This…is CNN.
Now you tell me there is no place of unutterable and eternal suffering.
First of all, how did Franky Schaeffer become the spokesman for the anti-hell side of the discussion? I thought he threw over Christianity all together? Didn’t his white hot hatred of all things religious righty turn him into an agnostic or a Marxist or something?
No such luck. Consider his take on the existence of hell. I have rarely read something this shallow that didn’t come out of Washington.
Since Christianity is my tradition, I can say more about it. One view of God – the more fundamentalist view – is of a retributive God just itching to punish those who “stray.”
The other equally ancient view, going right back into the New Testament era, is of an all-forgiving God who in the person of Jesus Christ ended the era of scapegoat sacrifice, retribution and punishment forever.
As Jesus said on the cross: “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
That redemptive view holds that far from God being a retributive God seeking justice, God is a merciful father who loves all his children equally. This is the less-known view today because fundamentalists – through televangelists and others – have been so loud and dominant in North American culture.
But for all that, this redemptive view is no less real.
Why does our view of hell matter? Because believers in hell believe in revenge. And according to brain chemistry studies, taking revenge and nurturing resentment is a major source of life-destroying stress.
So the God of the Old Testament, as opposed to the God of the New Testament, is really really stressed out, what with the Amorites and Girgishites and all the other ites running around?
Good gravy. Now there is room for reasonable, historically and theologically informed discussion about what the first century understood by God’s final judgment, Gehenna, the lake of fire, etc. and how that may have become mutated into a bad Rob Zombie movie during the Middle Ages. Read the literature on purgatory, never mind on hell, right up to the twentieth century and you get the gist of how clergy loved to play these terror mind games with laity, especially kids. Some sick stuff.
But Schaeffer’s sentimental view of a cuddly deity bears no relation to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Or the Father of Jesus. But I guess He’s the God of the religious right only.
Which is not to say that Schaeffer gets everything wrong. Luther was the one who emphasized that, if you want to know who God is, look to the Cross of Christ. The Cross should be the prism through which we view everything, even notions of God’s justice (which Schaeffer reduces to mere vengeance). But that does not mean that there are no dire, even eternal consequences to rejecting Life.
Driscoll’s take is what you would expect. Turn or burn. Except he leaves out the Calvinist distinctive: whether you turn or whether you burn has nothing to do with you.
The stark reality is this: either Jesus suffered for your sins to rescue you from hell, or you will suffer for your sins in hell. These are the only two options and you have an eternal decision to make.
Really? A decision? Hmm… (Yeah, yeah, I know: you still have to preach it, because God uses means. Nevertheless, pay no attention to the man behind the pulpit.)
In any event, this gruesome “My Turn” is just marketing fodder for a new documentary called Hellbound? Next time, if you’re going to host one of these “Jane, you ignorant slut” challenges, I’d rather hear from someone like Greg Boyd, who is an annihilationist, than Franky Schaeffer, a smart guy who could be doing something really creative with his gifts but whose sell-by date was about a week after he got that HuffoPo blog and started ringing the “I Can’t Shake My Fundamentalist Past Ooooh How I Hate Them Ooooh” bell. (Franky, we got it. Honest. You don’t have to tell us again. Like, we’re begging you.)
As for the traditional view of eternal suffering, maybe Jonathan Fisk will start getting some MSM face time, what with his new book coming out.
Tim Etherington
September 24, 2012 at 10:50 AM
Alright, alright Anthony. I’ll make no more apologies for the Calvinist view, I know I’m in Lutheranville here. However, you’ve done a commendable Moe Howard style eye poke of Frankie and a passable Larry Fine hair pull of Driscoll. How about articulating your view? Who goes to hell and how do they get there? What is God’s role in their condemnation?
Anthony Sacramone
September 24, 2012 at 12:29 PM
I leave such things to God. I only know that Jesus is the way to eternal life, in fact IS life. I know of no other. A real rejection of life is how you wind up with eternal death. I don’t believe it is a mere matter of human free will or choice, because I don’t believe we can ever know what the stakes are without the grace of God, communicated through His appointed means of grace or directly through Christ (think Paul on the road to Damascus). Whether the suffering of the condemned is for eternity or not, whether people who have never heard of Jesus have a chance to be saved by some mysterious communication of Jesus’s merits, I don’t know. Whether eternal condemnation means eternal personal conscious suffering, I don’t know. Whether it is even far worse that our imaginations can think up, I don’t know. I know that Scripture is clear that it is a fate STRICTLY TO BE AVOIDED. (Even if hellfire is a metaphor, the reality can’t be any less gruesome than the image used to convey it.) But I do believe (1) God does not rejoice in the death of the sinner. (2) The Cross is a reflection of God’s love for every last person who has ever lived, and so it makes sense that somehow, in some way, the Cross is MEANINGFUL in a potentially salvific way to every last person and not just a pro forma invitation that was never meant to be, or could not possibly be, accepted. I am not a universalist.
One thing I do think Schaeffer gets right, and he got the emphasis from Luther whether he realizes it or not: if you want to know God, want to know the will of God, want to know what the life of God looks like: look at Jesus. Not definitions of sovereignty or justice. The Cross must be the prism through which we interpret everything else. But that does not mean that it’s not possible to reject God’s own self offering, life, and suffer the consequences.
That may not be strictly orthodox by the lights of any one confession, but I am less interested in that than in conveying what I really believe.
Now, so as not to alienate my Reformed readers completely, I promise a Quote of the Day from Spurgeon sometime this week. Or maybe Tim Keller, which may not help, I realize. (I don’t do emoticons, but imagine one there.)
ahnyerkeester
September 24, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Re: Paragraph 1. A lot to agree with! “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20)
Re: Paragraph 2. It is a humble admission of the limits of what you get and a healthy dependance upon Christ; from where I’m sittin’ it is anyway.
Re: Paragraph 3. DON’T PATRONIZE THE REFORMED, SACRAMONE!! WE ONLY MARGINALLY GET SARCASM BUT WE DO UNDERSTAND PATRONIZING AND WE DON’T LIKE IT!! Unless God foreordained you to patronize us and has drug you, kicking and screaming, to the keyboard and forced your pudgy little, espresso-stained fingers to type that. If so, who are we to argue with God’s sovereignty?
Anthony Sacramone
September 24, 2012 at 12:47 PM
So fine. Tomorrow you get Dostoyevsky. And if you’re not careful, Charles Finney. (OK, OK, not even I’m THAT cruel…)
Jim 777
September 24, 2012 at 1:50 PM
Everyone who believes in the Son has everlasting life. Whoever rejects the Son stands condemned already. Hell is the default destination of every human. Only through the God-given faith by which the Gospel promises are individually applied can a person pass from death and hell to life and salvation. Don’t take my word for it, take the Word for it.