The Narrow Path Ministries

(The article consists of passages taken from Lee Strobel’s book, “The case for Faith”, and partly recounts his interview with J. P. MORELAND, PH.D)

I have the book & have read this chapter before. While I applaud the fact that “J.P.” does not believe in a hell with literal burning flames, I think there are enough biblically sound reasons to also reject the idea of (largely) non-physical non-ending suffering he sets out; other views are better explained by experts, but these are my thoughts/reactions to some statements I’ve excerpted:

Moreland paused before continuing. “And it’s important to understand that if the God of Christianity is real, he hates hell and he hates people going there,” he added. “The Bible is very clear: God says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”5

What baffles me is that while the verse clearly speaks of the DEATH of the wicked, the interpretation unaccountably becomes never-ending life in a not very pleasant state.

Yes, God is a compassionate being, but he’s also a just, moral, and pure being. So God’s decisions are not based on modern American sentimentalism. This is one of the reasons why people have never had a difficult time with the idea of hell until modern times.

From the even fairly basic research I’ve done, there was belief in CU (for example), fairly early on by some in the early church.

“Actually,” replied Moreland, “hell was not part of the original creation. Hell is God’s fall-back position. Hell is something God was forced to make because people chose to rebel against him and turn against what was best for them and the purpose for which they were created.

And yet the bible states that hell (which I think is what he is calling the lake of fire), was not actually made for people.
Mat 25:41 Then He also shall say to those on the left hand, Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.

Also the notion of God being forced to do anything doesn’t seem to gel with me.

“Make no mistake: hell is punishment--—but it’s not a punishing. It’s not torture. The punishment of hell is separation from God, bringing shame, anguish, and regret. And because we will have both body and soul in the resurrected state, the misery experienced can be both mental and physical. But the pain that’s suffered will be due to the sorrow from the final, ultimate, unending banishment from God, his kingdom, and the life for which we were created in the first place. People in hell will deeply grieve over all they’ve lost.”

“There will be degrees of separation, isolation, and emptiness in hell. I think this is significant because it emphasizes that God’s justice is proportional. There is not exactly the same justice for everyone who refuses the mercy of God.

It doesn’t make sense to me. How can there be degrees of separation from God? Will God visit some people there, but not others? Will there be trips out for some?

“Believe it or not, everlasting separation from God is morally superior to annihilation,” he replied. “Why would God be morally justified in annihilating somebody? The only way that’s a good thing would be the end result, which would be to keep people from experiencing the conscious separation from God forever. Well, then you’re treating people as a means to an end.”

I personally would prefer oblivion to never-ending regret, & think in that situation I wouldn’t mind being treated as a means to an end.

There’s no case where children are ever used as figures of damnation.”
He flipped through the Old Testament until he settled on Second Samuel. “Here’s a good example,” he said. “The child that King David conceived in an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba died, and David says in Second Samuel 12:23: ‘I will go to him, but he will not return to me.’
“David was expressing the truth that his child will be in heaven and that he would join him someday. So that is another piece of evidence that children will not be in hell.”

While I agree with the idea of children not going to hell, I understood this scripture not to be about heaven, just David saying he would die & go to Sheol like everyone else, including his child.

I think people in heaven will realize that hell is a way of honoring people as being intrinsically valuable creatures made in God’s image,” Moreland said.
“You have to remember that the soul is big enough to have an unperturbed sense of joy, well-being, love and happiness, while at the same time having a sense of grief and sadness for others. Those are not inconsistent states in a person’s life, and it is a mark of a person’s character and maturity that they’re able to have those states at the same time.”

I have difficulty grasping the idea of being able to enjoy heaven knowing that people I may have loved are eternally suffering elsewhere.
And allowing people to suffer without hope of reprieve is honouring them?

Why Didn’t God Create Only Those He Knew Would Follow Him?
“First of all,
“If God had chosen to create just a handful of four, six, or seven people, maybe he could have only created those people who would go to heaven. The problem is that once God starts to create more people, it becomes more difficult to just create the people who would choose him and not create the people who wouldn’t.”

Maybe he could have??
It becomes more difficult??

Mark 10:27 (KJV) And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
Jeremiah 32:17 (KJV) Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee

Perhaps I'm just being too picky.

Suzana,

Good to hear you the other day!

You wrote:

I have difficulty grasping the idea of being able to enjoy heaven knowing that people I may have loved are eternally suffering elsewhere.

How would it be any different if they were suffering there for 10,000 years, until they repent, as some of the Universalists argue? How much would be acceptable?

And:

And allowing people to suffer without hope of reprieve is honouring them?

It could be if they are where they choose to be. I believe God greatly values free will.

Suzana wrote:

I have difficulty grasping the idea of being able to enjoy heaven knowing that people I may have loved are eternally suffering elsewhere.

To which Homer replied:

How would it be any different if they were suffering there for 10,000 years, until they repent, as some of the Universalists argue? How much would be acceptable?

My thoughts:

It would be very difficult for me to know that anyone I had loved (which really should mean anyone I had ever known) were tormented for 10,000 years—or even ten years! I have a dear friend serving a twenty-year sentence in Texas, which truly grieves me. However, I know that his incarceration will have an end, and he will someday be restored to his grieving family (unless he dies in prison, in which case, also, his sentence has had an end). There are harsh realities with which we must cope temporarily, but the consolation given in scripture is that there will eventually come a time when there is no more suffering, sadness, or grief. I think this suggests that all the causes of sadness and grief will have been done away with, and all will be well in the universe. It is the cherishing of such a hope that pulls us through the season of grief.

Suzana wrote:

And allowing people to suffer without hope of reprieve is honouring them?

To which Homer replied:

It could be if they are where they choose to be. I believe God greatly values free will.


My thoughts:

If hell really means eternal conscious torment, can it be said that everybody who ends up there really chose that fate by their free will?

We can say that Adam and Eve sinned by their free will, but were they consciously choosing to experience eternal torment? God had not even mentioned that this penalty would accrue to their action. They had no reason to anticipate it. God had only mentioned a considerably lighter penalty—"In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die." We might say that they were choosing death over life, but that is not the same thing as knowingly choosing an eternal existence of endless conscious torment. God said they would die. The traditional doctrine says that dying is the one thing that sinners will never be permitted to do. They must live forever in a state of conscious agony. Perhaps if God had mentioned that, there would be more people choosing to avoid it.

Instead, God continually said that the sinner would face the consequence of death (Genesis 2:17/ Ezekiel 18:4, 20; John 8:24; Romans 1:32; 6:23). There is no place where God ever mentioned eternal torment, unless it is found in Revelation 14:11, or in Revelation 20:10. But if this is what Revelation is telling us, it is rather late notice for sinners, who all along had been informed that the worst penalty for their sins that they could anticipate was capital punishment.

Even in the Garden, only Adam could have been said to be choosing for himself to endure the wages of sin, since we are told that the woman was deceived, and, presumably, believed Satan's lie that God was making idle threats. Because of this deception, Eve probably did not think there was to be a punishment for her act. She chose to sin, but it is not likely that she was choosing to die—and much less to be eternally tormented.

To say that eternally tormenting sinners is honoring their free will suggests that their will was to be tormented eternally in exchange for the passing pleasures of sin. How many of those who will end up in hell actually see this as the exchange they are choosing to make? How many anticipate eternal torment? Of those who have heard the doctrine, how many believe it? If good Christians dispute whether the Bible teaches such a doctrine, and wonder how such a thing can be harmonized with the character of a good Creator, then how much more might non-believers be justified in doubting a doctrine that such a fate awaits them?

It is true that sinners choose to sin, and with their sin, they (unwittingly or not) also choose its penalty. But it seems very unlikely that one sinner in ten believes, when they choose to sin, that they are choosing to be tormented eternally.

Obviously, the sinner takes his chances, when rebelling against God, that the penalty for his rebellion may well exceed what he expects. No one is arguing that a criminal's punishment must conform to the limits of his expectations. I am just responding to Suzana's and Homer's comments. God may not be obligated to honor the rebel, but it seems strange to say that, in tormenting him forever, this is a way of honoring either him as a person made in God's image, or honoring free will.

Thanks Steve, just what I was thinking.
I'm looking forward to the book you're writing!

Homer wrote:Suzana,

Good to hear you the other day!

You wrote:

I have difficulty grasping the idea of being able to enjoy heaven knowing that people I may have loved are eternally suffering elsewhere.

How would it be any different if they were suffering there for 10,000 years, until they repent, as some of the Universalists argue? How much would be acceptable?

Hi Homer!

I believe anything would be more acceptable than forever.
I know the choice isn't up to us, but if it was, I think I would also prefer 10,000 years (for example, I'm thinking of my [currently] unsaved children here), as opposed to annihilation.

On that, I'm not sure whether Paidion or other universalists believe in there being literal flames, but I would think it would be impossible to make any kind of rational decisions to repent while in such unremitting agony.

Hello Homer, Suzana, Steve, et al,

I respect J.P. Moreland. He's charismatic and a non-Calvinist (me both too). I've heard him on mp3, speaking on other topics (Converse With Scholars, etc.), and read his Love God with All Your Mind, (NavPress). Good book. Good apologetics on other things.

I only got about halfway through Homer's link/interview. Like Suzana, I find things he said contradictory to scripture and/or contradictory to reason. To elaborate on why I think this (in detail) this would take a very long time, which I don't have now.

I wouldn't be the first to say the eternal torment (of conscious punishment) doctrine is largely, if not mostly, mythological (though "ET" believers have their texts cited as proofs). To borrow a term from C. Michael Patton, of Parchment & Pen fame; Imo, ET is quite: "folk theology": (beliefs that come about as a result of unexamined popular opinion, even from what we call superstition).

This reminds me of the other day on the radio: When Steve & I talked about just how many 'non-biblical ideas' we've inherited...and may not have examined...(or are even aware of)!

Homer's article/link gives me more reasons to accept Conditional Immortality. "Simplicity" isn't necessarily a good reason to accept a belief as being true. Yet in reading Moreland I saw just how complicated these things are for him. Much if not most of what he said seemed to be nothing more than mere human imagination: A primary reason I don't accept the other alternative view of hell: universalism.

The simplest take on any given topic isn't necessarily the best. But when arguments from any given viewpoint take us so far into the imaginative, a sign of "caution" arises in my mind.

Thanks.

I see Suzana & I "simul-posted." Hello Sue,

To reiterate my point about the "imaginative" we see in theologies (or belief systems); the Bible has absolutely nothing to say about "how many years" (leave alone 10,000) hell could possibly last. It also doesn't plainly state anything about anyone "coming out of hell" (though this has been proposed with supporting texts for that argument).

In our universalism debate from exactly a year ago we covered all of this stuff. So I know in advance that universalists disagree with me; that they believe in a post-mortem salvation of coming out of hell, and so on. I prefer not to go over that debate again.

As on the radio the other day; I simply want to think biblically. "Human imagination" isn't the only Caution Sign that arises in my mind when studying the Bible & theology. The more imaginations and their accompanying complications arise; the further we may be getting from what the Bible says, and only-says.

Sure. It's true that some doctrines need long explanations, as each case may be. I do everything I can think of to ensure I'm thinking biblically, no matter how difficult a doctrine, passage, or idea may be. In doing this, I make it a point to be aware that: What might be possibly true is different from what I 'imagine' and/or 'wish' could be true...if you see the difference (I do, anyway).

I have non-Christian family also. It would be nice and would make me feel good if I knew they would ultimately be saved after they die. I can 'imagine' and 'wish' such a thing, but don't see the possibility from the biblical data. This redirects my thinking to what the Bible does say about them, and the gospel that the living may believe:

Romans 10 (NIV)
9That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Lastly, to you and Steve (if he sees this).
I'm not convinced of the possibility of universalism being true, that it is a viable option I can take on biblical grounds. I also understand that Steve, and it seems, you too (Suzana), see it as a distinct possibility.

I don't want to debate either of you (nor anyone else) about this.

Thanks again.

RickC wrote:Lastly, to you and Steve (if he sees this).
I'm not convinced of the possibility of universalism being true, that it is a viable option I can take on biblical grounds. I also understand that Steve, and it seems, you too (Suzana), see it as a distinct possibility.

I don't want to debate either of you (nor anyone else) about this.

Thanks again.

OK.