The Insufficiency of Hell to convert Sinners
Well, here goes. I have heard very few sermons on hell. I don’t think I can remember even one! With much discussion going around these days in attempts to “defend” God’s apparent “mean streak”, it is challenging to remain unaffected. Certainly a loving God would not send anyone to eternal torment? Would He?
Some whom I respect deeply have made attempts to describe hell as a place where sinners would rather be than heaven, and that the doors of hell are “locked from the inside.” All this to soften the image of God pouring out wrath on sinners who don’t know any better.
This is a tough topic for anyone to get their hands around. I just listened to a teaching by John Piper given at Resolved 2008. It will only increase your love, gratefulness, and savor for God. I hope you will listen to it also.
so chris, what do you think hell is? you seem to be implying that it’s not as Lewis describes it in the Great Divorce. what Scriptures are you leaning on for your definition? come on, give us the goods.
Trevor, you are right. i was referring to CS Lewis and NT Wright, and some in the emerging church movement. The problem that Piper points out in his message is that these scholars may be trying to take God off the hook for Hell existing. That is the problem. If all of God’s perfections are equally glorious, then His judgments are as glorious as His grace and mercy, and each are more glorious in light of the others. So His mercy is seen as more glorious in light of wrath. I will think about writing more on this. But Piper has done a much better job. He also has a two part series on the same topic given at his church.
Chris
i doubt that the motive behind Lewis’ theology of hell is that he cannot conceive of (or would prefer not to support) the idea that God has created hell, and that it is part of his divine plan/ordination, but rather that he is faithfully trying to explain (for the edification of the church) how he conceives the (relatively little) evidence of hell in the Scriptures working out in reality. this is why i was curious as to your own conception of hell, because i know until i read some of Lewis’ thought on the subject, i had never been able to conjure up an image which reflected everything i understood about God from the Bible and my own personal experience.
Good points. by and large I agree with your assessment of CS Lewis. In reality I like his position, but it does take away some level of God’s active involvement of “casting” into hell and place it more towards the arena of man’s will in “choosing” hell rather than heaven. Both may be true, but to avoid or not mention God’s active role, in my opinion, would not be faithful to scripture. Words like “torment” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” do not imply to me that this place will be desired by anyone choosing to be there once they are there. I will get back to you on the post on this, but I am out of town today and busy tomorrow.
One more thing, do you really believe there is relatively little about hell in the scriptures? Or do you just mean little evidence about “Gehenna” as contrasted with God’s eternal wrath and judgment upon mankind? Please clarify and I can respond…..
Chris,
I agree with the direction you are headed re: hell. A couple of weeks ago Tabletalk magazine had as it’s weekend devotion an article on hell, which I then used as a part of our family devotion. I felt a little “fire and brimstone” doing it, but I realized that I had not communicated the reality of hell to my little ones. Like any other grim specter, I believe children should know the truth about hell, as appropriate for their age. Piper has said that it is easier for children than adults to lose sleep over hell, and that losing sleep is the right response.
If hell is the magnifying of God’s grace through the righteousness punishment of the rebellious, then the knowledge of the wicked, that their suffering only increasingly highlights the worth of the One they despise, could never lead to repentance, but only to increasing torment.
The one event that could break that cycle would be a change in their basic nature- they would have to stop being children of wrath and start (through new birth) being children of grace, so that they also could see and savor the worth of the One who torments them, “though He slay me..” But isn’t being left in their ‘natural state’ a fundamental piece of the punishment itself?
Here is a blip from what I wrote in response to the conversation here on my blog at 2mites.com.
Below, I attempt to add my insights, or lack thereof, to this conversation. I recognize that what follows is not a biblical defense of either position, but rather a brief investigation of one of the reasons the doctrine of hell is worthy of our investigation. I also acknowledge that the investigation is slanted in the direction of the position I see as the most biblical one.
my comment on the eternal conscious torment of the unrepentant sinner:
We know that God is perfectly just, and that He is a God that loves mercy. If the Bible does indeed speak of an eternal conscious torment that is as bad as the hell-fire-and brimestone preachers (such as Jonathan Edwards in “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God”) make it out to be, then indeed my sin is more terrible than I have ever felt it to be. Why have I failed to feel the depth of my own depravity? Because I fail to see clearly the holiness, perfections and beauty of God.
As I recognize that God is right to cast me into the eternal fire, and can do know less to a sinner apart from atonement, I recognize how distant from God I am in terms of holiness. I can then begin to rightly consider my own wickedness, by the help of the Holy Spirit, and experience a true and Godly sorrow that leads to repentance. I know in my own life I have often treated sin lightly, and therefore have valued the price that Christ paid for it much less than I ought. The more I recognize what I am rightly due because of my own sin and the way that Christ has made atonement for it to rescue me, the more I revel in the majesty of God’s love and mercy. The more I recognize how God is righteous in actively casting sinners into hell, the more I am compelled to worship Him as a result of His mercy towards me, a hell deserving sinner.
However, if hell is simply a place of our choosing, where we miss out on the eternal blessings of God because of our lack of desire for Him (as some suggest). Then our sin is not so bad that God is righteous to actively persecute it, and our vision of God much clearer, because God in His holiness isn’t all that distant from us.
This conversation on hell has caused me to think the past few days about something that has always bothered me from scripture. It is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. What has been difficult for me is the request of the rich man that Lazarus would go and preach to his brothers back in his Father’s house.
When I imagine a human creature writhing in the agonies of hell, it is with a twisted face and a raised fist; not this broken man hoping for the salvation of his brothers. Some smart guys have stated in their commentaries that it was his own agony that he wished to abate by keeping his brothers from that awful place. Are they saying that it is unrighteous to feel great pain when one we love suffers?
That doesn’t mean I consider his motive entirely pure, simply ‘good’ enough that in its context “I tremble and know not why”.
In the Great Divorce Lewis paints the picture of a woman who was willing, for her own selfish reasons, to take from heaven back to hell a son she had lost in life. Her notion of love was a thinly veiled attempt to hide the fact that she desired to possess her child as an object, caring nothing for his own condition. Lewis’s argument was that through our decisions we are constantly becoming either more hellish or more heavenly- better suited for our ultimate environment.
But when Jesus gives us (whether historic or symbolic) a specific example of a “hellish human” he looks uncomfortably like me.
There is a another troubling passage in the book of Luke; “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
There is only one valid reason I can think of for the rightness of eternal punishment following finite crime. That is, the crime is not finite. We live and move and have our being in the context of finiteness. We fail to see the infinite stage we are performing on, even while suffering in hell. We are constantly guilty of Edward’s “infinite provinciality”; valuing most is closest and not what is truly most valuable.