Geoff gave her some excellent homework! Nicely done!

Anyone who doesn’t at least wrestle with that last question might not have the love of God in their heart. It is a hard thing to believe that Jesus is the only way. It’s harder to believe than not to.

It is good to see a pastor employ “homework” to someone to research their faith.  I have done this after many witnessing encounters.  However, the catch is that the person first needs to hear and understand the Gospel message.  Without hearing the preaching of the Word first, the homework can make things even more confusing and generate more uneasy questions.

Daniel, I must say that I am concerned for you.  There is a Heaven.  There is a Hell.  God is both a God of love and a God of justice, and by sinning against Him, we deserve nothing less than Hell.  The Bible is quite clear on this.  If a “heaven and hell based Christianity is a horrible idea,” then you must therefore conclude that the Gospel message Jesus preached Himself is a horrible one, because he talked at length about Heaven and even more about Hell.

--
CS

Unfortunately with Millenials, this is becoming an all too common question that the church is not alwys active in answering. I am anxious to read Geoff’s complete response. And yes, I do think it is valid to do homework. Research is a vital and difficult avenue for the modern argument.. The failure to research is acutely felt in many arenas of the instant gratification culture that we have.  But, that speaks to an even deeper issue - how lazy are we about our faith? if someone doesn’t hand it to us, are we going to seek it on our own?
On the other hand, some people within the church community are so knowledged that they are perceived as spiritually bloated. They are overly pious and out of touch with the realiites of the modern world. Personally, I struggle a lot with where the line between Pharisee and Follower should be drawn.

CS, I appreciate your concern. ‘Heaven’ names God’s dimension. To many Christians, it also names their temporary post-mortem destination (until the final resurrection). All well and good.
‘Hell’ is a post-biblical construct which capitalizes on apparent similarities between fanciful depictions of the two realms in Hades (or Sheol), and apocalyptic descriptions of historical judgment via the metaphor of Gehenna. Jesus does adamantly NOT talk about ‘hell’. He talks a lot about Gehenna, and says one or two things about Hades, but neither support medieval or modernistic assumptions about a ‘place’ of eternal conscious torment.

Why oh why, might you ask, do I ramble on and on about this? Well fundamentally because if Christianity is, when you get right down to it, about Jesus as the ‘only way to heaven’ (notice I didn’t say “only way”, but rather “only way to heaven"), then it’s hard to escape the conclusion that billions are damned to hell through no fault of their own. And you have to do some fancy philosophical footwork from that point to escape the conclusion that God is unjust.

What solution do I propose? Well, the biblical solution, of course. Viewing Christian discipleship as individual and corporate imitation of Christ, our only Lord, Master, President and God, as a part of his earthly Body, for the sake of the manifestation of his beautiful loving Kingdom.
We need to get the Kingdom right, and we need to get eschatology straight, otherwise the bottom line will always be hell, and that’s a very very bad (and unbiblical) bottom line. That’s what this 18-year-old is rightly offended by.

Peace,
-Daniel-

“God does not damn people, “through no fault of their own.” God damns them because they have broken His holy Law.”

Why do they break his holy Law? Because they were born at a time and place where it would be inevitable. Therefore are they directly responsible for it? Did they choose where they were born? No. Therefore they are not ultimately responsible for what your god would hold them accountable to.
You’ve misread Paul’s argument in Romans. I suggest you delve into some of NT Wright’s or RIchard Hays’ work on Paul’s theology.

Appealing to Revelation, which is apocalyptic literature, is a bad move for establishing the physicalness of ‘hell’. And you lost me at “burneth with fire”. If you want to read Revelation literally, then meditate on the fact that death (as in “second death") does not mean unending conscious torment. It just means plain old death. Destruction. The end of existence.

As for Jesus’ numerous references to Gehenna (the valley of Hinnom), this is just picturesque language from Jeremiah which points to the historical manifestation of “God’s wrath” on Israel for its unfaithfulness. Jesus’ foresight is more than vindicated by the Roman destruction and sacking of Jerusalem in 70AD.
It is crucial Jesus be understood as a reform prophet in Israel, announcing the impending judgment (again, historically conceived) of YHWH on faithless Israel. Through his life death and resurrection, Jesus provides a ‘narrow way’ through which a remnant of Israel may be saved (remember his warnings in Mark 13 to run to the hills when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies!). But the very means by which Israel is saved (identification with Jesus the suffering servant) opens the door for Gentiles into the people of God (hence Paul’s whole bit about “to the Jew first and also to the Greek").
Jesus’ “eschatological horizon”, that is, the ‘end’ which he has in sight, is the end of Israel as first-century Jews knew it. Only those ‘in Christ’ would survive as the people of God on the other side of that judgment. This is primarily what the imagery of Gehenna conveys in a first-century Jewish context.

Again, I recommend you read just about anything about eschatology in recent scholarship (NT Wright, Andrew Perriman, etc.) to drive this point home.
I also suggest you adopt a better thanslation that the King James version.

Peace.
-Daniel-

Peter,

Just because she has been attending this church for a year does not mean she has heard the Gospel.  There are many churches that do not tell people the whole counsel of God and leave out the justice of God in favor of a “nicer” message so that no one is offended. 

To point this girl to anyone other than God’s Word is typical of a “pastor” that is not practiced in apologetics.  God is the only source of truth and the answers to her questions are in Scripture...and not in the gospel of man.  Soooooo sad!

CS,

In the simplest terms please tell me: is it just to condemn to everlasting conscious torment my imaginary and virtuous friend Bob from Mongolia in the third century B.C. on the simple basis that he is not a Christian, something which there is no conceivable way he could have been?

I read something somewhere about there being ‘no partiality’ in God. I submit that any understanding of the Gospel which makes it, essentially, an exercise in partiality, should be rejected as heretical.

Our 18-year-old friend is wise to find evangelical formulations of divine partiality to be intensely problematic.

Peace.
-Daniel-

I don’t think I agree that we are all worthy of hell, which was created for the devil and his angels, but I do believe that we all fall short of the glory of God.  And I’m not going to take the time to try to explain that right now. 

What I do want to say is that lately I have been aware of my own tendency to excuse behavior in people when I think the behavior was brought about by circumstances beyound their control.  I can see why a person who had been molested might develop an inappropriate sexuality.  I wonder if they had any real choice.  On that basis, I’d try to teach them about healthy sexuality, but because I understand the background, I’d be more merciful.  And that’s me, with my imperfect form of love and my incomplete understanding of the whole situation.  So I wonder how would perfect love and perfect knowledge deal with such a person?  Would God be less merciful and loving than me?

Don’t forget Jesus’ words from the cross, asking God to forgive those who did not understand what they were doing.  Tell me - did God answer that prayer?  Were those, who apparently sought no forgiveness, forgiven at Jesus’ - God’s - own request?

Dave

Daniel D. Farmer writes [In the simplest terms please tell me: is it just to condemn to everlasting conscious torment my imaginary and virtuous friend Bob from Mongolia in the third century B.C. on the simple basis that he is not a Christian, something which there is no conceivable way he could have been?] In terms of God’s justice, absolutely. We don’t “get to heaven” based on God’s justice, we get there based on His mercy. Again, Daniel, if we do not NEED Christ’s sacrifice to gain eternal life, then God is worse than unjust for what He made Jesus go through. And I know God is just and merciful both!

CS, the 1 Corinthians 6 passage is TOTALLY incomplete without the next verse… “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (I don’t use the KJV but quoted it for your benefit)” That is totally a passage about God’s mercy, not his judgement, and when we portray things like that in the fashion you did, you tell only half the story. That was MY point, and I think it is the issue that leads to young people having the questions this young person does.

Katrina writes [There are many churches that do not tell people the whole counsel of God and leave out the justice of God in favor of a “nicer” message so that no one is offended.] I am familiar enough with the author to think that she has indeed heard the Gospel message, and will not assume she has not.

CS, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my comments. I think this is an absolutely critical issue. And clearly I’m not the only one.

Paul’s argument in Romans has to do with the faithfulness of God to his covenant with Abraham in spite of Israel’s own faithlessness. It is not an abstract theological treatise on ‘how to get to heaven’. “Inheriting the Kingdom” is adamantly not the same thing as ‘going to heaven’, but is rather shorthand for surviving the transition of the ages (the age of Israel to the age of the New Israel) in which ‘people of God’ goes from applying to Israel to applying to all those who are ‘in Christ’ (because he was the one and only faithful Israelite). Again, I recommend you get a good commentary on Romans to study this further.

You keep talking about ‘hell’. But ‘hell’ is a post-biblical construct. And so you conflate ‘Hades’ with John the Baptizer and Jesus’ references to ‘Gehenna’ with Paul’s exclusion from (New) Israel’s ‘inheritance of the Kingdom’, to John’s ‘second death’. But these are different images which signify drastically different things. This is why there is no demonstration from Scripture that “no one is worthy of Hell"--I should add that there is no Scriptural demonstration that “some are worthy of Hell” either. ‘Worthy of Hell’ is not a category the New Testament writers deal with.

Peter, I want to fully affirm that no human being can ‘earn’ God’s favor. We are irreducibly broken, partially through our own fault, and only the Creator’s grace and project of New Creation can set things right. However, I don’t think that means God would be ‘just’ to damn to EVERLASTING conscious torment people who, through no fault of their own, are less than perfect. Talk about a violation of ‘an eye for an eye’. You sin for two days, you get tortured forever and ever. Man! What a just God! But no, Jesus, Paul, John, the entire Old Testament unanimously affirm God’s impartiality. This is why traditional understandings of ‘Hell’ undermine the goodness of God. And this is, at least in part, why our 18-year-old friend has the questions she has.

Out of curiosity, has anybody read any NT Wright or Andrew Perriman recently? Am I the only one who is trying to incorporate a healthy understanding of apocalyptic literature into my theology?
I really do believe this is a fundamental issue for Christianity, and I do pray we can be faithful to Scripture and to the goodness and fairness of God as we sort this out.

Peace.
-Daniel-

Daniel:

I’m sorry to hear that you deny a literal existence of a place of everlasting torment.  Calvin, Luther, Spurgeon, many more Biblical teachers, and Jesus Christ Himself affirmed that there is a place known as Hell.  Here are a few verses I can offer that shows a literal existence of Hell:

Matthew 10:28.  “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Matthew 8:12.  “But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Luke 16:19-31 clearly shows the rich man in Hell.

2 Peter 2:4.  “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast [them] down to hell, and delivered [them] into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;”

Jude 1:6-7.  “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.  Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”

--
CS

Leonard, I appreciate your cautious feedback.
You’re right, I am probably flirting with carelessness in holding God to a human being’s standard of justice. But remember Job. Ranting and raving about injustice for the sake of God’s goodness, even if imperfectly understood, glorifies God far more than blind insistence that the currently held historically contingent view cannot be rejected because it is (supposedly) God’s own view. I want to affirm your critical insight that our categories of ‘good’ and ‘justice’ may need some reworking, but I also want to argue that I say ‘God is good’ and ‘God is just’ partially because I already have some notion of what goodness and justice are (in large part, though not entirely, because of Scripture, I would suggest).
The occasion for Todd’s post is our 18-year-old friend’s questions. I simply want to suggest that they are excellent questions. And yes, I am pushing my ‘agenda’, namely that “hell” (a word that does NOT exist in the NT manuscripts, as any careful translation in fact notes) has post-biblical metaphysical baggage which is potentially damaging to God’s character.

I think I’ve more than exceeded my posting limit for this particular thread. Peace to all participants.

Cheers,
-Daniel-

CS, et al, this young girl has deeply felt philosophical questions and you’re arguing about theological nuances and eschatology.  It’s no wonder the church is losing young people in droves.

If you’re going to reach young people with their innate curiosity and questioning minds you’re going to have to do more than just throw some scripture at them, you’re going to have to actually engage them and talk with them.

She asks how it is that God would condemn an apparently virtuous man who lives a righteous life just because he is not a Christian.  She asks how a just God could do this.  You’re NOT going to reach her by quoting scripture that says God doesn’t have to be just or the God is vengeful against those who don’t know him.  She’s talking about someone she evidently admires and respects and she wants to understand how God views him.

There are passages in the Bible that may not seem right or just to some, especially young people, and we must be prepared to talk to them about the questions they have.

For Example; Joshua 6:21 decribes how the Israelites killed every man, woman and child in Jericho.  Try explaining to a child why God would command them to kill all the children.

Try explaining to a victim of rape how Deuteronomy 22:28-29 could ever have been the will of God.

Go ahead and try to really communicate with someone who is questioning their faith by quoting verse after verse of scripture. 

Talk to a young person who asks why they should call themselves a Christian when a respected Christian leader says things like “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians” and “You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."--Pat Robertson, The 700 Club.

Throughout the ministry of Jesus, the single most important principle that was emphasized is love.  He declared this to be the basis of all law and prophecy.
♦ Matthew 22:35-39 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

The love that Jesus calls us to is what many young people are looking for from the church today, but sadly it is not what many of them are seeing in the church today.