This is my reply to an article by Dr. Daniel Merritt, Ph.D., Th.D, at BellatorChristi entitled
When is the last time you heard a sermon on hell?
It's been about 25 years.
Hell is a doctrine that in the majority of Christendom is dismissed today as being an archaic belief that is ripped right out of the pages of mythology.
If it is the "majority of Christendom" that dismisses "hell", then you have a choice: The majority of Christians who dismiss hell are spiritually alive or dead. If they are spiritually alive, then you are a fool to expect spiritually dead skeptics to have a more accurate understanding of a biblical doctrine than a spiritually alive Christian has. In that case, spiritual death gives the skeptic all the reasonableness they need to reject the doctrine. If you don't expect a blind person to see what is in front of them, why would you expect a spiritually dead person to discern biblical "truth"?
If most Christians who reject hell are spiritually dead, then they would obviously disagree with you. If two Christians within the Trinitarian group question each other's salvation, you are a fool to expect a spiritually dead skeptic to figure out who is right and to thus to avoid the Christian who is "wrong" about hell.
But either way, your comment is problematically generalized. The vast majority of Christians do not dismiss "hell", they dismiss the eternal conscious torment-interpretation of biblical "hell".
So you have set up a false dilemma: the issue is not whether Christians should believe a biblical doctrine of hell, but whether they can be reasonable to interpret biblical hell as annihilation. As you are well aware, annihilationism is convincing more and more Christians within the Trinitarian group, it isn't just the 7th day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. Clark Pinnock was a signatory to the ICBI statement on bible inerrancy (see here), yet he held:
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"
“The Destruction of the Finally Impenitent”, Criswell Theological Review, Spring, 1990: p. 246-247
Merritt continues:
To speak of hell today is considered to be an unnecessary figment of over religious minds that seek to scare someone into submitting to an ogre-like God who takes delight in throwing someone who “steps out of line” into an eternal lake of fire.
Deuteronomy 28:63 sums up a list of horrors that only a lunatic would inflict on children, then sums up the list saying that just as god would "delight" to give abundance to those who obey, he will also "delight" the same way to inflict those horrors on children.
54 "The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain,
55 so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns.
56 "The refined and delicate woman among you, who would not enture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement, shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter,
57 and toward her afterbirth which issues from between her legs and toward her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in your towns. (Deut. 28:54-57 NAU)
63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut. 28:63 NAU)
Merritt continues:
After all, it is said, a loving God would never banish anyone to suffer the fate of eternal flames.
Sort of like "a loving father would never rape his adult daughter".
Interestingly, Jesus spoke more on hell than He did heaven.
That is a lie.
http://www.rightreason.org/2010/did-jesus-preach-hell-more-than-heaven/
That being true, teaching about hell must not be dismissed as being antiquated, but is of the utmost importance to understand why there is a hell…and even more so how to avoid such a place.
Naw, Jesus was just another dime-store fanatic. I've written thousands of pages refuting the resurrection arguments of Habermas, Licona and other apologists.
While discussing hell is a topic one would like to avoid and dismiss, if it is a real place to neglect attention to its existence is at one’s own peril.
Sure, if you can "show" that Jesus' warnings about hell apply to modern-day people. Good luck attempting mission impossible.
The bottom line is this, when one understands the holiness of God one understands why there is a hell.
It is beyond dispute that ancient semitic people exaggerated matters in their daily conversations and especially their religious writings. You would probably resort to that excuse to get rid of the horrors in Deuteronomy 28, supra, thus motivating skeptics to wonder whether Jesus' warnings about hell were also just another case of Semitic exaggeration.
Indeed, you probably don't have the first clue as to how to tell when ancient Semitic theology is employing exaggeration and when it isn't.
And whatever teaching-resource you recommend, how can I stay safe from the threat of hell while I go about procuring and studying that hermeneutical aid?
What would be the point of such study if I'm supposed to believe/obey first, and only study second? Doesn't rationality require that I first learn about the issues and form an hypothesis before I just dive in? But then again, does the urgency of needing to avoid hell make it 'dangerous' for me to delay the day of my salvation?
I mean, if I died in a car accident on the way to the library to check out "1001 Ways to distinguish Semitic reality from Semitic exaggeration", would I be saved because I was searching? Would I go to hell because I wasn't a Christian at the time I died? Or would you pull the same desperate excuse Lydia McGrew did, and speculate that there a second chance in the afterlife for those who die while in the effort to check out Christian claims?
And how long does God want me to study Calvinism, before he will expect me to draw conclusions about whether my choices in life contribute anything to my life, or if they are rendered nothing more than reactions to the allegedly infallible divine will? If you don't know how long God wants me to study Calvinism, don't you forfeit the right to balk if I answer that question for myself in a way you don't like?
And when one understands the holiness of God and sees their own sinfulness in the light of His pure and perfect holiness, one understands that hell is what we all actually deserve.
Your god is not that holy. The bible attests that he is often corrected by smarter humans. See Exodus 32:9-14. The efforts of classical theists to distinguish this from the analogous case of a friend changing their mind after receiving better advice from another human being, are laughable and are guided more by concerns about inerrancy and less by concerns to interpret the story correctly. But bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, so I can be reasonable to remain open to the possibility that the bible makes contradictory statements about god.
When one grasps the majestic, perfect holiness of God, like Isaiah (Is. 6), one will realize they are sinfully-unworthy to EVER encounter the presence of One so holy-other.
Didn't the sinful Balaam encounter God in Numbers 22:33, you know, that bible verse that equates God with Satan?
Come, let us reason together.
Then God is a fucking idiot because he in Romans 3:9-18 condemns man's ability to reason correctly.
Understanding Why There is a Hell and God’s Nature as Holy-Love
Are you even AWARE that many Trinitarian Evangelical Christian scholars have abandoned the eternal conscious torment version of hell for annihilationism? And yet you talk as if you can wave aside all that Trinitarian scholarship because of god's holiness...as if you think many such scholars, despite having legitimate claims to being both authentically born again and walking in the light of Christ for decades, somehow "missed" that the holiness of god somehow demands that he torture unrepentant sinners forever. LOL.
The Bible is clear that God is holy and that God is love
The Apocrypha is also clear that the Maccabees were zealous Jews. Did you have a point?
…He is holy-love.
He is also stupid, by his own admission. See Genesis 6:6. The immediate context indicates the statement about God's dissatisfaction with his prior decision to create man is no less literal than the prior story of the sons of God taking the daughters of men. It is how the originally intended audience would have interpreted the account, which matters most in interpretation, and such audience, being pre-scientific and mostly illiterate, would not have had the theological sophistication to pretend that they would have trifled that such language is "anthropomorphism".
While Christendom puts great emphasis on God’s love, His love cannot be properly appreciated if one doesn’t understand His holiness.
That is stupid: you can see the love of a man in assisting a victim of a traffic accident when he calls 911, even if you don't know anything more about him. Assuming he called 911 out of a general love for humanity is going to be reasonable until specific evidence is given indicating he called 911 for other more selfish reasons.
Holiness denotes the absolute majesty and splendor of God, that He is distinctly transcendent from any other being or thing He has created. He is holy-other. Holiness describes the essence of God. He is holy; divine holiness of character being who He is in all of His perfect ethical and moral authenticity and truthfulness. Holiness is His self-affirming purity; He cannot be other than holy.
Was Jesus still holy at the time he "became sin" (2nd Cor. 5:21)?
Or did I forget that Jesus has two natures and that it was only his human nature that became sin?
Gee, that's funny, the bible doesn't put forth much effort to say Jesus had two natures, and the gospels most certainly don't get that specific. Aren't you as a Christian supposed to be concerned that this sharp distinction between Jesus' human and divine natures was condemned at The Council of Chalcedon?
...One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He was parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as from the beginning the prophets have taught concerning Him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers hath handed down to us.
If Jesus is a single person, and that person has two natures, then its going to be reasonable to conclude that when "Jesus" became sin (2nd Cor. 5:21), ALL of him became sin, not merely his "human nature". I don't personally care if the apostle Paul would trifle otherwise, just like I wouldn't care if Paul trifled that demon serpents bite the spirits of unbelievers in some after-life. Paul doesn't have the minimal credentials I require in order to justify me in trusting his judgment about horrifically debatable things that not even Trinitarian Christians can agree on.
Merritt continues:
Holiness is God’s perfect righteousness. Habakkuk says, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Hab. 1:13). Holiness is God’s infinite value and worth as the One who is absolutely unique and morally pure and perfect. God’s holiness pervades His entire being and shapes all His attributes and His actions with humanity. That God is holy means that His very being is completely devoid of even a trace of sin, unrighteousness, or moral deviation.
Semitic exaggeration.
Understanding Why There is a Hell and the Creation Story
In the Creation Story, it was God’s desire that holiness be the atmosphere which would pervade the Garden of Eden, and man through fellowship with his Creator was to cooperatively conform to the order of His holiness. All of creation was to reflect the nature of a holy God, reflect the holiness of the Creator. God created the world where His holiness was woven into the very fabric of creation. When man willfully sinned, he defied God’s holiness.
But man in sinning conformed perfectly to the hidden will of God, or so the consistent 5 Point Calvinists say. How long do you recommend an unbeliever research the biblical claims of Calvinists about God's sovereignty? If you don't have biblical justification for that length of recommended time, isn't your recommendation something less than absolute? Doesn't that mean that it will be reasonable for the unbeliever to disagree and suggest another length of time to study such a subject?
The doctrine of Original Sin means that each of us have inherited a sinful nature from disobedient Adam.
A doctrine denied by the Orthodox church and several other denominations such as Church of Christ. How long do you recommend an unbeliever study their arguments aginst original sin before God will expect them to start drawing conclusions about that doctrine?
And how can the unbeliever stay safe from the threat of hell while they engage in that research?
Our inherited sinful nature means we are more than children who have gone astray, but we possess a nature that is consciously and actively rebellious against God’s holiness and our rebellion is directed against the holy God who created us and who is the true Source of all spiritual and ethical morality and reality. We are sinners by nature and by choice.
Correction, we only choose to sin because our nature is sinful. If we didn't have a sin nature, we wouldn't sin any more than Jesus sinned.
Sin is that which seeks to undermine God’s rightful place in our lives and in mutiny disregards the very holiness of God. Sin in its very nature, is an assault on God’s holiness. When His holiness is violated, nature and man convulse with consequences which repulses holiness and invites holy justice.
But if God is everything you think he is, he knew sin was inevitable, and therefore, God no more "expected" Adam and Eve to consistently obey him than you would expect a cow to jump over the moon. With good reason the bible warns you against peering into theology too much: you might discover its fallacies. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Understanding Why There is a Hell and the Guilt of Sin
For our holy God there can be no compromise with sin.
Then what word would you use to characterize God's "allowing" polygamy in the OT? Isn't "compromise" the best word? If the Adam and Eve marriage model is valid, polygamy would have been sin in the OT.
Sin must be dealt with.
No, Jesus forgave sins plenty including forgiving those who manifested neither repentance nor desire for forgiveness. Luke 23:34. God no more needs to "punish" sin than you need to "rob a bank".
You will, of course, trifle that Jesus' granting forgiveness during his earthly ministry was with a view toward his need to die for those sins. That is also bullshit, even in the OT, God can get rid of sin with nothing more than a wave of his magic wand:
13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. (2 Sam. 12:13 NAU)
See how easy it is for God to lift the death penalty against adultery and murder?
But then your "holy" God decides to torture David's infant son for 7 days for sins the baby obviously wasn't guilty of:
14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. (2 Sam. 12:14-18 NAU)
Merritt continues:
Judgement is holiness’ reaction to sin.
Unfortunately for you, forgiveness is also Holiness' reaction to sin. Luke 23:34. And it's spelled "judgment", not "judgement".
Hell is where all sin that is not adequately dealt with will be banished; banished to a place of eternal alienation from God because holiness’ reaction to sin is just judgment.
Why can't god simply forgive unrepentant unbelievers the way Jesus did in Luke 23:34?
Why can't God cause a fetus to be filled with the Holy Spirit, at a time in its life when it is incapable of choosing between good and evil (Luke 1:15)?
If God knows of a non-hell non-judgment way to reduce the amount of sin in the world, and he doesn't employ that solution, doesn't that make it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that God likes to take problems and falsely insist they are bigger than they really are? In other words, your god is a drama-queen?
Since I am guilty before a holy God, since my sinful and rebellious nature has willfully rebelled against His pure and perfect holiness, unless my sin is dealt with, then holiness will justly deal with sin in judgement.
God could have spared you all that sin-problem by simply filling you with the Holy Spirit before you were born, Luke 1:15. So if God chose to employ a solution that didn't preempt you from sinning, then God obviously wanted you to sin. God knew of a way to achieve his will with you without allowing sin, but he chose to forego that solution and employ a solution that involved you becoming a sinner. The notion that God "doesn't want" you to sin, is utterly stupid, and only dictated by the requirements of your theology, not common sense. And Exodus 32:9-14 indicates God sometimes lacks common sense. And Genesis 6:6 indicates God sometimes regrets not mankind's becoming sinful, but regrets his own decision to create mankind in the first place.
When one sees their sin in the light of God’s perfect and pure holiness, they realize that they are undeserving to ever come into the presence of His majestic holiness and justly deserve judgment.
Then how do you explain other equally authentically born again Trinitarians, whose salvation status you would charitably refuse to question, who say this article of yours teaches a heretical view of hell and god's justice?
Should skeptics be warned that even if they become authentically born again, there is STILL a very good chance they will end up espousing "heresy"? Then maybe my standards are higher than god's, but I don't see the point of going through the motions to convince myself I am "born again", if this still leaves the doors wide open to the possibility that I'll get a nasty surprise on judgment day (Matthew 7:22-23, Hebrews 6:4-8).
A holy God owes sin nothing but well-deserved judgment.
According to Luke 23:34, a holy god also believes himself obligated to forgive the type of sinners that not only engage in sin against him, but who manifest not the slightest bit of intent to repent or seek forgiveness.
God would deny His own holy nature if His holiness did not react to sin in judgement.
Then God must have been denying his own holy nature in 2nd Samuel 12:13, supra, where he exempts David from the death penalty for both murder and adultery. Apparently, god is capable of relaxing his standards when he really wants to. He is also capable of punishing David's baby for sins the baby did not commit (v. 15-18), which opens the door wide to the possibility that god sees nothing wrong in torturing babies in hell. If he doesn't see anything wrong in torturing babies in this current life, what makes you think god would regard it as "unjust" to do the same to a baby in the afterworld?
Understanding Why There is a Hell and the Offense of Sin
Now remember, God is holy-love. Though God’s love desires to extend forgiveness, the offensiveness of sin and sin’s assault on holiness must first be satisfied and dealt with.
No, see Luke 23:34
While holiness cannot overlook sin, it must judge it,
False, God got rid of David's sins by merely waving his magic wand. 2nd Samuel 12:13.
His love provided the means were by His holiness was satisfied and our sins could be forgiven!!
But his love apparently knew of a way to "forgive" people of sin before Jesus was crucified. Jesus was forgiving unrepentant sinners in Luke 23:34, and the OT is clear that under the animal sacrifice system, the blood of bulls and goats made a person "clean of their sins before the Lord". Leviticus 16:30.
God also apparently sees nothing wrong in causing sinners to be filled with the Holy Spirit before they are born. Luke 1:15. One wonders how much sin would be avoided, and how much excuse for divine wrath God would be deprived of, had he done for all humans what he did for John the Baptist in Luke 1:15.
Our holy God in love took upon Himself our flesh, and becoming the representative man, becoming our substitute, He lived that perfect holy life which holiness demands but to which we cannot comply, therefore deserving judgement.
Wrong again, the OT is clear that obeying all of God's commands is NOT too difficult:
10 if you obey the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.
11 "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach.
12 "It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?'
13 "Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?'
14 "But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it. (Deut. 30:10-14 NAU)
Merritt continues:
Christ, as your and my representative perfectly complied with God’s holy demands which we could never do, thus satisfying the demands of holiness.
Jesus could not possibly have "perfectly" complied, because Luke 2:52 says Jesus grew in "favor with God". IF that is true, then his conformity to god's will in his earlier years cannot have been as perfect as his conformity to God's will in his later years. Yes, Luke 2:52 is an affront to Jesus' alleged divine "nature", but we are reasonable to assume Luke did not possess the sophistication of Nicaea and later councils. When he said "Jesus" grew in favor with God, we are reasonable to assume he meant everything that made up Jesus, he did not mean "only his human nature". Since the question is whether skeptics can be reasonable to view things that way, your predictable recital to God's mysterious ways does not function to impose the least bit of intellectual obligation on the skeptic, nor does not function as "rebuttal", it merely helps you save face.
Then on the cross, the perfect Son of God took the sin of humanity upon Himself and confessed holiness’ just judgment on sin, which judgement you and I deserved, thus demonstrating love that goes beyond our comprehension.
If "love" goes beyond our comprehension, then so does the manner in which god withholds love, in which case there is a probability that the reason we shy away from saying God sends some babies to hell arises from our inability to understand god's ways. Torturing babies in hell certainly defies common sense, but in Christian apologetics, "common sense" is routinely tossed out the window when expediency dictates.
Christ lived a life I could not live, then paid a debt I could never pay (Romans 5:8; 2 Cor. 5:21). Now that is LOVE….
And the child molester gave the child food and water during the two months that he held her in his basement after kidnapping her. Now that is LOVE...but obviously humans are quite capable of manifesting "love" while also manifesting desire to harm. So it doesn't matter that God shows "love", real-world experience teaches us that the person who does a loving thing, can just as easily harbor desire to harm the entire time.
and when you and I understand the holiness of God and the just judgment upon sin for violating God’s holiness, then one bows in awe and wonder at such love demonstrated in the Christ event that makes it possible for sinful man to escape our sins deserved fate.
No, God can simply cause people to be filled with the Holy Spirit before they are born (Luke 1:15) and can get rid of our sins by simply waving his magic wand the same way he exempted David from the death penalties for adultery and murder (2nd Samuel 12:13). God's preferred method is apparently to avoid the solution that suppresses sin as much as possible.
When one grasps what Christ willingly did for us in His life and death, then the word “grace” takes on a depth of meaning that results in praise forever flowing from our lips.
Conclusion
Yes, there is a hell.
This was a horrifically weak argument. You avoided all biblical referenes to hell and simply tried to prove something with human sophistry, when Paul, your faith hero, was telling you for 2,000 years that persuasive words are not the true Christian's priority (1st Cor. 2:4-5).
Hell is a reserved place for divine justice in the face of willful defiance to divine holiness.
But most non-Christians are not "willfully" defying God anymore than authentically born again Trinitarians who are Preterist are "willfully" defying Acts 1:11. So was it your intention to teach that the vast majority of non-Christians don't go to hell in the afterworld?
Holiness’ judgement is justified reactional justice on sin’s violation of God’s pure and perfect holy nature.
But human wisdom can successfully persuade god that his intent to judge humans is stupid and should be avoided. Exodus 32:9-14.
Yet His divine love, as seen in the Christ of the cross, is offered and available to all who see their sinfulness in the light of his divine holiness and embrace the indescribable provision that is found in Jesus Christ.
No thank you. The true gospel was preached by Jesus before he died, and for obvious reasons did not require anybody to believe he died for their sins. You will say the rules changed, or something was "added" somehow when Jesus died on the cross, so, how long does God want unbelievers to study the differences of bible interpretation between dispensationsalists themselves, and between dispensationalists and covenant theologians, before he will expect the unbeliever to start drawing conclusions about who is right and wrong? If you don't know, you forfeit the right to balk if I answer that question for myself in a way you don't like.
Therefore, if I have studied the matter for several years, I cannot be faulted if my conclusions are "wrong".
What I find stupid about the doctrine of hell and God is that we are supposed to believe that there is terrible danger to unbelievers, and yet it is not god, but a mass of conflicting Christian theologians and apologists, who are the only ones doing the talking. If the creator of hell doesn't wish to make himself sufficiently clear for even authentically born again Trinitarians, he is a fucking fool to "expect" spiritually dead skeptics to "correctly" interpret biblical "hell".
