The traditional view of
hell is being challenged today not only on the basis of the language of
destruction and the imagery of the consuming fire we find the Bible but also for
moral, judicial, and cosmological considerations. To these we must now turn our
attention. Let us consider, first, the moral implications of the traditional
view of hell which depicts God as a cruel torturer who torments the wicked
throughout all eternity.
Does God Have Two Faces?
How can the view of hell that turns God into a cruel, sadistic torturer for all
eternity be legitimately reconciled with the nature of God revealed in and
through Jesus Christ? Does God have two faces? He is boundlessly merciful on one
side and insatiably cruel on the other? Can God love sinners so much as He sent
His beloved Son to save them, and yet hate impenitent sinners so much that He
subjects them to unending cruel torment? Can we legitimately praise God for His
goodness, if He torments sinners throughout the ages of eternity?
Of course, it is not our
business to criticize God, but God has given us a conscience to enable us to
formulate moral judgments. Can the moral intuition God has implanted within our
consciences justify the insatiable cruelty of a deity who subjects sinners to
unending torment? Clark Pinnock answers this question in a most eloquent
way: "There is a powerful moral revulsion against the traditional doctrine
of the nature of hell. Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of
view because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an
everlasting Auschwitz for His enemies whom He does not even allow to die. How
can one love a God like that? I suppose one might be afraid of Him, but could we
love and respect Him? Would we want to strive to be like Him in this
mercilessness? Surely the idea of everlasting, conscious torment raises the
problem of evil to impossible heights. Antony Flew was right to object that if
Christians really believe that God created people with the full intention of
torturing some of them in hell forever, they might as well give up the effort to
defend Christianity."83
Pinnock rightly asks:
"How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and
vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon His
creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a
thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral
standards, and by the gospel itself."84
John Hick expresses
himself in a similar fashion: "The idea of bodies burning for ever and
continuously suffering the intense pain of third-degree burns without either
being consumed or losing consciousness is as scientifically fantastic as it is
morally revolting. . . . The thought of such a torment being deliberately
inflicted by divine decree is totally incompatible with the idea of God as
infinite love."85
Hell and the
Inquisition. One wonders if the belief in hell as a place where God will
eternally burn sinners with fire and sulphur may not have inspired the
Inquisition to imprison, torture, and eventually burn at the stake so-called
"heretics" who refused to accept the traditional teachings of the
church. Church history books generally do not establish a connection between the
two, evidently because inquisitors did not justify their action on the basis of
their belief in hellfire for the wicked.
But, one wonders, what
inspired popes, bishops, church councils, Dominican and Franciscan monks,
Christian kings and princes to torture and exterminate dissident Christians like
the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Huguenots? What influenced, for example, Calvin
and his Geneva City Council to burn Servetus at the stake for persisting in his
anti-Trinitarian beliefs?
A reading of the
condemnation of Servetus issued on October 26, 1553, by the Geneva City Council
suggests to me that those Calvinistic zealots believed, like the Catholic
inquisitors, that they had the right to burn heretics in the same way God will
burn them later in hell. The sentence reads: "We condemn thee, Michael
Servetus, to be bound, and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to
a stake and burnt alive, together with thy book, . . . even till thy body be
reduced to ashes; and thus shalt thou finish thy days to furnish an example to
others who might wish to commit the like."86
On the following day,
after Servetus refused to confess to be guilty of heresy, "the executioner
fastens him by iron chains to the stake amidst fagots, puts a crown of leaves
covered with sulphur on his head, and binds his book by his side. The sight of
the flaming torch extorts from him a piercing shriek of ‘misericordia’
[mercy] in his native tongue. The spectators fall back with a shudder. The
flames soon reach him and consume his mortal frame in the forty-fourth year of
his fitful life."87
Philip Schaff, a
renowned church historian, concludes this account of the execution of Servetus,
by saying: "The conscience and piety of that age approved of the execution,
and left little room for the emotions of compassion."88 It is hard to
believe that not only Catholics, but even devout Calvinists would approve and
watch emotionlessly the burning of a Spanish physician who had made significant
contributions to medical science simply because he could not accept the divinity
of Christ.
The best explanation I
can find for the cauterization of the Christian moral conscience of the time is
the gruesome pictures and accounts of hellfire to which Christians constantly
were exposed. Such a vision of hell provided the moral justification to imitate
God by burning heretics with temporal fire in view of the eternal fire that
awaited them at the hands of God. It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching
impact that the doctrine of unending hellfire has had throughout the centuries
in justifying religious intolerance, torture, and the burning of
"heretics." The rationale is simple: If God is going to burn heretics
in hell for all eternity, why shouldn’t the church burn them to death now? The
practical implications and applications of the doctrine of literal eternal
hellfire are frightening. Traditionalists must ponder these sobering facts.
After all, Jesus said: "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matt
7:20, KJV). And the fruits of the doctrine of hellfire are far from good.
A colleague who read
this manuscript questioned my attempt to establish a causal connection between
the belief in eternal torment in hell and the policy of the Inquisition to
torture and burn "heretics" who refused to recant their beliefs. His
argument is that the final annihilation of the wicked by fire is no less cruel
that their punishment by unending hell-fire. The problem with this reasoning is
the failure to recognize that a capital punishment that results in death does
not harden or cauterize the Christian conscience like a capital punishment that
causes unending atrocious suffering. The difference between the two can be
compared to watching the istantaneous execution of a criminal on the electric
chair versus watching the unending execution of the same criminal on an electric
chair that shock his ever conscious body for all eternity. It is evident that
witnessing the latter over an indefinite period of time will either drive a
person to insanity or cauterize the moral conscience. On a similar fashion the
constant exposure of medieval people to artistic and literary portrayal of hell
as a place of absolute terror and eternal torment, could only predispose people
to accept the torturing of "heretics" by religious authorities who
claimed to act as God’s representatives on this earth.
Attempts to Make Hell
More Tolerable. It is not surprising that during the course of history there
have been various attempts to make hell less hellish. Augustine invented
purgatory to reduce the population of hell. More recently, Charles Hodge and B.
B. Warfield have also attempted to lower the population of hell by developing a
postmillenial eschatology and by allowing for the automatic salvation of babies
who die in infancy. The reasoning appears to be that if the total number of
those who are going to be tormented is relatively small, there is no reason to
be unduly concerned. Such reasoning hardly resolves the problem of the morality
of God’s character. Whether God inflicted unending torments on one million or
on ten billion sinners, the fact would remain that God tormented people
everlastingly.
Others have tried to
take the hell out of hell by replacing the physical torment of hell with a more
endurable mental torment. But, as we noted above, by lowering the pain quotient
in a non-literal hell, the metaphorical view of hell does not substantially
change its nature, since it still remains a place of unending torment.
Ultimately, any doctrine
of hell must pass the moral test of the human conscience, and the doctrine of
literal unending torment cannot pass such a test. Annihilationism, on the other
hand, can pass the test for two reasons. First, it does not view hell as
everlasting torture but permanent extinction of the wicked. Second, it
recognizes that God respects the freedom of those who choose not to be saved.
God morally is justified in destroying the wicked because He respects their
choice. God desires the salvation of all people (2 Pet 3:9), but respects the
freedom of those who refuse His gracious provision of salvation. God’s final
punishment of the wicked is not vindictive, requiring everlasting torment, but
rational, resulting in their permanent annihilation.
Our age desperately
needs to learn the fear of God, and this is one reason for preaching on the
final judgment and punishment. We need to warn people that those who reject
Christ’s principles of life and the provision of salvation ultimately will
experience a fearful judgment and "suffer the punishment of eternal
destruction" (2 Thess. 1:9). A recovery of the Biblical view of the final
punishment will loosen the preachers’ tongues, since they can proclaim the
great alternative between eternal life and permanent destruction without fear of
portraying God as a monster.
