Questioning Eternal Hell (Part 6) - Free Will & Corrective Punishment
Over the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, I had been inviting us to question the Doctrine of Eternal Hell. I had been using as my guide a book by David Bentley Hart trying to communicate the essence of some of the key points he makes.
A question that we began to explore in the last sermon was: Is there any justice? Where is the justice? If the promise of Universal Salvation is true, that everyone, even the worst of humanity will in the end be saved by God’s all-redeeming Love expressed in Christ, is there still room for justice.
We saw how David Bentley Hart believes that the New Testament writings point to two horizons: A penultimate horizon, ‘the end of the age’, in which all will be held accountable for our actions in this world, and a final horizon, ‘the age beyond all ages’ when having been purified of our darkness, we will all without exception be brought home to God.
George MacDonald was a Scottish Congregational Minister who lived in the 1800’s (born in 1824 – and died 1905). He was the author also of quite a number of fictional stories. He had a very big impact on C.S. Lewis.
Now George MacDonald was a Christian Universalist, in other words a believer in Universal Salvation, that in the end, all would be saved. But this did not mean that he had given up on the idea of some kind of judgement, accountability and even punishment in the after-life. MacDonald's universalism was not the idea that everyone will automatically be saved, but is closer to the ancient view of the Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa that all will ultimately repent (come to a change of heart and mind) and thus be restored to God.
MacDonald grew up in a very severe Scottish Calvinist tradition and appears to have never felt comfortable with Calvinist doctrine, feeling that its principles were inherently "unfair". Apparently when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him as a child, and that God had created some to be destined to eternal torment, he burst into tears. He could never accept the doctrine even though he was assured that he was one of the elect.
As Barbara Amall writes: He was repeatedly quoted saying that when Protestants decided that three places in the afterlife were too many, [hell; purgatory; heaven] he believed that “they got rid of the wrong one.” He believed the early protestants should have got rid of the idea of Eternal Hell and rather should have retained something of the idea of purgatory. It is not to say that his understanding of some kind of purgatory in the afterlife was an uncritical acceptance of the Catholic Doctrine of purgatory. He simply believed that some kind of purgatory, in other words a place or an experience of purification made far more sense of the over-arching Biblical framework and could at the same time preserve the foundational Christian teaching that God is Love, that God’s Love would be triumphant and that no-one would be finally excluded from God’s all encompassing, never-failing love. For George MacDonald, the idea of an eternal hell of sufferings and torment turns God into a monster for whom eternal cruelty is the final word and not eternal love.
And so in 1890, George MacDonald, while giving a series of lectures on Dante made the following statement: “I do indeed believe in a place of punishment, but that longing and pain will bring us back to God.” He went on to say “There is a deep truth in the soul undergoing Purgatory [in other words, the sufferings of purification] in order that it may return to God—in whom we live and move—at all times.”
From his "Unspoken Sermons: Series I, on Justice" MacDonald said that "If our God is a consuming fire, what will he do but burn and burn until every evil thing is consumed, and creation is awakened pure and free from sin! The fires of hell are but the love of God." He went on to say in the same sermon that "God's fire is not an avenging wrath, but a refining and cleansing flame. He will purge from his creation all that mars its beauty and tarnishes its purity."
In God's school, where men [people] are punished for their sins, there is no cruelty, only love. For God cannot be cruel, and he never punishes for vengeance; he only corrects for the sake of the wrongdoer…. Punishment is not vengeance, but a means of reclaiming the wrongdoer and restoring him to his true self."
It also needs to be remembered that where the New Testament refer to punishment, the Greek word that is used, kolasis, refers to corrective punishment and not vengeance. The word can be found in Matthew 25:46 at the end of the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the goats, or the ‘unrighteous’, who have not shown care and concern for the poor and the needy, are separated from the sheep and thus destined for what English translations call ‘eternal punishment’. But here the Greek word is kolasis. And as Thomas Talbot writes in his book the Inescapable Love of God, kolasis was a common Greek word for remedial punishment or correction, and that the idea of an eternal correction, would be an event or process of limited duration whose corrective effect literally endures forever.
And so for George MacDonald and many other Christian Universalists like him, all the metaphors of fire in the New Testament as we touched on in the last sermon, refer to the purging fire of Divine love burning away all that is false, unjust, unloving and wicked within us in order to reveal that golden essence within of that original true self or the image of God that God has placed with us that has been marred obscured and distorted, by our selfishness, injustice and lack of love. George MacDonald believed that the purifying, purgatorial, love of God is in fact already experienced in this life whenever we are met with the painful consequences of our wayward actions.
But there are also a few other metaphors as well in the New Testament, most especially in the Gospel of Matthew and one from the Gospel of Luke, metaphors of exclusion, like sealed wedding doors, accompanied by the gnashing of teeth. And one can think especially of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus where because of the Rich Man’s failure to show compassion and human kindness to Lazarus in his destitution and poverty, he seems to be quarantined off in some experience of suffering and thirst in the afterlife. But there is nothing in the parable to indicate that these sufferings of the Rich Man are in fact eternal. We should also be reminded of the fact that it is a parable, not a literal description. It is but one metaphor among many used in the New Testament.
For George MacDonald, if the passages in the New Testament referring to some kind of exclusion and banishment from the Divine Presence are to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, then the purpose of such exclusion is ultimately to awaken a deeper longing for God that would in the end bring that soul back home to God.
I am reminded of the words of St Augustine: “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”. The suggestion is that outside the embrace of Divine Love, there is no real happiness, only restlessness. And it is that restlessness and unhappiness that will eventually make all of us turn back to God where we can find our deepest happiness.
There are a lot of people who suggest that eternal hell is the choice that some will make to remain eternally separated from God. This is the argument based on free-will. That God respects our free will so much that God will allow us to make the eternal choice to reject God.
But David Bentley Hart says that such a choice in fact makes no sense. Because we have been made by Divine Love and for Divine Love, and that our true and deepest freedom can only be found within that Divine Love. To live outside of that Love will forever leave us unhappy, empty and unfulfilled. And it is precisely for that reason that David Bentley Hart suggests that we will all one day find our way back to God, no matter how far we have strayed or how lost and depraved we have become, because as beings who in fact crave happiness and freedom, the desire for that happiness and freedom will eventually lead us back to the only place where that happiness and freedom can be satisfied, and that is in God.
And so it could be said that God has created us with a homing device. You can only stray so far and for so long until it begins to chafe and a deep longing is ignited within us to return home. The idea that we can wonder off for all eternity and of our own free will reject God’s Infinite and Boundless Love doesn’t actually make sense, because it goes against the very nature of how we are made at our core. The Divine Image within, what some might speak of as the Divine Spark within all, will eventually bring us all back home. In this view, there is no-one who is dispensable in God’s eyes and there will in the end be no collateral damage in God’s plan to bring all things back to unity in the end.
“O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”. St Augustine, interestingly was not a Universalist, but if he had pondered his own statement deeply enough, and truly understood the limitless nature of Divine love, he might have realised that one day, all sorry and miserable sinners would turn back to God.
And so in the New Testament there are numerous passages, using a variety of images and metaphors that speak of judgement, consequences and remedial and corrective sufferings. None of those need to be dispensed within a Christian Universalist framework. What David Bentley Hart suggests however is that while these passages do exist and need to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, if we simply had the eyes to see them, the number of passages that consistently point to the final reconciliation of all things are in fact far more numerous.
I hope this series has been stimulating for you. I would have to concede that perhaps not all have been completely convinced by this series of 6 sermons. There is only so much ground that can be covered in 6 short reflections. The gift of our Non-Subscribing tradition remains that all of us are encouraged to investigate these things for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. If this series has peaked your interest there are a number of books that you can read further. I will put references up on our website.
David Bentley Harts book “That All Shall Be Saved” was not the easiest reading as he seems to be writing for people who have a masters or doctorate in theology. But there are a number of other books that you could read:
Rob Bell has a very readable book entitled: Love Wins which I would be happy to lend to you.
I have another readable book by Kalen Fristad called Destined for Salvation.
The most thorough book that I could probably recommend on the subject is by Thomas Talbot, called: The Inescapable Love of God.
Thomas Talbott’s Book which is available on Kindle is perhaps one of the most thorough Biblical explorations of the subject.
Over the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, I had been inviting us to question the Doctrine of Eternal Hell. I had been using as my guide a book by David Bentley Hart trying to communicate the essence of some of the key points he makes.
A question that we began to explore in the last sermon was: Is there any justice? Where is the justice? If the promise of Universal Salvation is true, that everyone, even the worst of humanity will in the end be saved by God’s all-redeeming Love expressed in Christ, is there still room for justice.
We saw how David Bentley Hart believes that the New Testament writings point to two horizons: A penultimate horizon, ‘the end of the age’, in which all will be held accountable for our actions in this world, and a final horizon, ‘the age beyond all ages’ when having been purified of our darkness, we will all without exception be brought home to God.
George MacDonald was a Scottish Congregational Minister who lived in the 1800’s (born in 1824 – and died 1905). He was the author also of quite a number of fictional stories. He had a very big impact on C.S. Lewis.
Now George MacDonald was a Christian Universalist, in other words a believer in Universal Salvation, that in the end, all would be saved. But this did not mean that he had given up on the idea of some kind of judgement, accountability and even punishment in the after-life. MacDonald's universalism was not the idea that everyone will automatically be saved, but is closer to the ancient view of the Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa that all will ultimately repent (come to a change of heart and mind) and thus be restored to God.
MacDonald grew up in a very severe Scottish Calvinist tradition and appears to have never felt comfortable with Calvinist doctrine, feeling that its principles were inherently "unfair". Apparently when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him as a child, and that God had created some to be destined to eternal torment, he burst into tears. He could never accept the doctrine even though he was assured that he was one of the elect.
As Barbara Amall writes: He was repeatedly quoted saying that when Protestants decided that three places in the afterlife were too many, [hell; purgatory; heaven] he believed that “they got rid of the wrong one.” He believed the early protestants should have got rid of the idea of Eternal Hell and rather should have retained something of the idea of purgatory. It is not to say that his understanding of some kind of purgatory in the afterlife was an uncritical acceptance of the Catholic Doctrine of purgatory. He simply believed that some kind of purgatory, in other words a place or an experience of purification made far more sense of the over-arching Biblical framework and could at the same time preserve the foundational Christian teaching that God is Love, that God’s Love would be triumphant and that no-one would be finally excluded from God’s all encompassing, never-failing love. For George MacDonald, the idea of an eternal hell of sufferings and torment turns God into a monster for whom eternal cruelty is the final word and not eternal love.
And so in 1890, George MacDonald, while giving a series of lectures on Dante made the following statement: “I do indeed believe in a place of punishment, but that longing and pain will bring us back to God.” He went on to say “There is a deep truth in the soul undergoing Purgatory [in other words, the sufferings of purification] in order that it may return to God—in whom we live and move—at all times.”
From his "Unspoken Sermons: Series I, on Justice" MacDonald said that "If our God is a consuming fire, what will he do but burn and burn until every evil thing is consumed, and creation is awakened pure and free from sin! The fires of hell are but the love of God." He went on to say in the same sermon that "God's fire is not an avenging wrath, but a refining and cleansing flame. He will purge from his creation all that mars its beauty and tarnishes its purity."
In God's school, where men [people] are punished for their sins, there is no cruelty, only love. For God cannot be cruel, and he never punishes for vengeance; he only corrects for the sake of the wrongdoer…. Punishment is not vengeance, but a means of reclaiming the wrongdoer and restoring him to his true self."
It also needs to be remembered that where the New Testament refer to punishment, the Greek word that is used, kolasis, refers to corrective punishment and not vengeance. The word can be found in Matthew 25:46 at the end of the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the goats, or the ‘unrighteous’, who have not shown care and concern for the poor and the needy, are separated from the sheep and thus destined for what English translations call ‘eternal punishment’. But here the Greek word is kolasis. And as Thomas Talbot writes in his book the Inescapable Love of God, kolasis was a common Greek word for remedial punishment or correction, and that the idea of an eternal correction, would be an event or process of limited duration whose corrective effect literally endures forever.
And so for George MacDonald and many other Christian Universalists like him, all the metaphors of fire in the New Testament as we touched on in the last sermon, refer to the purging fire of Divine love burning away all that is false, unjust, unloving and wicked within us in order to reveal that golden essence within of that original true self or the image of God that God has placed with us that has been marred obscured and distorted, by our selfishness, injustice and lack of love. George MacDonald believed that the purifying, purgatorial, love of God is in fact already experienced in this life whenever we are met with the painful consequences of our wayward actions.
But there are also a few other metaphors as well in the New Testament, most especially in the Gospel of Matthew and one from the Gospel of Luke, metaphors of exclusion, like sealed wedding doors, accompanied by the gnashing of teeth. And one can think especially of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus where because of the Rich Man’s failure to show compassion and human kindness to Lazarus in his destitution and poverty, he seems to be quarantined off in some experience of suffering and thirst in the afterlife. But there is nothing in the parable to indicate that these sufferings of the Rich Man are in fact eternal. We should also be reminded of the fact that it is a parable, not a literal description. It is but one metaphor among many used in the New Testament.
For George MacDonald, if the passages in the New Testament referring to some kind of exclusion and banishment from the Divine Presence are to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, then the purpose of such exclusion is ultimately to awaken a deeper longing for God that would in the end bring that soul back home to God.
I am reminded of the words of St Augustine: “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”. The suggestion is that outside the embrace of Divine Love, there is no real happiness, only restlessness. And it is that restlessness and unhappiness that will eventually make all of us turn back to God where we can find our deepest happiness.
There are a lot of people who suggest that eternal hell is the choice that some will make to remain eternally separated from God. This is the argument based on free-will. That God respects our free will so much that God will allow us to make the eternal choice to reject God.
But David Bentley Hart says that such a choice in fact makes no sense. Because we have been made by Divine Love and for Divine Love, and that our true and deepest freedom can only be found within that Divine Love. To live outside of that Love will forever leave us unhappy, empty and unfulfilled. And it is precisely for that reason that David Bentley Hart suggests that we will all one day find our way back to God, no matter how far we have strayed or how lost and depraved we have become, because as beings who in fact crave happiness and freedom, the desire for that happiness and freedom will eventually lead us back to the only place where that happiness and freedom can be satisfied, and that is in God.
And so it could be said that God has created us with a homing device. You can only stray so far and for so long until it begins to chafe and a deep longing is ignited within us to return home. The idea that we can wonder off for all eternity and of our own free will reject God’s Infinite and Boundless Love doesn’t actually make sense, because it goes against the very nature of how we are made at our core. The Divine Image within, what some might speak of as the Divine Spark within all, will eventually bring us all back home. In this view, there is no-one who is dispensable in God’s eyes and there will in the end be no collateral damage in God’s plan to bring all things back to unity in the end.
“O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”. St Augustine, interestingly was not a Universalist, but if he had pondered his own statement deeply enough, and truly understood the limitless nature of Divine love, he might have realised that one day, all sorry and miserable sinners would turn back to God.
And so in the New Testament there are numerous passages, using a variety of images and metaphors that speak of judgement, consequences and remedial and corrective sufferings. None of those need to be dispensed within a Christian Universalist framework. What David Bentley Hart suggests however is that while these passages do exist and need to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, if we simply had the eyes to see them, the number of passages that consistently point to the final reconciliation of all things are in fact far more numerous.
I hope this series has been stimulating for you. I would have to concede that perhaps not all have been completely convinced by this series of 6 sermons. There is only so much ground that can be covered in 6 short reflections. The gift of our Non-Subscribing tradition remains that all of us are encouraged to investigate these things for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. If this series has peaked your interest there are a number of books that you can read further. I will put references up on our website.
David Bentley Harts book “That All Shall Be Saved” was not the easiest reading as he seems to be writing for people who have a masters or doctorate in theology. But there are a number of other books that you could read:
Rob Bell has a very readable book entitled: Love Wins which I would be happy to lend to you.
I have another readable book by Kalen Fristad called Destined for Salvation.
The most thorough book that I could probably recommend on the subject is by Thomas Talbot, called: The Inescapable Love of God.
Thomas Talbott’s Book which is available on Kindle is perhaps one of the most thorough Biblical explorations of the subject.
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