Defending the Traditional Doctrine of Hell: Part 1
Introduction
In his introduction to The Other Side of the Good News, Larry Dixon says, “Today’s ‘kinder and gentler’ evangelicalism seems to question [hell as] a motivation for salvation. ‘People should respond to the love of God, not to His wrath,’ we are told.”[1] As a result, it is no wonder that “today’s sermons… seldom include any reference to hell and seem as if they were inspired by a kind of Miltonian collection entitled ‘Perdition Lost.’”[2] Dixon is not alone in his assessment. Gary Habermas and J.P. Moreland agree, “We [society] do not want to talk about hell, much less dwell on it. We would rather the topic never came up.”[3] And while it seems a more recent phenomenon, C.S. Lewis even addressed our reluctance to confront hell while addressing a group of Oxford undergraduates in October 1939. In a tongue-in-cheek manner, he asked his audience’s forgiveness for using “the crude monosyllable” and then soberly acknowledged “that many wiser and better Christians than I in these days do not like to mention heaven and hell even in a pulpit.”[4]
Why are theologians reluctant to discuss the downside of eternity? Quite frankly, it is because the traditional doctrine of hell is widely regarded as logically and morally indefensible. A doctrine that has not been especially difficult until the last hundred years or so, the concept of hell has gotten mired in modern sentimentality. As Moreland says, “we do not appreciate or extol the ‘hard’ virtues of holiness, justice and righteousness. Instead, we are preoccupied with the ‘soft’ virtues of love, mercy and kindness.”[5] As a result, two doctrines, universalism and conditional immortality, with roots in the early church, have seen resur-gence. Herein, we will assess the validity of these doctrines against the traditional doctrine of hell and determine which better quells the logical and moral concerns people have with damnation.
[1] Larry Dixon, The Other Side of the Good News: Confronting the Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ Teaching on Hell (Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2003) 10.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gary R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1998), 285.
[4] C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time” in The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 48.
[5] Habermas and Moreland, Beyond Death, 287.