What's the Deal with Hell?
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Streamer X Main-1: [00:00:00] I grew up as a preacher's kid, literally running around the pews as a child, and that was my environment. And yet here's a shocking reality. I didn't know that there was more than one Christian view of hell till I was in my twenties. I literally thought there was one way you thought about hell. That was the only way, and I struggled with it for much of that time.
Now, I'm gonna share today three different dominant views that historical Christianity has believed and has shared about the view of hell over the years since Jesus was around. We've had three dominant ways of looking at it. You may not have heard all three. Perhaps you're only familiar with one, and today we're gonna explore all of them.
And here's what I know. For some of you, today's discussion might completely alter or perhaps shatter what you think Christianity is about. Like for many people, we are taught, we are [00:01:00] raised that hell is a staple. It is an essential thing that you have to believe. And so if you struggle with it or if it doesn't make sense to you, then you often wonder, I don't know if I can believe in this Christianity thing.
But I've got good news for you. There are other ways of looking at that and we're gonna explore them in today's episode. This is episode 43. What's the deal with hell?
I've never shared this with anybody publicly. There's so many things happen in this conversation right now, thousand years from now, people are gonna be looking at this podcast saying, so this was the breakthrough. If this was SportsCenter, that would be like such a hot take. Skip Bales would've no idea.
Steven A. Smith would've no idea what to say. You drop that down. That is so good. The joke I always say is like, how'd you learn so much? You gotta drink a lot. The power of food and beverage to lubricate an environment, resistance to change [00:02:00] is hurting the church. I'm not in the camp that God has a penis or a vagina or a body at all.
I mean, the camp to God is a. Universe Spirit. This is the strangest podcast that I've been on. I don't even know what to do. I'm kind of geeked up about this wine. This is my second glass and it delivers a little more of a punch than I expected. So how I get a little loopy? It's your fault you told me to drink on this show.
I'll also say as a confession, I am a lightweight, so I've had like three sips of this wine and I'm already feeling it, so. This is fun. You've uncovered the mystery, you've exposed the formula. You've just duct taped together a number of things that aren't normally hanging out together, and I'm here for it.
We're gonna sit down a table. We're gonna have a glass of wine and some food, and we're gonna talk about. The beauty of Jesus. Thank you for the, the hospitality that this particular podcast provides folks like myself and I know others to, to be curious around their faith practices. I really appreciate this menu, what you're doing.
It is fun, [00:03:00] and yet you dig into the deep stuff. I've heard about your podcast for a long time, and I love that you're a pastor and that you explore the world of faith through wine that's very unique. I will never forget the first time I bought a bottle of wine. By myself, which was yesterday. If you're familiar with Drunk History, I thought it's like drunk theology, so I, oh, I got a little spicy there.
It's the peach wine, by the way, drinking this peanut regio at three o'clock in the afternoon is making me even more direct in my communication than I normally would be. I know why you have your guest drink wine. Makes sense now. Yeah, I get it. A little bit of liquid courage should really unleash the beast.
Streamer X Main-1: We'll start with what I'm drinking today. Hopefully if you're in a position where you're not driving you can enjoy a glass with me. I am busting out a 2019 Sequoia Grove Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa [00:04:00] Valley. And what's interesting, I opened it last night to to try it and then have, seen it today.
And there's all sorts of sediment that is collecting around the bottle, which you don't normally see especially for a 2019. So I'm not sure if that's just the way they make these wines, if this one was maybe not filtered or. If I just got a special bottle, I don't know. But what's interesting about this one is tons of what are called herbaceous notes.
So this one is not a fruit forward wine to me. I'm getting strong bell pepper, even a little bit of like jalapeno, which I actually really like. If you drink enough wines, you start to appreciate wines that are a little bit weird. And so I like that. It reminds me of a Washington wine that I'd had before that had like a, a jalapeno note to it.
And so I really am enjoying this one. But then it's also. Once those notes kinda wear off a little bit, you get like a little bit of a cherry and you get some, like other like red fruit flavors begin to [00:05:00] come through. But definitely they are secondary to the, the big earthy herbaceous notes that I'm getting in this one, which I don't mind.
I, I enjoy it. It's super fun for me and again, I like variety in my wine, so that's what I am enjoying today if you are enjoying glass as well. Cheers to you and cheers to a great theological discussion.
One of the topics I get asked about probably the most is hell, and people struggle with hell. Perhaps you found this episode because you are trying to figure out what on earth. Am I supposed to think about it or am I supposed to believe about this? Can I have options? Can I have other ways of processing this?
You, you've no doubt are aware that hell has been used for literally centuries to scare people into behaving in certain ways. I would say the doctrine of hell [00:06:00] has become this, this sword, if you will, this weapon of the church to get people in line, to get people to shape up, to behave in certain ways.
What we find as you discover more about hell and the history of the Christian view of hell is that much of what we think of as biblical or these are theological ideas are actually cultural ideas. Things from people like Dante and other cultural expressions of what we assume hell to be that aren't actually found necessarily in the pages of scripture.
Today we're gonna look at the three main views of hell, and I'm gonna share which one makes the most sense to me. And you are welcome as always, to disagree to have your own take on this, but at least you'll be aware that there are three views at a minimum. And maybe learn some things about the other views that you didn't know if you only knew your view.
Now for those of you who are watching this episode on [00:07:00] video, I'm gonna be sharing some fantastic graphics that my friend Jeff Caine made when he and I were discussing hell one time, and I remember just saving these graphics. So I'm like, this is so great. And so each of the views will be represented with a cartoon hotdog and it's going to be experiencing different things.
And so if that's interesting to you and you're listening to this, maybe watch the video of this episode as well. Now. Disclaimer, I'm not going to dive into all of the history. I'm not gonna dive into all of the original language about hell. That would be many, many episodes of a podcast to try to unpack all of that.
I, I'm just not gonna do that. That's not what this is about. So if you want that and you're like, Hey, I'm really interested in that, I'm gonna give you two book recommendations and I will be quoting these books throughout this episode. But these books go into way more depth and detail on the languages, on the history, on some of the geography of the [00:08:00] passages and the different, places that are being referenced that I would highly encourage you check out if this is interesting to you.
Now, the first book is called Her Gates Will Never Be Shut by Brad Jersak, and I would recommend you read this one first. This is a great primer. Into the three different views. And Juza does a great job going into tons of passages on each one of these three views. So you will read that book and you'll realize, oh, there are a lot of Bible verses about all three of these views.
And that book does a great job of helping you to see that. The second book that I would recommend is, is called That All Shall Be Saved. By David Bentley Hart. Now this book gets into a, a more specific view of hell, one of the three that we're gonna look at today. And this was the, the, the book that pushed me over the edge, if you will.
I had been entertaining one of these three views for a while and, [00:09:00] and just couldn't make sense of it, couldn't, dip my toe fully in. And I read this book and I was like, alright, I'm in this, this makes the most sense. And it freaked me up to fully go there. So maybe at the end of it maybe that's the book you want to check out as well.
Now, a few overarching principles for this discussion. Before we dive into the three different views, and these principles will apply to all three and, and I would say set a foundation that any conversation about hell would benefit from. Okay, so here's a few things to keep in mind. Number one, good theology is theology that looks like Jesus.
If you've ever been to one of our community wine co tasting events, you've heard me say this line, no doubt I say it often. Good theology is theology that looks like Jesus. What do I mean by that? When you are figuring out what is my view of hell, okay, your view of hell should help you to to reconcile the [00:10:00] person of Jesus around an idea.
So you're gonna explore the idea of hell, but you need to come up with it in a way that looks like Jesus. To you and, and so keep that in mind because for a lot of people, the traditional view of hell I is tricky in this regard. So keep that in mind. Another thing I would say is that our view of hell should reflect all of the New Testament writers.
Okay. Not just a couple passages that you like, not just the one verse that you can remember, but should take into consideration all of what the New Testament writers are saying about this, which means we have to at least be aware. There are more than one view. Okay? At least acknowledge, yes, this might be the view that I land on, but I'm aware there are other passages that would suggest other ways of viewing this as well.
Historically, like I said, there have been three Christian views of hell. There's lots more, but three dominant Christian views. There are verses [00:11:00] that support each one of these, and so people in any of these three camps would be able to say, yeah, I got here from the Bible, which this is another side note as a tangent.
Whenever someone says The Bible is clear, it is not okay. The Bible is many things. Clear is not one of them. Today's discussion is another example of why the Bible's not clear. Christians have not agreed. On what does hell mean and how do we think about it? As we'll see in the three views today, Brad Jak says this, the stubborn fact is that scripture is richly polyphonic on the topic of hell and judgment as if by design.
Thus, if we become dogmatic about any one position, we reduce ourselves to reading selectively. Doing interpretive violence to those verses that don't fit our chosen view. [00:12:00] So we have to be aware there are other views and that should create a little bit of humility with us, especially when we want to make people believe the way we believe.
Another thing I would say as we set this conversation up, we do not know who is in and who is out, and it is not our job. Now, dear Christians, for those of you listening are watching, this is for you, okay? It is not our job to know who's in or who's out. That is where a lot of this comes from, is we want to be able to assert definitively.
We know who's in, we know who's not in. Look, give it up. That is not our job. Nowhere in the New Testament do you have people claiming to know that other people are damned and, and definitively speaking to that, that is not our role. Even though it's become a popular thing for many Christians. We don't know who's in.
We don't know who's out. That's not our job. [00:13:00] Another thing I would say is that your view of hell is not an essential part of Christianity. Now I, I know some of you're going, no, no, no. This is absolute essential. It's not, and hopefully as we explore this, you'll realize why it's not, because you can have multiple views of this and it's not like only one view gets you to Jesus.
Now, I would say not all views equally display Jesus and I would, baker room for that? I would say that just because someone disagrees with me on where I land on this conversation, I would in no way say that makes them less of a Christian or not a Christian. And so that means this is not an essential Christianity 1 0 1.
You have to believe one view of hell. You do not. The historic Orthodox Church has not agreed. On which view of hell is is the right view. And depending on when you lived and where you lived, you may have been exposed to [00:14:00] any one of these three. Now, David Bentley Hart says it like this, if we were not so stupefied by the hory and venerable myth that eternal damnation is an essential element of the original Christian message.
Which it is not, we would not even waste our time on. So preposterous a conjunction. So there he is kind of throwing shade at one of the views, but he is pointing out like this is not the essential thing that we often assume it is. Now, my last thing I'll say before we dive in hell is a cheap motivator to follow Jesus.
Meaning if the reason you or anyone else you're talking to is going to follow Jesus is because of hell, or in particular because of a fear of hell, this is a really shallow way of thinking about Christianity and I, I don't think you'll experience the fullness of Jesus with [00:15:00] this approach. Now, a couple of verses to set up, why one John four 16 says this.
God is love and all who live in love, live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear.
If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. This is a mic drop verse that John gives about people who are only motivated to go follow Jesus out of fear of what else might happen. Now, the irony [00:16:00] of this is, the reason many people are motivated this way is because many Christians have presented hell like this.
Like this is the ultimate. You better do what God says or else something bad is going to happen to you. And, and John is saying, if we're afraid of, of punishment from God, it shows we have not experienced this perfect love. So let me just stop you there and say, if you are listening or watching this episode today and you have a fear inside of you, that God is going to punish you.
I want to encourage you to experience God's perfect love, which will not leave any room for that. And invite Jesus to show you, to let you experience that love rather than the fear that you are currently living with. Another verse that I love, Romans two, four, says, don't you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant and patient God is with you?
Does this mean nothing to you? [00:17:00] Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? So according to the Apostle Paul, how does God get us to repent? How does God get us when we're in the middle of sin to turn around? It's not by threat, it's not by fear, it's not by coercion. Paul says it's by the kindness.
God that God's kindness leads us to repentance, which should cause a lot of us who are preaching a scary message of fear of hell to stop and rather invite people to experience the kindness of God that the Apostle Paul says, this is what leads people to repentance.
Alright. First up, we'll call this view infernalism. infernalism is the belief in the existence of hell, often very literal existence of hell understood as a place of eternal punishment and suffering. [00:18:00] It is often called eternal conscious torment, and this the traditional view of hell.
And what we mean by that is a lot of Christians have believed this. As long as we've been paying attention, and you can go back to where this all began but this is a view that a lot of people have and a lot of people share today.
So here's a verse that would seem to lend itself to this view of hell. Revelation 14 verses nine through 11. Anyone who worships the beast and his statue, or who accepts his mark on the forehead or on the hand, must drink the wine of God's anger. I, I love a, a good wine reference, but this one, this is a, this is a spicy wine.
This is a wine of God's anger. It has been poured full strength into God's cup of wrath, and they will be tormented with fire and burning sulfur in the presence of the Holy Angels and the lamb. The smoke of their torment will rise forever and [00:19:00] ever and they will have no relief night or day, or excuse me, day or night for they have worshiped the beast and his statue and have accepted the mark of his name.
This view became popular when Constantine, the emperor of of all of Rome became Christian, and all of a sudden you had church and state mixed together. And Constantine and the church had to figure out how do we get people to do what we want now? How do we motivate them to be Christians in the way that we wanna motivate them?
And they developed this view of hell. And since then, when you are living in an empire that is a, a Christendom empire, where church and state are often blended together in certain ways, or you have social status or respect given to people because of their beliefs. Hint America has been living in Christendom for, for many years now.
This is the view that often prevails because this is how you get people to do [00:20:00] what you want them to do in that kind of a culture. Now, this is the group I grew up. Now, this is the view I grew up with. I, I had this view for many years and I struggled with it for many years as I got older, as I studied it more.
I just. Couldn't reconcile this view, but again, like I said in the intro, I didn't know till my twenties that I had other options. Well, what are a few issues with this view? Well, I'd begin by saying, this view doesn't look like Jesus. I cannot imagine Jesus making people suffer. I can't imagine Jesus torturing people.
It's literally the opposite of what we read Jesus doing. In the gospels. So to imagine Jesus facilitating this for eternity is a hard one for me intellectually. It reminds me of the meme that maybe you've seen before, this little picture of Jesus standing and knocking at someone's [00:21:00] door. And Jesus says, let me in.
And the person behind the door says, why? And Jesus says, so I can save you. And the person says, from what? Jesus says, from what I'm going to do to you if you don't let me in. Like, it's such a circular reasoning, like, okay, we need Jesus to save us. Why? Because Jesus is gonna torture us if we don't. Like, if this is your motivation to follow Jesus, I can't wrap my head around it anymore.
It doesn't make any sense. This is not a good depiction of God. Now from this model the wicked are not being punished to learn something. It's only punitive, which again, seems so contrary to what I see in the nature of God, that God's just punishing them just for fun at that point, or because God can, but there's nothing.
There's no good coming out of it. There's no redemption. There's nothing that they're learning through this. And to me, I just can't reconcile that [00:22:00] with God. Unending suffering is inconsistent with the love of God. And logically, I think there's a case to be made there. Brad Giza says that God deals with sin through correction, not punishment.
And I would totally agree. God doesn't deal with sin by just punishing you. A lot of Christians believe that, but God corrects us. God redeems us. God is bringing something better out of us, not just a punitive response. This view seems to be motivated primarily by fear, and whenever I hear it used and I hear it preached, which is again in, in the majority of churches today, it is usually with a tone of fear.
Now this can also be reversed. People can talk about how passionate they are of saving you from these fires, right? But that's still fear in reverse because what they're saying is if they can't save you or somehow you don't [00:23:00] respond, then that's what's coming and they're still passionate about saving you from that, right?
Which still implies if you don't do what we say, this is coming for you and you're going to get what you deserve. I would say also that the notion of unending punishment is out of sync with any sense of justice, like just a logical sense of justice does not reconcile with an idea of unending punishment.
If a government today tried to create a punishment like this, the world would rise up and say, that's not fair like that. That's not justice. You can't treat people like that. And yet we attribute this to God and say, yeah, but God is good and this is how God works. David Bentley heart says it like this.
Can we imagine that someone still in torment? After a trillion ages or a trillion trillion or a trillion [00:24:00] ion, I don't even know that word, is the same agent who contracted some measure of personal guilt in that tiny, ever more vanishing, insubstantial gleam that constituted his or her life. Translation.
If eternity goes on and on and on, you would get punished so far beyond whatever you could have done in the earthly years you were alive and, and to say that that has any sense of making sense. Like, yeah, you had X amount of years and so because you spent those years doing this for trillions and trillions and trillions of years, you're gonna experience that.
There is no justice in that. Now, I would also wanna say that just because it's popular today does not make it more true. There are lots of things throughout Christian history that were popular that today we would say are [00:25:00] awful. The Crusades, the witch hunts, the inquisition, all sorts of things. We're promoted by Christians.
Slavery in America was promoted primarily by Christians. Right? And so there were times in which these theologies were very popular. That does not make them true. And I would say the same is true of this, that just because you go, yeah, but everybody believes this. Everybody teaches this. How? How could it be other than that?
I would just invite you to go, does it look like Jesus? Does it make sense to you as you wrestle with these views? And maybe could you create space that this was invented, this view to get people to do certain things because they would be afraid? And that makes a whole lot of sense to me. One, a well-known preacher named Clark Pennix says this.
I do not feel calm about the traditional doctrine of hell. I love that phrasing, [00:26:00] and so I will not pretend indeed. How can anyone with the milk of human kindness in him remain calm? Contemplating such an idea as this, oh, I'll slow much there. Anyone who has the milk of human kindness in him, which. That, that's great.
How can you become contemplating an idea this crazy one of my absolute favorite quotes in David Bentley Hart's book that I, I recommended, the second of the tomb is when he gets to the end and he says, this line that I remember, I think I literally laughed out loud reading this because this is a very academic book.
If you read it, you'll notice like, wow, it's gonna take you a little bit of work to process what he's saying. This is like he pulls behind the curtain and just like places his cards for you right here. He says this custom dictates and prudence advises that here in closing, I wax gracefully disingenuous and declare that I am [00:27:00] uncertain in my conclusions that I offer them only hesitantly, that I entirely understand the views of those that take the opposite side of the argument and that I fully respect contrary opinions on these matters.
Like that's what I'm supposed to say. He says this, I find however, whether on a count of principle or of pride, that I am simply unable to do this. I believe I am obeying my conscience in refusing to lie about my convictions. More to the point though, I believe that I am obeying my conscience with a special rigor in rejecting the majority view that there is a hell of eternal torment.
Then he says this banger line, since I am fairly sure. That it must be a wicked thing to give one's intellectual ascent to something. One cannot help but find morally repugnant. Whew. That's worth getting the book for just [00:28:00] that quote. Look, it is a wicked thing to give your intellectual ascent. Yeah, yeah. I agree with that.
To something that if you are honest, you find morally repugnant. Friends, I find the traditional view of hell morally repugnant. Now, not to say that I find people who view that because I was one of them. I understand how you get raised in that and how it makes sense to you. But this is my plea to you is, is to study it more, to think through it more, to ask some questions, and as you do, you will hopefully see, yeah, this view.
Is pretty awful, and this view does not look like God. And this view is all about creating fear, and we do not need to create fear in order to get people to follow Jesus.
That brings us to view number two, we'll call this view Annihilationism. Annihilationism is the view that whoever and whatever [00:29:00] cannot be redeemed by God is ultimately put out of existence. You cease to be after you die. No eternal conscious to you're not suffering. You just don't, you don't have existence anymore.
You stop being this is also known as soul sleep. Here's a couple passages that would seem to indicate this view. Matthew 13 verses 40 through 43. Just as the weeds are sorted out and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the world, the son of man will send his angels and they will remove from his kingdom.
Everything that causes sin and all who do evil and the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the son in their father's kingdom. So it seems to imply there's this ending. They get burned up, they cease to be, and the righteous go on to live and they, they keep going.
Even John three 16, the most quoted [00:30:00] well-known verse in all the Bible seems to make some room for this. It says for this is how God loved the world. He gave his one and only son that everyone who believes in him will not perish. Have eternal life. So what are the options there? You perish, you cease to be, or you have eternal life.
And again, it seems to be a very simple explanation here. Now, this was the first view that I clung to out of infernalism because it gave me a chance to believe something that looked more like Jesus. This looked way more like Jesus to me than infernalism did. And so I grew up in, infernalism, thought that was the only view that you could have.
Discovered this view next, and I went, yes, I, I'll take it, I'll gladly go with this. Because I can handle this much more than I can make sense of the other view, which looks to me again, nothing like Jesus. It also logically makes sense with a lot of [00:31:00] verses and, and even just as we're trying to make sense of it, eternal life is a gift, not a right.
So not everybody has eternal life. Eternal life is something to those who choose it, those who experience Jesus in that way, it's granted to those who want it, and there's not eternal suffering happening. So God's not this torture maniac, who wants people to suffer for trillion of trillions of years.
Okay, I can get on board with all of that. However, I would say it after a while, starts to feel a bit anti climactic. Like, okay, so that's the best we've got and, and it seems to fall short of Jesus to me, to be honest with you, where it looks closer to Jesus, but I still don't go. Yeah. That resonates with who I have seen God to be and, and so what it would mean for someone who didn't experience eternal life.
They go from non-existence to life, back to non-existence. It just seems like, okay, what was the point of all of that? [00:32:00] Like. That, that would've been great if you could have chosen something different but you didn't, so you go back like it never happened in the first place. And it all kind of just seems like this cosmic board game that some people figure it out, some people don't.
And then it all goes back in the box. And those of us who got eternal life get to play another game. And if you don't, your pieces go back in the board for someone else to play and see if they can figure it out too. As Billy Eilish says in Bury a Friend, when we all fall asleep, where do we go?
That's the question of Annihilationism. Do we just fall asleep and never wake up? Is is it like a hell type of you cease to exist, you perish in flame, and then there's no more, or, or, or what else are we supposed to believe about that? Now? Again, I think this is a step. In the right direction and for years I, I adopted this view, but ultimately I have discovered, I think there's something even better that looks even more like [00:33:00] Jesus.
That actually gets me excited to see what God is gonna do at the end of all this, which brings us to our third and final view, which we'll call universalism. Now to be more specific or talking about Christian universalism, because universalism, as it's often presented, is the idea that all religions take you to the same exact place.
Jesus, and Muhammad or Buddha or whoever you're gonna, they're all the same. No difference there. It all takes you to the exact same place. That is not what I believe, and I would say that's not the Christian view of this. We're talking about what's known as universal reconciliation in a lot of Christian circles which is the idea that Jesus will save everyone.
Okay? So notice the difference there. It's not that all the roads go the same place, it's just that all the roads eventually are gonna take you to Jesus. That Jesus is at the end of every road and Jesus is the one that's going to figure out how to save everyone. Now here's a couple [00:34:00] verses that would seem to indicate this view.
One Timothy four 10. This is why we work hard and continue to struggle, for our hope is in the living God who is the savior of all people, and particularly of all believers. Now, it's an interesting wording there. Why would you say all people and all believers how, how is that, how is there any difference there?
'cause wouldn't there be believers and then those who are not gonna get it, but he says no, he savior of all people. Now, the believers may be the ones who are aware of it, who know it, who recognize it, but this is the God who's the savior of all people, that Jesus will save everyone. Titus two 11 says, for the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people, not to some people, not to the people who believe, not to the people who get it right to all people.
Now what a lot of [00:35:00] things I like about this view, one of them is that hell is either not a literal concept or it's temporary. So one of the cool things about this view is that it leaves room for some of these other verses that we find throughout scripture to understand them in a different way than people traditionally take them.
For example, when you take all these views or verses about fire and you go, yeah, but what about the fire verses. You can say, okay, well fire can essentially burn in a couple ways. You can have a consuming fire that burns something up to where it perishes where it is no longer. Or you can have a refining fire as we see in, in metal work, right?
Where that fire is not used to to do like eradicate something, but to refine something, to produce something different, something better in the fire. And, and I think there's tons of room to think of hell in that concept that someone who has lived their entire life will experience flames perhaps, or that [00:36:00] type of experience, but not to consume them.
Not to punish them. To refine them, to bring out the things in them, the best part of them, so that they're able to see God in ways they couldn't see before. Brad Dza says it like this, by way of analogy. When the children of Israel fled Pharaoh's army, the presence of God stood between them as a pillar of fire to God's people.
He was warmth, light, and comfort, but to his enemies, he was darkness. Terror. The same is true of the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel to Daniel's friends. The fire served to burn only the ropes of their bondage, but meanwhile it incinerated their captors. In the end, the glory and love of Christ is that fire.
So this fire that is ultimately redeeming and and bringing out the best of us, that gives me tons of room to go. Okay, now I can make sense of these verses. [00:37:00] In light of Jesus. See, I like this view the most because to me it looks the most like Jesus. It's the most Jesus looking theology of hell that I have ever found by far.
And, and there is not a close second. Now, here's what I would say to you that maybe you're going, okay, I, I still have a few questions, a few issues I gotta work through, or I, I just don't know. I would say at a minimum, it's a very Christian thing to want this view to be true. Like I just encourage people, could you start there?
Could you start by wanting Jesus to save everyone? And sadly, I found that there are many Christians that don't, that they don't want Jesus to save everyone. And they like the idea that some people will be burning and some people will be out of the party and, left out and, and, and tormented. They like that idea.
And friends, I would just say that looks nothing. Jesus. And, and even if you're not there on this view right now, could you, could you start making room to go? My [00:38:00] heart should want that. Like I, I should want Jesus to save everyone. Even if you logically don't think it's gonna happen. Why would you not want Jesus to save everyone?
Why would you not want Jesus to have that chance to, to get the heart of every single person? I love this view and, and I encourage people to open up some room for it. Now, the issue I had, why it took me so many years to get to this view was actually the issue of free will, and it felt like to me that this view negated free will because if I can't not choose God and ultimately God's gonna wear me down, then free will is an illusion.
I just couldn't get on board with this view. And so again, I was in the Annihilationism camp for a long time and I thought, I wish this view were true, but I, I just have an issue with free will until I read David Bentley Hart's book and he had this, this [00:39:00] quote in there that was literally right to my objection that I thought, yeah, he's making a better point.
I'm gonna go with that. Here was the quote. He says, the irresistibility of God for any soul that has truly been set free is no more a constraint placed upon its liberty than is the irresistible attraction of a flowing spring of fresh water in a desert place. To a man who is dying of thirst, to choose not to drink in that circumstance would not be an act of freedom on his part.
Only a manifestation of the delusions that enslave him and force him to inflict violence upon himself contrary to his nature. So to a, a, a man dying of thirst who says, I choose not to drink this water. It is not the, the fullest expression of his free will to do that. He is deluded. There's something else that is keeping him [00:40:00] from what his true free will would choose if he had the ability.
David Benhart gives another analogy. A woman who chooses to run into a burning building not to save another's life, but only because she can imagine no greater joy than burning to death may be exercising a kind of liberty. But in the end, she is captive to a far profounder poverty of rational freedom.
The point being that when we look at something we go, free will is the, the use of your own choices to the, the best of you. It is what choice would allow you to thrive the most. That's the, that's the extreme fulfillment of free will when I choose something that allows me to thrive, and ultimately there are conditions in which someone may not choose God.
It may not choose eternal life, but it is not in a logical, rational way. I [00:41:00] believe when people see Jesus, when they fully experience Jesus, and again, that may take some type of refinement in the afterlife, but I think everyone will get to a place where they'll go, that is in my best interest, that I want to follow this guy and and they will embrace Jesus.
And so I've actually come to believe. That choosing this and that God giving people enough time is the fulfillment of free will. And you might think, well, yeah, but don't you have to figure this out before you die. And notice how, how often that is the, the fear we talk about. You gotta get this figured out before you die.
'cause death seals the fate of every believer. And I've heard this line so many times. In fact, this is on many church websites, on their, what we believe death seals the eternity of the believer. To which I would say, why? Why would death seal the fate of a Christian who believes in Jesus, the guy [00:42:00] who rose from the dead?
If we believe in a guy who came back to life post death, why in the literal hell would we give the death all the power to say That's the decision. No, Jesus can can work with us as long as God wants death does not seal any fate. I, I think Jesus seals our fate. Jesus will patiently wait around for us, will continue to refine us if needed.
But death does not seal, death does have no power over Jesus. And if you believe death has more power than God, I would encourage you, I think your, your Christian theology is not as orthodox as you think. It's.
So those are three Christian historical views of hell. Now I'm gonna end with this. I had a professor in college and someone would ask him a [00:43:00] question, a bible question, and he would often say, do you want the theological answer? The biblical answer, and I remember this question the first time I heard it.
I thought it was such a weird question, like they just asked you a question, answer their question, and yet he would always say, are you looking for the biblical answer or a theological answer? And the first time I heard it, I was like, well, what's the difference? And he would always explain the biblical answer is, do you want me to tell you a verse that you can, you can go, this verse addresses this question.
Or do you want me to give you an answer, A theological answer that helps you make sense of all of the verses that speak about this. And what we realize is that most people, they settle for a biblical answer. I found one verse or a couple verses, and that's all I need. And I've, I've created my theology on that with hell.
That's problematic because there are a lot of verses on all three of these views. And if you read the books I recommended, you'll see. So instead, I would encourage us, we have to [00:44:00] have a theological answer that makes sense of all of these different views. Now, biblically, I think a case can be made for any one of the three views, but theologically only the third view looks like Jesus only universal reconciliation.
This idea of universalism with Jesus is the only view. Of the three that I can reconcile with a Jesus looking God, all three of them are biblical. Only one of them looks like Jesus. David Bentley heart says this, if Christianity taken as a whole is indeed an entirely coherent and credible system of belief, then the universalist understanding of its message is the only one possible.
Finally, I'll end on something. Brad Jersak says I am more hopeful [00:45:00] of Jesus than I am sure of. Hell, even if you finish this episode and you go, I have way more questions than answers. That's okay. We can be more confident in Jesus than we are about hell, and we can take that confidence in Jesus. We can take that passion, that view we have of Jesus to help us navigate.
The questions that we have about hell. I'll see you on the next episode of Cabernet and pray.
