Chapter 1—A Series of Stumbling-Blocks
One answer to the temporal judgments (seeming cruelties) of Jehovah God of the Old Testament is this: “The only sane position for the Christian to take, it is said, is to regard the Bible as the story of man's emergence from primitive, false conceptions of God to a mature, enlightened understanding. It is one part of the whole story of evolution, the marvellous story of the progressive development of a universe under the guiding hand of God. The Bible is a true enough account of what men have thought about God. But in parts it gives a very untrue account of what God is actually like. The lower conceptions must continually be tested by the higher.” HOWEVER, HEREIN LIES THE DIFFICULTY of this approach, according to John W Wenham in his good book, “The Goodness of God.”—>
Jesus accepted the Old Testament as true, authoritative and inspired. Therefore it is impossible to use the Jesus of history as a yardstick for criticizing the Old Testament. The only sort of Jesus who can be used for such a purpose is a fictitious character. It seems wise then to see what the New Testament (and Christ himself) have to say on these matters which cause offense.
THE STUMBLING -BLOCK OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
It is plain at once that it is fallacious to regard this as essentially an Old Testament problem, and to set the 'bloodthirst' Old Testament over against the 'gentle' New Testament. Possibly the phenomenon is more crude in the Old Testament than in the New, but of the two the New Testament is the more terrible, for the Old Testament seldom speaks of anything beyond temporal judgments. The death of Uzzah for a seemingly trifling infringement of the Mosaic law is indeed a fearful thing, but there is no suggestion that the penalty is eternal damnation; whereas the Son of man in the Gospels pronounces eternal punishment. To the Old Testament writers the impending wrath' is usually a judgment on the historical plane; to the New Testament writers it is usually a judgment beyond the grave - though even here a sharp contrast is not to be imagined. It is the New Testament which records the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira, the sudden blindness of Elymas and the terrible end of Herod Agrippa, whom an angel of the Lord smote and who was eaten by worms and died'; and the destruction of Jerusalem is pictured as a divine judgment in the New Testament as clearly as was the destruction of Babylon or Nineveh in the Old. But the stress is on the after-life, so that we find in each of the four Gospels, in Acts, in Paul's letters, in Hebrews, James, Peter, John, Jude, and the book of Revelation, strong and clear teaching about the judgment and the wrath to come.
Omitting for the moment our Lord's words, here are a few examples of New Testament teaching:
John the Baptist: 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? . .. he will clear his threshing floor
… the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.'
John the Evangelist: ‘He who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.'
Acts: 'And as he argued about justice and self-control and future judgment, Felix was alarmed.’
Paul in his letters: The foundation of his great doctrinal exposition in the Epistle to the Romans is the terrible passage on the wrath of God: 'You are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
'For he will render to every man according to his work'…. for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil ... on that day when . . . God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus: Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.' ‘The Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you.'
Hebrews: ‘For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God ? ... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God?’
‘For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, . . But you have come ... to a judge who is God of all . . . See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven . .. let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.'
James: ‘Judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.'
1 Peter: 'For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?’ And
"If the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?"'
2 Peter: 'Swift destruction ... their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep . .. the Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment . .. these will be destroyed in the same destruction ... for them the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved . .. by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men?'
Jude: 'Sodom and Gomorrah . .. serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.? Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'
The book of Revelation bristles with judgments depicted in the most lurid colours. We will merely extract a few vivid phrases: ‘The wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger', ‘tormented with fire and sulphur', ‘the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night’, ‘the angel swung his sickle on the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God'. ‘From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty; the second death, the lake of fire.’
Surely it cannot be said that the severity of God is primarily an Old Testament problem. These references are but a fraction of the total, but they show beyond all cavil that the problem of the judgment of God finds its acutest expression in the New Testament.
THE STUMBLING BLOCK OF THE TEACHING OF CHRIST
Further, if it is fallacious to try to drive a wedge between the Old and New Testaments, it is equally fallacious to attempt to show a contrast between the teaching of our Lord and the teaching of the New Testament writers. The temptation to do this has been very strong, and the taste for a sentimentalizing of Jesus has been indulged to such an extent during the past
hundred years that a totally erroneous mental picture of him has very largely become the common property of theologians, preachers, church foll and non-Christians. The majority of our contemporaries genuinely think that Christ taught that God was the loving Father of all mankind, who would make everything come out all right for everyone in the end, no matter what they did. The belief that Jesus taught the love of God as no-one before had ever taught it, and that by his life and actions he displayed love as no-one before had ever displayed it, is true. In him there was no hint of hardness, or of lack of sympathy, or of unwillingness to spend himself to the limit on behalf of those in need. Yet he did not teach that all would be well for everyone in the end, no matter what they did. With great earnestness he called on everyone to repent and with great compassion he invited those weighed down with cares and sorrows to come to him for rest. Yet this very Jesus uttered the most terrible warnings, not once or twice, but again and again.
Speaking with no trace of harshness and with a wealth of compassion and concern, he frequently spoke of judgment. He warned men of perdition and destruction, of the danger of losing their souls. Christ spoke of sins which would not be forgiven. He spoke often of hell. Frequently he spoke of fire in this connection. Sometimes he spoke of eternal fire or eternal punishment. He spoke of it as a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sometimes he spoke of outer darkness. Sometimes he spoke of torment. To feel the full weight of this teaching of Christ, the relevant passages should be looked up and written out. To do this is to receive an awesome and indelible impression which remains with one for life.
In sheer number these statements are inescapable. In intensity they are fearful. We are here faced with the ultimate horror of God's universe, before which we stand aghast, longing to escape, but as in a nightmare unable to move. We cannot escape, for we know who said these things, we know his tenderness, we know the authority of his words and we know that this is the language (be it more or less symbolic) which he regarded as best fitted to describe the price of impenitence. It is Love who speaks like this, it is God himself. It is the final test of our repentance towards God and our faith in Jesus Christ that we accept our creatureliness and our sinfulness when faced with this teaching; that we really, sincerely acknowledge that our thoughts are limited by ignorance and perverted by sin; that we accept (however reluctantly and protestingly) his teaching and we reassert (however falteringly) our trust in his love.
THE NEW TESTAMENT UNDERLINES THE OLD
It is worth noticing too how often specific Old Testament difficulties are taken up, reaffirmed and then embodied in the teaching of the New, several times by our Lord himself. Instead of softening the harsh outlines of the Old Testament, the New Testament actually engraves them more deeply. Again and again the most unpleasant characters and the most unpleasant incidents of the Old Testament are adopted by the New without apology and without mitigation, sometimes to repeat an old lesson, sometimes to teach a new lesson more severe than the first. On other occasions where there is no specific reference to the Old Testament, we come across parallels of thought which remind us that our Old Testament difficulty is a difficulty common to both Testaments.
It is not only in the Old Testament that Rahab, Samson and Jephthah are regarded as examples of faith, but also in the New. The offering of Isaac may present difficulties to the modern reader of the Old Testament, but the New Testament accepts it as a supreme example of both faith and works. Is the God of the Old Testament a jealous God? So is the God of the New - 'Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy?’ (1 Corinthians). Is the God of the Old Testament a God of vengeance? So is he in the New - Vengeance is mine, I will repay, re-echo Romans and Hebrews. ‘The Lord is an avenger,' says 1 Thessalonians. Does the law of Moses demand death without mercy for the transgressor? 'How much worse punishment, asks the New, will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God?' Does God send a lying spirit to deceive the false prophets of Israel? Paul says of the impending apostasy, of those who refuse to love the truth and so be saved': ‘Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness?’ Does the Old Testament thunder out its anathemas? Paul (the author of glorious passages on love) can write: 'If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed; if any one has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.’ Are we going to find the imprecatory psalms repudiated in the New Testament? On the contrary, we find them honoured with a frequency of quotation rather above the average.
The Old Testament apparently glories in the fall of the enemies of the people of God. The book of Revelation gathers up in a single chapter a wealth of Old Testament imagery and phraseology and pours it out in a tremendous description of the fall of Babylon the Great, in the course of which a voice from heaven says:
‘Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and played the wanton, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning. Since in her heart she says, "A queen I sit, I am no widow, mourning I shall never see," so shall her plagues come in a single day, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she shall be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.'
“Hell”, chapter 2
After making the case that Christians are stuck with the character of the God of the Old and New Testaments, Wenham begins to take a closer look at the Biblical Hell:
The ultimate horror of God's universe is hell. The other difficulties of the Bible and of Providence are real enough, but however appalling they may be, their seeming harshnesses and injustices are only temporary, cut short at death. The terrors of hell, on the other hand, belong to the world which lies beyond death. For a single being to endure pain hopelessly and unendingly, or even to pass out of existence and forfeit for ever the joys of heaven, is more terrible than any temporal suffering.
BIBLICAL IMAGERY
It would have been easier to have evaded the subject of hell altogether on the just ground that it is far too big a topic for adequate treatment. Had this book been simply an academic exercise, it would have been sensible to have argued: 'This is a book for Christians; Christians are committed to the teaching of Christ; Christ taught the existence of hell with a wealth of terrifying images; it is best to let these images speak for themselves, leaving further comment to those who can discuss the issues at length.'
Yet this is not a mere academic exercise, it is an attempt to grapple with the heart's cry of contemporary man who wants to know what to believe about God. If the biblical imagery is left undiscussed, there is no guarantee that he will interpret first-century images correctly. Twenthieth-century man does not and cannot come to the Bible with an empty mind. The very word 'hell' comes to us laden with literary and artistic associations of many centuries. Platonic philosophy clearly had a great influence on Christian thought and Greek mythology on Christian art. Satan is still currently represented in the likeness of Pan, a pagan deity with tail and horns, rather than as a prince of this world and the angel of light of the Bible.
Modern scholarship, whatever its faults may be, has tried very hard to see the New Testament through first-century eyes, and it is now recognized that medieval thought, though believed at the time to be in complete harmony with the Bible, was in many respects quite alien to it. A large number of serious students think that the doctrine of hell as traditionally taught comes in this category. It seems highly desirable therefore that this question should not be side-stepped. Unfortunately the subject is so vast that it will not be possible even to summarize the discussion in such a way that the reader can come to a considered judgment on it. The most that can be done is to outline the alternatives and to give references to books where the matter is more fully discussed.
The ultimate horror of God's universe is hell. The other difficulties of the Bible and of Providence are real enough, but however appalling they may be, their seeming harshnesses and injustices are only temporary, cut short at death. The terrors of hell, on the other hand, belong to the world which lies beyond death. For a single being to endure pain hopelessly and unendingly, or even to pass out of existence and forfeit for ever the joys of heaven, is more terrible than any temporal suffering.
…
CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY
The other alternative, the possibility that the lost will eventually pass out of existence, needs much more serious attention. Conditionalists (as those who uphold conditional immortality are called) look for the resurrection of all men, followed by a just sentence according to the deserts of each, which will mean anguish (but not unending torment) for those outside Christ, finally terminating in the second death. Some (though not all) believe that there is no conscious existence of a soul-without-body between death and resurrection, but that at death all pass into a soul-sleep in total unconsciousness. This would mean that the first consciousness of the redeemed after death would be of Christ's welcome into paradise, that is to say, into heaven.
The conditionalist tries to establish his case by raising fundamental questions. For example, does the Bible teach that the soul is immortal? Does it not rather teach that the souls that sins will die? [13. Ezk. 18:4; Rom. 6:23, etc. It is sometimes said that the Bible does not teach the immortality of the soul, but that it assumes it. But that so important a truth should not be explicitly taught is strange. The onus of proof is on those who say it is assumed.] Do not the most frequently used terms, 'death', 'destruction', 'perishing' and the metaphor of the fire which consumes vegetable matter, suggest an end? (The description of Gehenna is based on the garbage dump in the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where the slow fires ceaselessly burnt and the worms steadily consumed the rotting rubbish.) Does not the Bible rather teach that man is mortal, and that sin is a self-destructive force whose final wages are the complete destruction of body and soul? Is not immortality part of the gift of eternal life bestowed on those who come to partake of the divine nature through union with Christ? [14. The Lord alone has immortality (1 Tim. 6:16); well-doers seek immortality (Rom. 2:7); immortality is brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1:10); those in Christ will put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:54); they have become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4)] Is not the universalist's insistence on the eternity of all souls a move in the direction of pantheism, and the traditionalist's insistence on the eternity of sinning souls a move in the direction of dualism? These are some of the questions conditionalists tend to ask.
Some, such as L. E. Froom, challenge the factual accuracy of Hodge's claim that unending torment has virtually been the sole doctrine of mainstream Christianity, derived from a monochrome belief in first-century Judaism. They admit that from the sixth century to the Reformation unending torment was the accepted orthodoxy with few dissenting voices, and that after the Reformation it continued to be dominant in the major churches at least till the nineteenth century, though with a growing volume of dissent. They deny that unending torment was so generally accepted by first-century Jews that Jesus' hearers would necessarily have interpreted his teaching in this sense without some specific denial on his part. They maintain that conditional immortality was generally accepted in the early church until its thinkers tried to wed Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul to the teaching of the Bible. This unequal yoke, they say, spawned two bastard offspring: universalism (as taught by Clement and Origen of Alexandria) and unending torment (as taught by Tertullian and Augustine).
As to the key biblical texts, which seem so inescapable, they claim that the unquenchable fire and undying worm mean only fire which is unquenchable and worms which are undying until their work of destruction is complete. Eternal punishment has been dealt with by them in two different ways. Some argue that eternal punishment is everlasting in its effects (like the 'punishment of eternal fire' which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, mentioned in Jude 7), but not in its pains. It is an everlasting punishment, but not an everlasting punishing. Others argue that the concept lying behind the Greek word aiōnios is that of contemporary Jewish thought, which spoke of the two contrasting ages: 'this present age' and 'the age to come'. Eternal life is the life of the age to come and eternal punishment is the punishment of the age to come. The former has been made available by the coming of Jesus and the inauguration of his reign; the latter will be administered by Jesus when, as Son of man, he utters the final judgment. Christ's reference to 'eternal life' and 'eternal punishment' is not primarily concerned with the everlastingness of the two destinies, but with the finality of what happens when the advent of the New Age is consummated. These two views are not mutually exclusive and both could be held together.
Conditionalists also deny that the highly symbolic Revelation of John intends us to picture a final state which includes continuing sin and suffering. The smoke of torment which rises for ever represents the memory of the triumph of God's righteousness, not a continuing burning of tortured flesh. As to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, it is noted that the scene is Hades, not Gehenna (Hades is one day to be cast into the lake of fire), [15. Rev. 20:14. ]and that the passage is pictorial rather than literal. It would be precarious for any school of thought to draw literal conclusions from it about the topography of the next world.
If it is said that conditionalism devalues the terror of the biblical deterrents, since 'to believe in annihilation is only to believe what the atheist believes' and many tormented people might welcome annihilation, conditionalists would reply in these terms. (1) The atheist has no conception of the wonder and blessedness of heaven. (2) He therefore has no conception of what it means to forfeit heaven – to forfeit the very purpose for which he was made. (3) He has no realization of what will be involved in the dread of awaiting judgment and in the anguish and remorse of standing naked in the presence of God to see his true self revealed and to hear the Judge say: 'Depart.' (4) It is doubtful if anyone really desires annihilation. Man clings tenaciously to life, and it is arguable that the prospect of annihilation is the most dreadful of all fates. Certainly it is the most final of all tragedies. If the purpose of the Bible is to paint the horror of just judgment and final destruction its language is not exaggerated.16
16. Conditionalists regard their doctrine as providing a more effective deterrent than the traditional teaching, on the ground that the latter is incredible to those who hear and is simply not believed. The point was put by a writer quoted (though with disapproval) by Horbery (p. 274): 'We only imagine we believe it...Nothing that is over-strained, or seems exaggerated, strikes the Mind. Let a Schoolmaster tell his Scholar that his Father will hang him if he doth not study; he laughs at the Menace. It is too much disproportion'd both to his own Demerits, and the Idea he entertains of his Father's Equity.
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