The doctrine we don’t talk about

Hell used to be popular. Medieval artists and playwrights churned out depictions of the coming damnation without quenching their audience’s appetite. Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost became classics largely because of their sizzling scenes in hell. During the Great Awakening, hellfire sermons induced huge emotional responses.

Yet something has changed. Few today could joyfully sing bygone hymns lauding the just agonies of hell.¹ Jonathan Edwards declared that a father’s bliss in heaven will increase through seeing his child eternally tormented. Most now find this perspective disturbing, but what are the options? Must we either suggest a lobotomized existence in heaven or reject hell’s reality?

Hell seems to offend logic as well as modern sensibilities. How can any sin against God by finite creatures demand infinite punishment? What does punishment accomplish when it can neither deter nor rehabilitate? Our MB confession states that “God the Father is the source of all life” (article 1), and “Satan and all those who have rejected Christ will be condemned to eternal punishment in hell, forever separated from the presence of God” (article 18). How can there be life in a place separated from the presence of an omnipresent God?

Instead of being an effective warning that saves souls, the doctrine of hell has become a common excuse for not taking Christianity seriously. In many churches, talking about hell is discouraged just a little less than questioning it. Others reject it entirely. Two popular Christian writers take different approaches.

C. S. Lewis described his novel, The Great Divorce, as a fantasy with a moral. In a hell that seems much like Earth, residents are so self-absorbed they can’t distance themselves enough from each other and all external reality. As a result they continually extinguish every form of true pleasure, vibrancy, and joy from their lives. Heaven is only a bus ride away, but few take it. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it. . . . No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.”

Brian McLaren suggests more study of the Bible’s judgment texts. Many may be warnings for a biblical generation – warnings that rejecting the peaceable intrusion of God’s kingdom and seeking another will have consequences: the Jewish revolt would lead to Jerusalem’s destruction by the Romans. Secondly, by looking beyond the pictures of judgment to the criteria, one sees that it varies, often stressing actions over beliefs. Finally, God’s love and justice are most clearly revealed at Calvary, and however God ultimately judges every person will also showcase his full nature.

Another view is that the end result of hell will be non-existence, rather than eternal conscious suffering. Called conditional immortality, this challenges the idea that all humans will live forever in some state. In Eden, the Lord prevented humans from gaining immortality, which only he can provide.² While all will be raised to face judgment, some will experience eternal life with God while others will perish in the second death. To be destroyed is an eternal punishment, never to be undone.³

This view deals with the logical problems raised earlier. God is indeed the eternal I AM, and separation from him means to ultimately not be. If this is hell, it is still a tragic fate,⁴ but our Creator has the right to unmake those who spurn life’s only source. In eternity, God truly will be “all in all” because nothing will exist that is in rebellion to him.⁵

Is it possible, through study and synthesis of the best of these views, to arrive at a perspective on judgment that is scriptural, logical – and praiseworthy?

1. Well-known hymn-writer Isaac Watts wrote many such hymns. One lyric attributed to him: “What bliss will fill the ransomed souls, When they in glory dwell, To see the sinner as he rolls, In quenchless flames of hell.”
2. Genesis 3:22–23; 1 Timothy 6:13–16.
3. This interpretation is based on the historical examples given of a punishment of eternal fire (2 Peter 2:6; Jude 7), and the words of Jesus (Matthew 10:28; John 3:16; 15:5–6), Paul (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2 Timothy 1:8–10), Peter (2 Peter 2:12–3:9) and others. Objections are typically based on less prosaic passages. The post-mortem conversation between the rich man and Abraham (Luke 16:19–31) is so problematic that even those who take it literally usually suggest that it depicts a temporary arrangement. The point of the story is disbelief, not hell, and it doesn’t specify the duration or result of the anguish. Revelation describes torment in the lake of fire (Revelation 14:9–11; 20:7–15), but those being tormented include impersonal entities such as Death and Hades, making a literal interpretation difficult. John defines what the lake of fire represents: the second death. In the Old Testament, unquenchable fire and smoke rising forever symbolize the irrevocable, certain nature of judgment, not its duration. In Mark 9:43–49, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 66 to describe hell as a refuse heap where enemy corpses are devoured by worms and consumed by smouldering flames. Worms and flames are common symbols of decay and destruction in both the Old and New Testament.
4. Aside from Jesus’ repeated statements that judgment will be more bearable for some than others, the amount of agony that destruction will cause is probably morbid speculation.
5. 1 Corinthians 15:24–28.

Marshall Janzen lives in Regina and attends Parliament Community Church.