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What I'd Have to Deny to Deny Hell
- 03/07/11
- 68
Everyone is talking about the existence of hell. Is hell a real place? Is it a literal place of literal torment? It seems that this issue snuck up on us a little bit. Just a month ago a book came out titled Don’t Call It a Comeback. In that book several of the “young, restless, Reformed” authors (myself included) penned chapters discussing issues pertinent to the church today: the gospel, the new birth, Scripture, social justice, homosexuality. These are some of the big issues in the church today and tomorrow. But there is no chapter on hell (the index shows only 2 references to it).
And yet here we are with discussion raging on the existence and nature of hell. This weekend, as I thought about this controversy, I allowed myself a little thought experiment. What would I have to deny in order to deny hell? If I am ever to come to the point of denying the existence of hell, what will be the doctrinal cost of getting there? Though I am sure there is much more that could be said, I came up with four denials.
I Will Deny What Jesus Taught
Jesus believed in the literal existence of a literal hell. It is very difficult to read Luke 16 (the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus) and arrive at any other conclusion except that Jesus believed in hell and that he believed in a hell of conscious torment of body and mind.
The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.'
Jesus also believed in the permanence of hell: “[B]esides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” In Matthew’s gospel Jesus speaks of hell as the furnace of fire, the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. He calls it a place of everlasting fire. This would be strange language for a man to use if he believed that hell did not exist and that it was not a place of horrible torment.
If I am going to deny the existence of hell, I will need to outright deny what Jesus teaches and declare that he is wrong, or I will need to obscure what is so plain. I will need to make all of Jesus’ language symbolic and all of the meaning something other than what is clear. I will need to deny what Jesus says.
I Will Deny the Plain Sense of Scripture
Time would fail me here to provide an extensive look at the concept of hell in the Bible; time would fail me to look at each of the words associated with hell. But one does not need to be an expert on the Bible or on its original languages to see that it teaches clearly that there is life after death and that this life after death will involve joy or torment, it will involve enjoying the loving presence of God or facing his wrathful presence. This is stated explicitly in Scripture and it is stated implicitly. It is in the Old Testament and comes to full form in the New Testament. Those who wrote Scripture believed that hell existed and made it plain in what they wrote.
If I am going to deny the existence of hell, I will have to do a great deal of redefining, a great deal of reinterpreting. As with the teaching of Jesus, I will need to change what is plain to what is symbolic, I will need to take what is clear and make it obscure. There is no getting around the fact that a plain, honest reading of the Bible teaches the existence of hell.
I Will Deny the Testimony of the Church
If I am to deny the existence of hell, I will be denying what has been the near-unanimous testimony of the Christian church through the ages. From the church’s earliest days until today, hell has been understood as a place of conscious, eternal torment. The Westminster Larger Catechism offers an apt summary of what Christians have long believed: “The punishments of sin in the world to come, are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire forever.” Though this was formed in the days of Reformation, it depends upon the testimony of Christians who came before. And it informed generations that followed.
If I am to deny that hell is a real place, if I am to deny that hell is that kind of place, I will be turning my back on two thousand years of Christian history—on two thousand years of brothers and sisters in Christ who had great knowledge of Scripture. I’ll grant that there are times this is necessary; there are times that many Christians are wrong about many things. But such a decision must be made with great fear and trembling and only on the basis of overwhelming Scriptural evidence.
I Will Deny the Gospel
I cannot deny hell without utterly changing the gospel message. The message of Christ dying for the lost in order to save their souls will be meaningless. If there is no hell, there is really nothing to lose. And so heaven and hell must be brought to earth, they must be seen as present realities rather than future ones. The Baptist preacher J.L. Dagg said it well: “To appreciate justly and fully the gospel of eternal salvation we must believe the doctrine of eternal damnation.” If I am going to deny eternal damnation, I must radically rewrite the gospel. Gone is the gospel of sinners who have committed treason against God and who call upon themselves God’s just wrath. There are many gospels I can put in its place. But what is clear is that this gospel, this gospel of a substitutionary atonement must be a casualty. This gospel stands and falls upon the existence of both heaven and hell. Take away either one and you gut the gospel; it becomes meaningless and nonsensical.
If I am going to give up hell, I am going to give up the gospel and replace it with a new one.
Let me close with some words from the great theologian Robert Dabney. What he says here I believe as well. “Sure I am, that if hell can be disproved in any way that is solid and true, and consistent with God’s honor and man’s good, there is not a trembling sinner in this land that would hail the demonstration with more joy than I would.” It’s not that I want hell to be true, but that the Scripture makes it clear that it is true. It is not for me to dismantle the doctrine or to deny it; I am simply to believe it and to live and act as if it is true.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (68)
Landon,
My beliefs are built upon what I believe about the Bible to the same extent that your beliefs are built upon your beliefs about the Koran.It’s a logically incoherent statement to say that your faith is “built” the fact you DON’T believe in the Bhagavad Gita. It is equally illogical to say my beliefs are built on what i don’t believe about the Bible
But I understand your situation because I use to be there myself: Your biblical worldview is absolutizing, it becomes the filter of everything. My worldview still does it too, for sure, that’s what worldviews do.
But I can no longer preach the Christian’s worldview over the Hindu’s… because they are both justified by the same internal system of presuppositions.
Those who believe the entire Christian faith must be thrown out if hell is thrown out bother me. It’s like knowing Jesus in this earthly life isn’t even worth it.
John Piper famously asked “Would we want heaven if God was not there?”
Can we allow this conversation to challenge us this way: “Would we want God if hell was not there?”
I think this prospect of universal salvation causes so much trembling because the evangelical faith of many is based on consequences (and rightly so, perhaps). But without hell, how many would stick around?
Is He real to us in our lives as they are?
Superb post, Tim! Well said!
Good man Tim. We need people like you to counter false preachers such as Rob Bell who recenthy said there is no hell. Keep up the good work.
Marty, do you believe in the Christian God? If no, why? If you yes, then He can speak to us in a way we can understand since He created both us and language. If He speaks to us, can He not insure that His Word to us is without error, so that we may truly know Him?
I remember before I was a Christian, back in my youthful ungodly days, a young girl witnessed to me on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, and i didn’t take her that serious, but i liked her. I wanted to be with her, until her Mom came a long and told her to not talk with me, since i wasn’t feeling any pain. She told me i was going to die and go to hell, with some other words as well, and she was quite bold.I told her, quite boldly, “I’d rather go to hell, if going to heaven you would be there.”I had a Catholic upbringing and knew of hell, but never really understood it.Since I have come to Christ i have learned that hell is a truth that every Christian must find difficult, and struggle with discussing.It is dark and fire. It is with Satan and sin and evil forever. Very heavy subject.We should never take it lightly, nor pronounce it lightly, yet we surely need to tell others of hell.
Thanks for the post. Well done.
ps RC Sproul has the best teaching Cd on hell i have yet listened to.
Tim,
Great post - thanks for standing up for what seems to be a very unpopular truth. I’m not surprised by the tone of some of the objecting comments here, either. 1 Corinthians 2:14 comes to mind: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Or perhaps Jesus said it best in John 8: 43 and 47: “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word… Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
@Jesus thanks…but we don’t have the same abiding presence of God as say, in the Garden of Eden. God is present here, but not in the same way as the scriptures portray that presence will be after the Judgement (or as it was before the Fall) Currently I believe anyone still breathing has a chance to enter into that abiding presence and renounce their rejection of God (no I’m not reformed) But a time will come when that option will not be available to us. Not only will Hell be the separation from God it will be the loss of ever being able to reconcile with God. Perhaps that’s a better way of putting it….
@Marty…why do you assume my acceptance of scripture is ‘unquestioning’? I’ve questioned and questioned hard…but when I questioned I was interested in an answer. The answer that I got was the Bible has been shown over and over again to be a reliable testament where that reliability can be shown. Another answer I got was that oral tradition is not what it used to be (I think Tim just recently did a blog on that as well…) Still yet another answer is the ancient autographs we have of scripture say pretty much the same thing then as the modern translations do now (the joke about “it says celebrate!” is just that, a joke). So it’s not a complete blind leap of faith to accept the scriptures as accurate and authoritative. But you still have to make a volitional choice to accept or not accept those scriptures.
Peace
To the person who posed the problem of hell as how the whold universe can be good but then there is hell, the answer is that hell is good, because God’s justice is good, however horrible it seems to us.Marty, for you: take a look at 1 Corinthians 1 and Romans 1. Romans 1 particularly says that your system of thought is built upon what you don’t believe. And the presuppositions of evangelical/fundamientalist Christianity and of Hinduism are about as similar as Albert Einstein’s contribution to society is to Pacman Jones’ contribution. When Hinduism changes its beliefs to reflect that Jesus is the only way to God and belives in the God of the Bible and there is no reincarnation, then maybe we can talk about similarities.
One other thing. A number of churches talk about hell as separation from God, but per Revelation 14:10 that is not the case. In fact, people in hell will wish that God is absent, but it will not be so.
Endless torture (aidios timoria) is a Pharisee doctrine that they picked up from the Babylonians. Against that view, I preach about an eon of discipline (aionian kolasin—Look it up in the Greek) from a God intent on healing the sin-disease of His children. This was the majority view [See below] in the early church, until Augustine (who couldn’t read Greek) started the process that made “endless torture” into dogma.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (~200): “God’s punishments (in Hades) are saving and disciplinary, leading to conversion.” Chastisement (kolasis) is for the good and advantage of him who is punished.” “We can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he continue to operate after this life.” (Mis. B. VI, c. 6)
ORIGEN (~203): God is a “Consuming Fire…[because he]…consumes evil thoughts, wicked actions, and sinful desires when they find their way into the minds of believers.” “God’s consuming fire… annihilate[es] that which harms his children.” (De Principis. I.2)
GREGORY OF NYSSA (~370): “Whoever considers the divine power will plainly perceive that it is able at length to restore by means of the aionion purgation and expiatory sufferings, those who have gone even to this extremity of wickedness.” “The soul which is united to sin must be set in the fire, so that that which is unnatural and vile may be removed, consumed by the aionion fire.” (De an. Et Res. Ii. P. 658)
BASIL THE GREAT (~370): “It is the sins which are consumed, not the very persons to whom the sins have befallen.” “The mass of [Christians] say that there is to be an end of punishment to those who are punished.” (De Asceticis)
JEROME (~375): “The wrath of the fury of the Lord [comes] in pity and with a design to heal, in order that every one may return to the confession of the Lord, that in Jesus’ Name every knee may bow, and every tongue may confess that He is Lord. All God’s enemies shall perish, not that they cease to exist, but cease to be enemies.” (Mic. V. 8)
“When you get right down to it, how can an omnipresent God be absent? Know what I mean?”
That is not the same thing as being “separated” in the sense meant here.
Imagine being in a room with someone with whom you were created to have close, loving relationship, but whose very presence is now inescapable, but also entirely and insurmountably hateful, to you, and with whom you know you can never be reconciled. You would truly be “separated” from that person, despite a form of proximity, wouldn’t you?
To assert that omnipresence means that one can’t be separated from God makes nonsense of all kinds of scriptural ideas, quite apart from this one. Scripture’s quite clear that there are many times that men are separated from God. The language of turning His back on people, of departing from them or ordering them from His presence, is all over scripture. It isn’t so simply done away by saying, “But He’s omnipresent!”
Pentamom, your post was really smart - nice to read, and well stated. You are a very good communicator. You have a gift.
Tim, do you take the Sermon on the Mount literally?
It also seems to be (apologies if this has been covered in an earlier comment) that to deny hell is to deny the God given gift of free will.
If someone has chosen to reject God, then to suggest that God will force them into an eternal relationship with him in heaven is tantamount to kidnapping or rape, only on an eternal scale.
The alternative, is hell.
@Pentamom: Thanks for the clarifying language; if that is what we mean by separation, then I fully agree. To avoid precisely this confusion, I prefer to use the term “alienation.” Because the separation is relational, not spatial or ontological. My Father’s embrace of humanity is unconditional, but alienation from him (and the pain of that alienation) is still an option for those who choose it.
@ThealityBites: Well said! If Father forced you to like him, then you would cease to be you. Hell is the experience of being loved eternally by God, but not loving him back.
“Hell is the experience of being loved eternally by God, but not loving him back.”
Stark statement. Horrifyingly true.
@Susan - I agree with you. I think Stott’s view actually fits much better with the plain meaning of Scripture and the fully revealed character of God in Christ.
More Scripture has to be “twisted” in its interpretation to fit Tim’s view. And it presents a God that asks us to do what he is not willing to do himself.
http://www.jeremyandchristine.com/articles/eternal.php
I challenge those of you who are so sure in your interpretive framework to take this quiz.
http://www.edwardfudge.com/hellquiz.html
One need not deny what Jesus taught, the plain sense of Scripture, or the gospel.