Defending the Traditional Doctrine of Hell: Part 4
Traditionalism at a Glance
I believe the traditional doctrine of hell is well enough understood that I will not spend a great deal of time on it but will offer a recap of its prominent tenets. Every man’s soul is immortal and can never be destroyed. The “fire” and “flames” references are seen by some traditionalists as literal, as metaphorical by others. Repentance is no longer an option after death. Judgment is both immediate and eternal upon the death of the physical body. There is no third option for the “cleansing” of the soul to a point that it is acceptable to heaven (purgatory). I believe it is the option that best squares with Scripture and the concept of a holy, perfect and wholly perfect God.
Why?
Why the traditional view? Why not save everyone or put the damned out of their misery once and for all? What kind of a God takes pleasure in the endless torment of body and mind? These questions reach beyond scriptural proofs and tug at our intellectual, philosophical and moral sensibilities. While I have addressed them tentatively in earlier sections, they deserve a more thoughtful consideration.
Our primary concern has to be to make God the center of our consideration of hell. While that may sound obvious, every ob-jection to the traditional doctrine of hell is usually “me” centered. I do not like the idea of hell. I think it is immoral. It is not fair. “One must take into account not only the nature of the sin, but also the person against whom the sin is committed.”[28] Any offense against an absolutely holy God, no matter how trivial it may seem, is a serious offense. We have forgotten the essential nature of the very God we begrudge for holding us accountable. Therefore, “even if God has infallible foreknowledge of all future events, is almighty, and gives all persons an optimal measure of his grace, it is possible, so far as the nature of God is concerned, that some will choose evil decisively and be damned.”[29] It is wrong to think God is only loving. “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.”[30]
“Hell will forever be a monument to human dignity and the value of human choice. It is a quarantine where God says two important things: I respect freedom of choice enough to where I won’t coerce people, and I value my image-bearers so much that I will not annihilate them.”[31] Therefore,
an account of hell must not only be compatible with the
divine nature, it must also be compatible with what we
know about the nature of free creatures…. So in the end,
one either perfects his moral freedom or he perverts
it… [and] such freedom, in its most significant form,
requires that we live with the consequences of our
choices, at least our decisive choices. Our choices are far
more significant if the consequences are eternal and
inescapable rather than merely temporal, or, like the
choice of annihilation, eternal but escapable because
not experiencable.[32]
Those who are damned choose evil over the constant offer of His grace. Hell is simply honoring that choice.
And probably the most egregious oversight of them all is completely forgetting the Atonement and all it means. No one complaining against God mentioned the Atonement, except in one extreme viewpoint to say it was completely unnecessary. John Hick aside, no one else took it into account in lodging his complaint. The infinite, holy, perfect God of Scripture came to earth, took on humanity, endured unimaginable pain and suffering and a horrific death all to reconcile man to Himself. No one has to go to hell. No one need trouble himself with the thought of hell. We have completely forgotten what God has done for us, and we continue asking for more. Rather than be grateful He did something He did not have to do and we do not deserve, we stomp our feet at actually having to be accountable for something for which we are without excuse.
Conclusion
We are so easily satisfied with the offerings of this broken world that we have lost the concept of the “divine” and our role in it. I agree with Kierkegaard: "It is now high time to explain that the real reason why man is offended at Christianity is because it is too high, because its goal is not man’s goal, because it would make of man something so extraordinary that he is unable to get it into his head."[33]
We have lost sight of all the good in the Good News. And because we feel unworthy, we are sure we are not worthy either of the hell of traditionalism. We have settled. We forget that the Atonement confirms our intrinsic value to a perfect God. And our preference for the soft virtues coupled with our seeming inability to truly understand the holiness of God have left us in the precarious position of second-guessing Him, attempting to replace His concept of righteousness with our own. Make no mistake about it, traditional conceptions of hell are compatible with God’s perfect goodness and make sense of human freedom. Eternal punishment is neither capricious nor arbitrary. Understanding that we are sons and daughters of God, we will better appreciate the necessity and rightness of hell, and it will take its proper place in our moral and intellectual framework.
[28] Dixon, The Other Side of the Good News, 101.
[29] Jerry L. Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 113.
[30] Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 174, original formatting maintained.
[31] Ibid., 192, original formatting maintained.
[32] Walls, The Logic of Damnation, 113, 131, 136.
[33] Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 214, in Walls, The Logic of Damnation, 138.