Hell Under Fire

Why is Universalism so commonly held today even among mainstream Christians? Or, if they don't actually advocate Universalism, why do so many Christians today, including so many Christian pastors and teachers, pretty much avoid the whole subject of final judgment all together, even though it's standard, both in the Bible and in all Christian traditions?

And the main reason, surely – or at least one of the two or three main reasons – is that even Christians today are utterly embarrassed by, and in fact ashamed of, the Traditionalist view of hell! And James Packer himself agrees with this. He says: "the deepest motivation in {Universalists'} minds has always been revolt against mainstream belief in endless punishment in hell for some people" (p171). In the first essay in the book, J. Albert Mohler Jr. traces something of the growing moral disquiet about this doctrine during the 19th Century. ¹ He writes: "Of all the articles of accepted Christian orthodoxy that troubled the consciences of Victorian churchmen, none caused more anxiety than the everlasting punishment of the wicked."

Well I would say: I should think so! So it should! It should cause us anxiety, or again there is something seriously wrong with us. And this anxiety should drive us back to the Scriptures to discover whether in fact the Traditional view is substantiated – and there we will find it is not substantiated at all. The great modern Evangelical Christian leader John Stott, who of course came to believe in Conditional Immortality, said: "I find the concept [of eternal conscious torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain."² Even some of the Traditionalists in this book Hell Under Fire are clearly disquieted about eternal torment. For example, in the essay "Jesus on Hell", Robert W. Yarborough writes,

"With Stott I affirm that the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment strains our sense of justice", and concedes he "cannot make sense" of it (p90).

Yet it seems to me that, in the biblical view, God's justice ought to make sense to us. In fact, the Bible insists that God's justice is something we can all rejoice in! This is what the Psalmist says: "Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity" (Ps 98:7-9)! Really? How can you rejoice at a hell of eternal suffering which doesn't make sense or cauterizes your feelings?

This is what makes sense to me. God is the Lord of life. I have no existence without God. If I reject God, if I sin against God, I cannot expect to live and I am not fit to live. That makes sense. Interesting that it's more or less what was affirmed, in 1995, in a report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England entitled The Mystery of Salvation, quoted in fact in Hell Under Fire. The report said:

"Hell is not eternal torment, but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so absolutely that the only end is total non-being." ³

It makes sense, and it's self-evidently just, that if you reject God's will for your life, you must die – for you have no power or right to live without it.

Yet Traditionalists say that even those who reject God will live forever. One of the essayists in Hell Under Fire, Sinclair B. Ferguson, quotes with approval the remark by Thomas Brooks of the 17th Century:

"The damned shall live as long in Hell as God himself shall live in Heaven." ⁴

That's merely putting bluntly what the Traditionalist view does in fact imply. Well, not only is it an appalling thought, it makes no sense and it is entirely unbiblical. The Bible says eternal life is available only through the Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, that sinners shall "die", shall "perish", and that in the end God will be "all in all" (I Cor 15:28). I believe that, because that is the biblical Gospel, and I'm happy to say it makes sense as well.

And in fact this is what the Bible affirms: both that God's justice does make sense and that what it prescribes for sinners is death. In Ezekiel 18, for example, the prophet Ezekiel goes to great lengths to spell out how God's justice works to people who are finding it obscure. He doesn't say, Like it or lump it! He says to his contemporaries: "You say, 'What the Lord does isn't right.' Well, listen to me and I'll explain it" (Ezek 18:25), and launches into the most painstaking exposition of God's judgment in the whole Old Testament. And this is what he says – or rather, what God says through him: "'As I live,' says the Lord God, '…all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins shall die'" (Ezek 18:4). Sorry, Traditionalists! God doesn't say: "shall suffer forever"! He says: "shall die."

The Apostle Paul says the same thing. In the most theologically systematic and precise of all his letters, Romans, in the middle of the most painstaking exposition of God's judgment in the whole New Testament, Paul says, "{Sinners} know God's decree that those who deserve such things deserve to – die" (Rom 1:32). They "know" it, both in the sense that they are aware of it and in the sense that their consciences acknowledge its justice. And what is it that sinners deserve, by God's decree? Eternal suffering? No. They "deserve to die". Just as Paul repeats later, in Romans 6:23: "The wages of sin is – death". Just as God told the first man and woman in Eden: If you sin, you will die. And just in case you don't get what death is, God said – just in case, like many Traditionalists, you think the word "death" may not mean what it seems to mean – I'll tell you: Genesis 3:19: "You are dust and to dust you shall return". You will cease to exist. Conditional Immortality.

This also is what makes sense to me: that ultimately God will put an end to evil and to unrepentant evildoers. Isn't that what the Bible means, among other things, when it affirms that ultimately God will be "all in all" (I Cor 15:28), or that ultimately God will "unite all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10), or that "Babylon" "shall be found no more" (Rev 18:21)? And yet this is not what Hell Under Fire says. Hell Under Fire says that evildoers will both continue forever, that in fact God will deliberately keep them that way and, furthermore, that they will continue to be unrepentantly evil forever!

I refer, for example, to one of the two essays by the co-editor Christopher W. Morgan.⁵ Morgan knows that God could put an end to the unsaved, if He wanted to. Even Christians who believe in the immortality of the human soul usually concede these days that such immortality cannot be absolute, as is God's, but can only continue by God's will. And actually most Bible scholars and competent Christian thinkers today agree that, biblically, we have no immortal soul at all. So Morgan writes: "…the wicked will be punished consciously forever in hell, not because they exist as immortal souls but because God will sustain them" (p205). So God could put them out of their misery if He wished, but He won't!

So Traditionalists have this huge problem: they have to somehow explain how it is just, even thinkable, let alone merciful, for God – our God, Jesus and His Father – to deliberately cause people, millions of them, to keep on suffering forever and ever. The usual explanation is, that because God is infinite, and infinitely worthy, sin against God demands an infinite penalty. And sure enough, Morgan argues this (pp210-1). Here he goes: "If people lied to us or disobeyed us, would they deserve death? Of course not. If they do these things against God, do they deserve capital punishment? The Bible's consistent answer is yes…."

Well, okay. But did you notice something strange? Morgan has just argued for "death", for "capital punishment" – not for eternal suffering. It seems that the Traditional view of hell is so unthinkable that, even while he's arguing for it, Morgan can't think it!

But wait: there's more! Morgan realises that, in order to justify eternal torment, he must go further than the infinite God argument. For he goes on to add: "It also seems likely that those in hell remain in their sinful state…continuing in sin and therefore stockpiling more and more guilt and its consequent punishment." (p212). What an appalling notion! Yet Morgan is not alone in this. He is able to cite A. H. Strong and D. A. Carson to the same effect. Clearly, this is considered to be an important plank of Traditionalist teaching. And, in fact, I can't see any alternative to it, if indeed the wicked continue forever deprived of the saving grace of God – for how else do we escape from the habit of sin at all, except by God's grace? And sure enough, in the last essay in the book, Sinclair B. Ferguson says the same thing:

"In Scripture," says Ferguson, "…the sinfulness of the wicked is viewed as continuing….There is no repentance. Hatred of God has no time limitation on it" (p235)!

God "all in all"? Doesn't sound like it! "All things reconciled to God" (Col 1:20)? Not according to the Traditionalists. "Every tongue in heaven, in earth and under the earth confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil 2:9-11)? Not at all. "New heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwell" (II Pet 3:13)? Don't count on it, says Hell Under Fire! Rather, evil without end, by evildoers whom God Himself actively sustains. And to what purpose? This sounds like no final judgment at all, to me. In fact it sounds like a most appalling nightmare. Frankly, it sounds like blasphemy. And yet Traditionalists are the ones who regularly accuse Conditionalists of heresy! No. Conditionalism doesn't threaten any fundamental Christian doctrine whatever: it enhances them all. But this Traditionalist teaching of evil without end – well, that's another matter.

As a matter of fact, I doubt that Traditionalists really mean what they say! In Hell Under Fire, R. Albert Mohler Jr. makes the following quotation with approval:

"'Hell expresses the intent of a holy God to destroy sin completely and forever…'". ⁶

Amen. But that's not Traditionalism! That's Conditional Immortality. But I don't want to "up the anti" any further! I just thank God that the Bible teaches, not eternal torment, but Conditional Immortality.

But does it? Isn't it Traditionalism that is biblical ? This is the central question, after all, as I've already said. For if Traditionalism is biblical, we need to go with it and try to make sense of it, however hard that may be. Well, on the basis of the arguments put forward in this book, I would say: No, Traditionalism is not biblical at all. This book cannot marshal a serious case based on the consistent witness of Scripture, not even on credible interpretation of a significant basket of texts.

Maybe contributors to Hell Under Fire sense that their own arguments are weak, for they do actually employ several strategies to skew the debate unfairly and unreasonably in their favour. For one thing, they often argue that Conditionalists are not really listening to the Bible: that we are allowing ourselves to be led astray by emotional or sentimental considerations. Actually they claim even more. As I've just observed, they repeatedly seek to link the doctrine of Conditional Immortality either with age-old sectarianism or with modernist liberal tendencies to deny the full authority of Scripture, to pick and choose which parts of the Bible will be taken seriously and to undermine key features of orthodox Christian faith.⁷ A pair of Traditionalists have even stated that "The doctrine of eternal punishment is the watershed between evangelical and non-evangelical thought"!⁸ Well, that's just ridiculous. Can Traditionalists really claim that such proponents of Conditional Immortality as Michael Green, John Wenham, Philip E. Hughes and John Stott are less committed to the authority of Scripture, or less competent Bible teachers, than they? They do have the grace to admit, at least, that Edward Fudge's book The Fire That Consumes is thoroughly biblical. As for myself, all I can say is, that I am at least as committed to the Bible as these Traditionalists, and just as concerned as they are about modernist trends to undermine the biblical Gospels, or about emergent church tendencies to shelve orthodox teaching regarding the atonement. In my own book, I deliberately avoid any appeal to emotionalism and seek to found everything I say squarely on what the Bible consistently teaches.