Use your favorite podcast app: Apple | Google | Spotify | Breaker | Stitcher | RSS
Sharing is caring: Twitter | Instagram | #ForTheHope
Original airdate: Wednesday, September 4, 2019
*** SHOW NOTES (not a transcript) ***
Lead:
Nobody likes the idea of hell, so many are tempted to dismiss it. From the perspective of apologetics, what should we know going in?
Intro:
A really big question to ask — yourself or someone else — is, “Is there objective truth ‘out there’ or is it all a matter of what’s ‘in here?’” To be sure, feelings rule a lot of people’s worlds.
I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain. But our emotions are a fluctuating, unreliable guide to truth and must not be exalted to the place of supreme authority in determining it. ~John Stott(1)
Today we’re going to wrap up talking about talking about hell. Or not even talking about it…just understanding why it’s an important part of the Christian narrative. Remember, every worldview tries to answer four foundational questions — origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. Everybody has an answer to, “Where does this all go?”
Before we get there, of course, we start with the Bible so we have time for that. Yesterday we saw Jesus bounced through a kangaroo court and pronounced guilty, and today completes the book of Matthew as he presents to his Jewish audience the culmination of his argument that Jesus is, in fact, the long-awaited King.
Sponsor:
Today’s sponsor and provider of background music is Pip Craighead’s The Dandelion Project, and the new track is Night School.
Bible segment (read along with The Bible Project):
Passage: Matthew 27-28
Translation: HCSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 86
Words: ~1818
Thinking/reflection segment:
Ten issues at stake in the doctrine of hell:
William James rightly reminds us that the first question we should ask about any idea is whether it is important, that is, whether it makes a difference. If not, he refuses to call it “true” in any practical sense of the word. So why is hell important? What difference does it make? What happens if we drop it?
Obviously, the difference between heaven and hell is by definition infinite. And the difference between a world in which there is no heaven or hell, and a world in which there is, is enormous. But what is the difference between a world in which there is only a heaven but no hell, and a world in which there is also a hell?
Disbelief in hell involves three presuppositions and entails seven consequences that destroy the whole Christian faith. In other words, removing hell is not like removing one stone from a pile and leaving all the others untouched. It is like removing a vital organ from a body; all the others are affected and eventually killed.
First, the three totally destructive presuppositions.
1. To believe there is no hell presupposes that both Scripture and the church lie, for both clearly teach the reality of hell. They are our authorities, our reasons, our premises for believing in hell. If they are wrong about hell, they could be wrong about anything and everything else.
2. If Scripture and the church do not lie about what Jesus said about hell, then it presupposes that Jesus is the liar. For he was far more explicit and adamant about hell than anyone else in Scripture. If there is no hell, the fundamental reason why Christians believe anything—the authority of Christ—is denied.
3. If we drop hell because it is unbearable to us, that presupposes the principle that we can change whatever doctrines we find unbearable or unacceptable; in other words, that doctrine is negotiable. Christianity then becomes a human ideology, not a divine revelation; a set of humanly chosen ideas and ideals rather than propositional data. There is then nothing new or surprising to learn. Doctrine becomes a nose of wax to be twisted into any shape we choose. Try this principle out in any other branch of knowledge and see whether it makes a difference.
In addition to these three presuppositions, there are also seven disastrous consequences of dropping the belief in hell.
1. If there is no hell, life’s choices no longer make an infinite difference. The height of the mountain and the depth of the valley, the importance of winning and the importance of losing a war or a game—these two things are relative to each other and measure each other. Drop hell, and heaven becomes a bland, automatic anything and everything for anyone and everyone. The razor-edge drama of life is blunted into a flat, safe plain.
We can see the difference hell makes by comparing Hindu or Buddhist cultures. In these Eastern religions there is no eternal hell, only temporary purgatories or reincarnations. The difference this makes to life here on earth is striking. Drama, especially tragedy, is something the West has specialized in and excelled at because it has theological roots in the doctrine of hell. C. S. Lewis said he never met a person who had a lively belief in heaven who did not also have a lively belief in hell. “If a game is to be taken seriously, it must be possible to lose it.”
2. If salvation is universal and automatic, then ultimately there is no free will. We may still be free to choose between one road to heaven and another, but we are not free to choose destinations or directions on the road—forward versus backward, up versus down, good versus evil. It is no accident that those Eastern religions that do not teach hell also do not teach free will. Free will and hell go together; scratch the idea of free will and you will find underneath it the necessity of hell.
3. The same Eastern religions that teach there is no hell also teach there is no absolute morality, no real and objective opposition between good and evil. Morality becomes then only this-worldly and pragmatic—at most a means for purifying the mind from desire so that we can attain the enlightenment of seeing the truth of pantheism. A real, objective opposition between good and evil is incompatible with pantheism. If everything is God, there can be nothing else, nothing anti-God.
4. If there is no hell to be saved from, then Jesus is not our Savior, but only our teacher, prophet, guru or model.
5. If there is no hell, a religious indifference follows. If faith in Christ as Savior is not necessary, we should recall all the missionaries and apologize for all the martyrs. What a waste of passion and energy and time and life! If there is no such thing as fire, fire departments are a distraction and a waste.
6. If salvation is automatic, Christ’s sacrificial death was not what Christ himself said it was: necessary, planned, the culmination of his whole earthly life and his reason for coming from heaven to earth. Instead, it was a stupid mistake, a tragic accident. (This idea is devastatingly satirized in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, chap. 5.)
7. If there is no reason for believing in the detested doctrine of hell, there is also no reason to believe in the most beloved doctrine in Christianity: that God is love. The beloved doctrine is the reason critics most frequently give for disbelieving the detested doctrine; yet the two stand on exactly the same foundation.
Why do we believe that God is love? Not by philosophical reasoning. What logic can prove that the perfect, self-contained, independent Reality, who has no needs, nevertheless loves these superfluous creatures of his so much that he became one of them to suffer and die for them?
How do we know that God is love? Not by observation of nature, any more than by philosophical reasoning; “nature red in tooth and claw” does not manifest love.
Not by science. No experiment has ever verified divine love, or measured or weighed it or even observed it.
Not by conscience, for conscience is “hard as nails.” Conscience tells us what is right and wrong and tells us we are absolutely obliged to do right and not wrong, but it does not tell us we are forgiven. The King’s laws imprinted on the walls of our conscience do not excuse, but accuse, the lawbreakers. Only the King himself forgives.
Not by history either. History does not move by universal love but by universal selfishness. In fact, history began to move only after universal love was dethroned in Eden. Before the Fall, what happened? Adam and Eve loved each other and God. Hardly headlines. To us fallen creatures, evil and its conflict with good is necessary for anything dramatic and interesting.
There is one and only one reason anyone ever came to the idea that God is love, mercy and forgiveness—and only one good proof that this idea is true. That reason is the character of God revealed in the Bible, culminating in Jesus Christ. The exact same authority which is our only authority for believing God is love also assures us that there is a hell. Either we accept both on the same ground or reject both on the same ground, for they stand on the same ground.(2)
Wisdom segment:
Passage:
Translation:
Verses:
Words:
Love you!
-R
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) David L. Edwards and John Stott, Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988), 314.
(2) Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 282.