hell-may-june-2002

PREACHING HELL ❘ C.S. LEWIS ON HELL ❘ CHRIST’S DESCENT

MODERN REFORMATION

HELL:

Putting the Fire Out?

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HELL: PUTTING THE FIRE OUT?

14 The Very Idea Of It In today’s intellectual climate, the concept of hell is a very tough sell—even for ministers. The author outlines the most common objections to a traditional view of hell and counters with a strong case for believing in this very crucial doctrine. by Michael Horton Plus: Is Hell Separation from God?

21 Speaking Soberly and Sensitively about Hell Dovetailing with Dr. Horton’s article, this minister details how hell must be preached in a comprehensive fashion— pastorally, correctively, exegetically, and christologically—for a congregation to truly understand hell’s import.

by J. Ligon Duncan, III

25 Lewis’s Reflections on Hell While justly appreciated for his famous apologetic and fictional literature, C.S. Lewis’s views on hell are often perceived as controversial and beyond the pale of Protestant orthodoxy. by Brian J. Lee

30 Hell and the Nature of God Using an Episcopal philosopher at Yale Divinity School as an example, the writer shows how revisionists view hell as both indefensible and as an affront to fundamental tenets of justice. by Paul Helm

36 The Consummation of the Law A Lutheran theologian acknowledges that while hell is not popular in contemporary theological discourse, it has always been taken seriously in Lutheran theology because of Christ’s earthly mission to save lost souls. by John T. Pless

38 He Descended Into Hell This scholar contends that the phrase, “he descended into hell,” in the Apostles’ Creed underscores that the Son of God in his incarnation experienced the full range of suffering necessary for our redemption. by Tom J. Nettles COVER PHOTO BY CORBIS

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Open Exchange page 7 | Ex Auditu page 8 Preaching from the Choir page 10 | Speaking of page 11 | Between the Times page 12 Resource Center page 26 | Free Space page 42 | On My Mind page 52 M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 2 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

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Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton

Objections to Hell

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MODERN REFORMATION

Executive Editor D. G. Hart

f the cross is offensive to the unbelieving world, the topic of this issue of Modern Reformation borders on the repulsive.

Managing Editor Eric Landry

Hell is not a pleasant or appealing subject.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Barna Research Group only three out of

ten adults in the United States believe that hell is a “place of physical torment where people may be sent.” Four out of ten Americans think that hell is not an actual place but “a state of permanent separation from God.” Finally, two in ten Americans, according to this same study, say that hell is merely a symbolic term. Because of the implications of the idea that hell is a place of eternal punishment for those outside Christ, those surveyed in this poll who answered that it is a real place must likely have been Christians. Even here in the believing segment of the population, ambivalence about hell is not hard to find. The Barna Research Group’s surveys confirm what Modern Reformation has long asserted, namely, that American Christians are seriously confused about how one goes to (or is kept from going to) hell. For instance, four out of ten born-again Christians accept the proposition that if a person is “generally good” he or she will escape the punishment of hell and enjoy the rewards of heaven.

The confusion among American Christians about hell, however, extends beyond issues of merit and grace, or righteousness and good works. Annihilationism is a teaching that has gained some notoriety in evangelical circles over the past decade. Although it involves a constellation of ideas (as the pages that follow indicate), one that sets it apart from what the Church has historically confessed is the notion that hell is not a literal place. The punishment for those who do not trust in Christ and do not go to heaven, according to annihilationists, is ceasing to exist. In other words, hell does not need to be a literal place because those who fail to confess Christ are simply no more.

Annihilationism, however, is only one of several challenges to the doctrine of hell, which raises the Next Issue interesting question Growing in Grace: of whether the polls a Defense of Piety conducted by Barna

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indicate a popularity of these heterodox teachings, or whether some theologians and philosophers are simply expressing the same ignorance of Christian theology exhibited by the American Christian public.

What is at stake in the doctrine of hell?

And why has it come under assault so much of late? These are some of the questions this issue of Modern Reformation hopes to answer. To be sure, hell is in a category different from justification or the other solas of the Reformation. It may not be a doctrine on which the church stands or falls. Nor is it a doctrine on which all heirs of the Reformation agree in the fine print, as the articles that follow by Thomas Nettles and John Pless indicate. Some, for instance, believe that Christ’s descent into hell, affirmed in the Apostles’ Creed, indicates the full extent of his suffering and humiliation, while for other orthodox believers, Christ’s time in hell was one where he triumphed over sin and death.

Hell is a doctrine that provides a useful gauge of theological health. As such, the recent questioning of hell by some church leaders and theologians is symptomatic of significant departures from the historic Christian faith.

Not only do these teachings deny what the Church universal has taught throughout her history, but they stem from related ideas that are at odds with the truth of Scripture. For this reason the aim of the articles in this issue is not to engage in a form of doctrinal nitpicking.

Instead, it is to alert readers to ideas that are growing in popularity, as polls indicate, and that have gained eloquent proponents. Above all, the goal is to explain the importance of an idea that God has revealed in his Word no matter how offensive that teaching may be.

Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark E. Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith, Jr. ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Lisa Davis, Open Exchange Paul S. Jones, Preaching from the Choir Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times Mark R. Talbot, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Assistant Editor Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Katherine VanDrunen, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2002 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

D. G. Hart Executive Editor

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Similarly, while I respectfully admit the relative propriety of journalistic freedom and the interests of robust discourse, I would humbly request the editors to discourage such inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric in their usually admirable publication.

Joshua W.D. Smith Escondido, CA

I must humbly take exception to the statements of T. David Gordon regarding theonomy as the “error of an unwise generation,” “a generation that has abandoned the biblically mandated quest for wisdom,” and “the view of the never-to-be-wise” (“The Insufficiency of Scripture,” January/ February 2002, p.

22). In response, I wish to juxtapose the comments of the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen: It should constantly be borne in mind that no school of thought, least of all the theonomic outlook, has all the answers. Nobody should get the impression that clear, simple, or incontestable ‘solutions’ to the moral problems of our day can be just lifted from the face of Scripture’s laws. A tremendous amount of homework remains to be done, whether in textual exegesis, cultural analysis, or moral reasoning—with plenty of room for error and correction. The work of Christian ethics must not be carried on thoughtlessly or without sanctified mental effort (Five Views on Law and Gospel, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993, p. 115, italics added).

This seems to be quite a good description of “wisdom,” and not an example of “the prooftextual, Bible-thumping, literalist, error par excellence.”

I submit that for Rev. Gordon to publish such claims without any discussion, support, or citation of proponents of theonomy is “prejudicial to the truth” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 78), and it certainly is not in accord with Paul’s instruction to be “kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another” (Rom. 12:10, cf. Gal. 6:10, Eph. 4:1-2, Phil. 2:3, etc.).

I would like to respond to Rev. T. David Gordon (“The Insufficiency of Scripture,” Modern Reformation, January/February 2002).

It is not an over-emphasis on the biblical directions for daily living, but rather a blatant disregard for the Bible’s authority in life beyond its saving benefits, which leaves us with our antinomian spirit. It was twentieth-century popular Evangelicalism that emphasized Matt.

28:19 as the Great Commission to make disciples and baptize, while ignoring the instruction of verse 20 to “(teach) them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” To suggest that the Church has adequately fulfilled this commission is a fundamental mistake. But to suggest that the solution will be found in some twelve-step program or a sophist comparison of men and women to Mars and Venus is to cast adrift the Church in the same sea of confusion as the world.

Furthermore, he suggests that since God’s people know what is right and wrong, it necessarily follows that they will do the right. Is not this precisely the point Paul was refuting in Romans 7?

In verse 11, Paul says that “sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.” But is the Law to blame? Verse 12 gives us the answer: “Therefore, the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.” Rather it is our old sinful nature which will find every opportunity to flagrantly disavow God’s law.

Let us resolve together to call God’s people to search out the things which God has commanded and encourage each other to “walk worthy of the calling with which (we) are called.” This includes acknowledging that God’s Word is sufficient to guide us to a joy-filled marriage if we will only rely on his guidelines for establishing and maintaining a Christian home.

Gary Berkenpas Wyoming, MI

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I am writing in defense of the scriptures. In “How My Mind Has Changed” (January/February 2002 issue), T. David Gordon implies that the Word is insufficient in its content to effectively address the topic of modern marriage. His proof is the alarming statistic that the divorce rate within the Church is virtually indistinguishable from that reflected by society at large. Although the statistics are true enough, Dr. Gordon’s logic is flawed as to how they apply. The issue is not the sufficiency of Scripture (or lack thereof), but the definition and composition of “church.”

The exponential expansion of a mixed multitude (corpus per mixtum) within the professing Evangelical community skews the numbers. When one focuses on couples who regularly come together in the disciplines of a disciple (prayer, study of the scriptures, etc.), the percentage of divorce drops dramatically from roughly 50% to below 12%. The inevitable result of preaching an emasculated, seeker-sensitive gospel has filled the pasture with a large number of goats in sheep’s clothing. The problem isn’t education, it’s reprobation. True sheep whom he has made alive by his sovereign grace through the power in the biblical gospel will find that the Word is more than sufficient.

Although the scriptures may not tell us every facet of how to work out a twenty-first century American marriage, timeless truths such as “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3), and “Likewise...dwell with them according to knowledge, always giving honor…” (1 Pet. 3:7) will move the regenerate heart of a disciple to learn and do those things that flesh out these admonitions, whatever the cultural climate.

We must never condemn those among us who stumble, including within the arena of marriage, for his grace is greater than our sin. Even more important, we must never condemn our Lord’s living Word as a source of the deficiency, for “his divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Pet. 1:3).

Russell W. Reynolds Diamond Bar, CA

One of our church members, a theologically astute school teacher, first drew my attention to this article in the January/February 2002 issue because he was disturbed by it. I came away from reading it puzzled that a PCA minister and Ph.D. religion professor seemed to present a view of the sufficiency of Scripture which appears to me more

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on the level of a college undergraduate just discovering intellectual challenges to his faith.

And then he offers up what appear to be “straw man” illustrations for his thesis from theonomy and divorce among Christians.

Having corresponded with Mr. Gordon, I am reassured that he continues to believe the doctrine of Scripture in his PCA ordination vows. Initially I was disturbed by his presentation of qualifications to the sufficiency of Scripture. Perhaps I am overly sensitive from my experience in the PCUSA where I frequently heard similar reservations from men who had deeper doubts about the infallibility of Scripture. Nonetheless as it stands, the article does not reassure your readers on this point.

While Mr. Gordon bears initial responsibility for the article, the editors of Modern Reformation do as well. Is it possible that editorial considerations may have left out things he wrote, inadvertently creating a wrong impression? In any case, I believe you would serve the Church well by clarifying this matter for us who read the magazine….

I trust Mr. Gordon’s confidence in Scripture’s application to the particulars of life is much more integrated in his teaching and practice than his article suggests. Perhaps he was simply using hyperbole to be provocative; if so he succeeded!

Nevertheless I am disappointed so much space was given over to making a point that does not need to be made for those whose heritage is the sola Scriptura of the Reformation, because in the process he has potentially mislead those whose roots have not gone deep into that heritage.

The Rev. Pat Morison Faith Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church Kalispell, MT

I grieve for Rev. T. David Gordon for his great loss in the last 10 years. I grieve that one who once understood the sufficiency of God’s Holy and complete Word could be drawn, in such a short period of time, into the dark unknown of human wisdom, believing there to be any insufficiency in God’s Word. I grieve for all who believe this darkened view.

Rev. Gordon seems to ignore the fact that we are spiritual beings in human tents (to use Paul’s terminology, see 2 Cor. 5:1-5). To lose sight of this simple fact blinds one from understanding the role of the scriptures in our life. We must start and finish with God’s view of who we are and his work in our life. When we realize we are spiritual beings in human bodies, we understand more clearly that Truth can never be explained in human terms.

There can be no separation of the two,

spiritual/human, only an understanding of how they relate to each other.

Clarifying scriptures include those where Jesus describes the role of the Holy Spirit: He will teach us all things and guide us into all truth (see John 14:26, John 16:13). Along with that we have the description of God’s Word in Hebrews 4:12-13 as living and active with “all things open and laid bare” to him. God’s Word is an integral part of the Holy Spirit’s leading. Last, in summary here, is 2 Peter 1:3 where we are told “his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness….”

Those four scriptures clearly refute every doubt Rev. Gordon has thrown at the sufficiency of Scripture. The Word of God is a work of God still in process in every life along with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (see Phil. 2:13)!

In 41 years of walking with the Lord, 28 years in congregational leadership and more than a decade of church consulting I have never found God’s Word lacking. It has been, is, and will continue to always be sufficient!

Richard L. Roberts Director, Life Focus Ministries Turlock, CA

As an avid reader of Modern Reformation since its literary inception in the early 1990s, I have greatly appreciated your stand for Reformational Christianity. However, I must whole-heartedly disagree with T. David Gordon’s thesis in his article entitled “The Insufficiency of Scripture” (JanuaryFebruary 2002).

While Dr. Gordon is correct that the scriptures do not lend authoritative directives regarding auto mechanics, etc., the scriptures are replete with inspired commands regarding the Christian’s function in the business world, the male-female roles in marriage, and the “human as legislator” as Dr. Gordon puts it.

I would like to suggest that the magisterial reformers Luther and Calvin of whom MR claim to follow, would adamantly disavow Gordon’s thesis as entirely contrary to their Reformational teachings. Calvin and Luther disparaged the authority of tradition for the primacy and exclusive authority of the sacred scriptures in all areas of human endeavor. I am greatly disappointed with MR for including Gordon’s article that greatly undermines the principle of sola Scriptura, a primary article of the Reformation.

Lee Edward Enochs Via Email

I was very disappointed to read T. David Gordon’s article, “The Insufficiency of Scripture” in the January/February 2002 Modern Reformation.

Though I doubt it was your intent or his, I fear its arguments may undermine immature believers’ confidence in the Word of God….I hope in the future you all will more carefully consider the possible consequences of what you publish in your magazine. I remind you of our responsibility to fellow Christians to be edifying at all times.

The Rev. Matthew Wendell Kingsbury Park Hill Orthodox Presbyterian Church Denver, CO

Thank you for Modern Reformation. After receiving my first issue over a year ago, I purchased all of the back issues you had in stock, photocopied those I could find in a nearby seminary, and retrieved the rest from your website. Thank you for a marvelous pathway back from the superficiality that seems to be so much a part of Evangelicalism.

The only thing that Leadership Journal has on your publication is the comics. A suggestion: the elders casting their crowns before the throne (Rev. 4, 5) with George Barna passing surveys asking, “Are your needs being met by this worship service?”….

The Rev. Douglas H. Shank Hancock Evangelical Free Church Hancock, MN

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Response from T. David Gordon Editors’ Introduction:

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ome of our readers were concerned by Dr. T. David Gordon’s article, “The Insufficiency of Scripture,” which appeared in our January/February 2002 issue, “Modern Reformation Turns Ten.” We have printed a selection of their responses

in this issue’s “Letters” section. In order to address some of their concerns, we asked Dr. Gordon to respond briefly to a few questions. We hope this will clarify his position on Scripture’s sufficiency and purpose. (A somewhat fuller version of Dr. Gordon’s reply can be found on the MR website: www.modernreformation.org.)

Dr. T. David Gordon’s Reply: TDG: I am grateful to the editors of MR for the opportunity to clarify my earlier comments and to reply briefly to those who found the article troubling. The response to my article has confirmed my judgment that the article was timely.

MR: Your article was very provocative. Have you really “changed your mind” about the sufficiency of Scripture? Is it accurate to say that you believe you have now adopted the view of Scripture that the reformers and their followers have always confessed?

TDG: I have not changed my mind about Westminster Confession of Faith’s (WCF) doctrine of Scripture’s sufficiency. But I have changed my mind about how crucial Westminster’s qualification of the doctrine is. As it does concerning Scripture’s clarity, the Confession teaches a qualified, not an unqualified, doctrine of Scripture’s sufficiency. Indeed, I have come to cherish how nuanced, sophisticated, and qualified many of Westminster’s affirmations are. Yet even as I’ve come to appreciate that, I have observed the Reformed and evangelical communities occasionally affirming the same doctrines in unnuanced ways. I still agree with Westminster; I disagree with those who think they agree with Westminster but who do not accept Westminster’s qualifications of Scripture’s sufficiency and clarity.

MR: Some of our readers thought you were redefining what the Westminster Confession intended concerning the sufficiency of Scripture by limiting the scope of “faith and life” to its religious and covenantal senses. How do you respond to this?

TDG: This is the crux of the matter. So let me describe why I read the Confession as I do.

The Confession’s historical background.

The Confession’s first chapter, on Scripture, was framed in a historical context that involved two controversies. Against the papists, the Westminster divines affirmed that Scripture itself, without any papal additions, sufficiently governs the Church.

Against the enthusiasts, they affirmed that Scripture itself, without any additions from private revelation, sufficiently governs the Church. WCF 1:6 alludes to this historical context: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (my emphasis).

The issue expressly addressed was not whether Scripture was sufficient to govern creatures in every creaturely task, apart from the light of nature or wisdom; the issue was whether there was any “counsel of God” regarding “faith and life” that would be found other than in Scripture.

What the Assembly meant by “faith and life” in WCF 1:6. Did they mean that everything the creature needs to fulfill his created calling and mandate would be found in Scripture? Did they mean that we could exercise dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the creeping things merely by reading Scripture? Would they have discouraged biologists peering through microscopes, or ornithologists inspecting hawks’ nests, on the ground that everything necessary to fulfill the mandate to exercise dominion could be found in Scripture? To raise these questions is to answer them. The divines did not mean by “life” everything needed to sustain, improve, or nourish [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 6 ]

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by Don Walker

Charismatic and Reformed

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represent a growing segment of charismatics who have embraced Reformed theology, but maintain a non-cessationist

view regarding the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have at times felt left out on the fringes of both “camps.” Nevertheless, with strong convictions based upon the scriptures, I continue to hold fast to both Reformed theology and the charismatic gifts, in spite

Interested in contributing to Open Exchange?

Send your name, address, and essay topic to: Open Exchange c/o Modern Reformation Magazine 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 or contact us by e-mail at OpenExchange @AllianceNet.org

of being regarded as an oddity by some.

Allow me to say from the very beginning that I am greatly troubled by much of what I have seen over the years within the so-called “charismatic movement.” I have witnessed an emphasis on subjective experiences (dreams, visions, etc.), an unbiblical approach to faith and prosperity, false “prophecies,” the abuse of Scripture, and a variety of “excesses” in the name of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that all experiences, prophecies, visions, etc., must be judged by Scripture, which is the final authority on all matters (2 Pet. 1:16-21). I believe that much of what passes itself off as “manifestations of the Spirit” is in reality emotionalism and the “flesh.” I am appalled by the way some have raised money through the exploiting of “signs, wonders, and miracles.”

Nevertheless, I find no justification biblically for the idea that the spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing ceased when the last apostle died, or when the canon of Scripture was completed.

On the contrary, I find the Bible affirming just the opposite. I find Luke presenting the empowerment of the Church on the day of Pentecost as a normative experience (Acts 2:39). I find Matthew, and the other Gospel writers, presenting the miracle-working ministry of Jesus as a model for his disciples. I find Paul presenting the gifts of the Spirit as essential for the Church (I Cor. 12:1-31).

There has been what might be described as a “waxing and waning” of these gifts throughout the history of the Church, but within virtually every tradition, and every age, there have been testimonials regarding prophecies, healings, and

supernatural manifestations. For instance, the early church fathers provide ample evidence that gifts such as prophecy and miracles continued into the second and third centuries, though not to the extent that they were seen in the first century.

The Reformed faith is certainly not without such testimony. John Knox, according to John Howie in The Scots Worthies, on several occasions prophesied future events.

In recent times there have been a number of theologians and scholars who would be classified as Reformed, yet affirm belief in the perpetuity of the spiritual gifts. John Piper and Wayne Grudem are two such men. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a leading spokesman for Reformed theology in the 20th century, held such a view.

My desire is to see the gifts of the Holy Spirit function within the context of sound theology. I have seen the Pentecostal/Charismatic “circuses” and want no part of it. I have also witnessed the dry lifelessness of some Reformed churches that are theologically sound, but void of any spiritual dynamic. I believe that when the heat of the charismatics meets with the light of Reformed theology, the fire that will be produced will cause an unbelieving world to take notice. It will be a modern reformation.

Don Walker is pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

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Hebrews 7:1–25

Jesus: The Intercessor between God’s Wrath and Our Sin Christ’s Superior Priesthood

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saved from, especially when we talk to unbelievers. For he book of Hebrews is well-known for its beauty and profundity. The main point them “salvation” or “being saved” may not carry the of our text this morning, Hebrews 7:1–25, can be summed up in Hebrews 7:25, same meaning the Bible gives these terms. The connection that is, Christ’s priesthood is superior over the Old Testament priesthood of the here between eternal salvation and eternal tribe of Levi. The word hence or therefore indicates intercession helps explain that this is the great conclusion drawn from all the what it is that we are being preceding truth about Christ’s priesthood. “Hence, saved from.

From also, he is able to save forever those who draw near If eternal salvation JOHN PIPER to God through him, since he always lives to make depends upon Christ’s eternal intercession for them.” intercession—on our behalf, Verses 1–24 may be both complex and difficult before God—then what, or to understand without earnest mental effort, but whom, must we be saved Senior Pastor from? The implication is that this concluding verse is wonderfully plain. It is Bethlehem Baptist Church we need to be saved from expressed in three parts: Minneapolis, MN God himself. Specifically, we 1. Christ is able to save forever (25a)—a great promise. need to be saved from the 2. He always lives to make intercession for us wrath of God that burns against all ungodliness and unrighteousness (Rom. (25c).

3. This eternal intercession and eternal salvation are 1:18). Christ can save us forever from the wrath of for those who draw near to God through Christ (25b). God, because he intercedes forever with God. He Think with me about the causal relationship continually puts himself between the Father and us between the first two points. Christ is able to save as a protective shield, guarding us from God’s forever, and he always lives to make intercession white-hot anger against sin. Hebrews 10:30–31 for us. The connection between the two is says, “We know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will extremely important and is stated explicitly in this repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a verse: “He is able to save us forever … since, or terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living because, he always lives to make intercession for us.” God.” In other words, our future eternal salvation hangs Until we firmly grasp this truth, hardly anything on Christ’s future eternal intercession for us. This in the book of Hebrews will make sense. The fact implies two important truths. major problem in the world and in our lives is not our troubled marriages or our wayward children or What Are We Being Saved From? our financial pressures or our failing health or our We need to be clear about what we are being cultural degeneration. The main problem in the

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world—everyone’s problem—is how to be reconciled to God so that we escape his terrifying wrath at the judgment.

And the biblical answer is the intercession of the priesthood, specifically, the superior priesthood of Christ. There are priests in the Old Testament because they are needed to intercede for us with God. They enter the holy place where we are not allowed to go. They take sacrifices for us so that our sins will be forgiven. That Old Testament priestly system was meant to teach us about our sin and God’s holiness and wrath, and the inescapable judgment that is coming on us. And the point of it all was this: God has made a way to get right with him. He provided priests in the Old Testament, and then he provided his Son, the final High Priest.

So the reason for this extended talk about Christ’s relation to Melchizedek in verses 1–24 is because the eternal, superior priesthood of Jesus is our only hope of eternal salvation. God’s wrath never changes. There is only one hope for sinners like us. We must have a faithful high priest, who will intercede for us forever. We need a king of righteousness and a king of peace (7:2). We need someone without beginning and ending (7:3).

Someone who has an indestructible life and who will never die and need to be replaced (7:16, 23–24). We need someone greater than Abraham and greater than Levi—somewhat like Melchizedek, who blessed Abraham, and received tithes from Abraham and, in a sense, from Levi in Abraham (7:5–10). We need a new and greater priest, so much greater that verse 11 says there was no perfection through the Levitical priesthood. All the Old Testament priesthood could do was point toward the one superior priest after the order of Melchizedek, whose sacrifice of himself and eternal intercession would guarantee eternal salvation for all God’s people (Ps. 110:4).

So the first implication drawn from this verse is that this extraordinary truth about priesthood is necessary because we need to be saved from the wrath of God. Priesthood is God’s way of solving this problem. Don’t make a mistake here. It is not as though Jesus the Priest loves us and God the Father doesn’t. God the Father ordains the priesthood for our salvation. It is his idea. He sends the ultimate priest, his own Son, and he loves him infinitely. All this is the love of God rescuing us from the wrath of God, in such a way that the justice of God is vindicated and the glory of God is exalted.

The Continuing Work of Christ Now the second great implication of this verse is that our salvation depends on the continuing

active work of Christ. Not just on the past work of Christ, nor on our past decisions and commitments. Christ is able to save forever … since he always lives to make intercession. In other words, he would not be able to save us forever if he did not continue interceding forever. Our salvation is as secure as Christ’s priesthood is indestructible. This is why we need a priest greater than any human. Christ’s deity secures his indestructible priesthood for us.

Thus, we should not talk about our salvation in static terms the way we often do. As if I did something once in an act of decision, and Christ did something once when he died and rose again, and that’s all there is to it. That is not all there is to it. This very day I am being saved by the eternal intercession of Jesus in heaven. We are saved eternally by the eternal prayers and advocacy of Jesus in heaven as our high priest (Rom. 8:34; 1 John 2:1). He prays for us, and his prayers are answered because he prays perfectly on the basis of his perfect sacrifice.

What is it that Christ prays for? What do we need forever in order to be saved? This same verse tells us that we must “draw near to God through him.” The verb here for “drawing near” indicates an ongoing, continuous action in the present, not a single action in the past. It is not saying that Christ is able to save forever those who once drew near to God, but those who go on drawing near to God. If we do not continue to draw near to God, we have no warrant to think that we are being saved by the Lord Jesus.

If this is true, then shouldn’t our drawing near be one of the things that Jesus requests from the Father? If not, his intercession would leave us in a very precarious situation, lacking what is necessary for our salvation. Indeed, Hebrews 13:21 says that God is “working in us what is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ.” Since our drawing near is pleasing in his sight, we can conclude that he is working this very thing in us. Further, he is doing this through Jesus Christ. This means that Christ has purchased this grace for us by his death, and that he asks the Father for it on the basis of that death. We are not left in our bent and sinful natures to do this on our own. Rather, our High Priest intercedes for us and asks the Father to work this drawing near in us through himself.

We can see how this looked when our High Priest was on the earth. In Luke 22:31–32, Jesus says to Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 5 0 ]

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Sermon in Song: Sacred Music as Proclamation

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n the modern evangelical church, singing, praying, giving tithes and offerings, and other

and to give an incentive to those who can better carry congregational acts of worship are regarded, at times, as preamble to the sermon. Music, on the gospel and bring it to the people.” Luther did not in particular, seems easier to separate from elements of worship that appear to be more invent the notion that both the singing and preaching of spiritual, such as praying and preaching. This the gospel are related; he found its basis in worship dichotomy, however, does not exist in Scripture. Both Old and New Testaments support Scripture, and our thinking is more biblical when the idea. In his commentary on Psalm 9:9–10, we understand that musicians and pastors actually pastor and theologian James Boice wrote, “It is share the ministry of the Word. Proclamation and striking that in each part the psalmist combines interpretation of the Bible, and the edification and singing with preaching. And, it is interesting to encouragement of the saints with the ultimate remember that great periods of church history goal of giving glory to God—these are also have always been marked by both.” purposes of sacred music delineated in the Word The New Testament also confirms music’s of God and heralded by theologians throughout appropriate role in the teaching ministry. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and the Church’s history.

Martin Luther said, “Music and notes … do help admonish one another with wisdom, and as you sing gain a better understanding of the text, especially when songs, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in sung by a congregation and when sung earnestly,” your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16–17). and “We have put this music to the living and holy Within the context of proclamation, we expect Word of God in order to sing, praise and honor it … He to find exhortation and teaching. Hymn-writer is thereby praised and honored and we are made better Isaac Watts’s goal for his hymns supports this and stronger in faith when his holy Word is impressed concept: “In his belief in the didactic value of on our hearts by sweet music.” Paul Westermeyer, praise, as in his insistence upon intelligibility, his professor of church music at Luther Seminary, aim … was edification.” The apostle Paul relates expands on these statements: “Luther thought song and proclamation again in 1 Corinthians 15 music had a theological reason for being…. Music and Ephesians 5:19. Luther underscores this: “We is unique in that it can carry words. Since words may boast, as Moses does in his song in Exodus 15, carry the Word of God, music and the Word of that Christ is our praise and our song and that we God are closely related…. Luther saw music in its should know nothing to sing or say but Jesus Christ own right as a parallel to preaching.” our Savior, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians.”

With collaborator Johann Walter, Luther Luther used the phrase “sing or say” to describe compiled hymn collections, the forewords of the proper occupation of a believer. The content which clarify his intentions: “Therefore, I too, with of the proclamation, whether spoken or the help of others, have brought together some sacred songs, in order to make a good beginning [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 5 0 ]

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Speaking of...

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n present-day theology there is an evident tendency

in some circles to rule out the idea of eternal punishment. The annihilationists, who are still represented in such sects as Adventism and Millennial Dawnism, and the advocates of conditional immortality, deny the continued existence of the wicked, and thereby render a place of eternal punishment unnecessary. In modern liberal theology the word hell is generally regarded as a figurative designation of a purely subjective condition, in which men may find themselves even while on earth, and which may become permanent in the future. But these interpretations certainly do not do justice to the data of Scripture. There can be no reasonable doubt as to the fact that the Bible teaches the continued existence of the wicked.

Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 1939.

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he damned shall be punished in hell with the punishment of sense; they must depart from God into everlasting fire. I am not disposed to dispute what kind of fire it is into which they shall depart, to be tormented forever, whether a material fire or not: experience will more than satisfy the curiosity of those who are disposed rather to dispute about it than to seek how to escape it. Neither will I meddle with the question, Where is it? It is enough that the worm that never dieth, and the fire that is never quenched, will be found somewhere by impenitent sinners.

Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 1720.

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he Fathers made four sorts of hell. 1. The forefront, wherein, they say, the patriarchs were until Christ descended into hell. 2. The feeling of pain, yet only temporal, as purgatory. 3. Where unbaptized children are, but feel no pain. 4. Where the damned are, which feel everlasting pain. This is the right hell; the other three are only human imaginings‌. What hell is, we know not; only this we know, that there is such a sure and certain place, as is written of the rich glutton, when Abraham said unto him: “There is a great space between you and us.â€?

Martin Luther, Table Talk, 1566.

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The Politics of Calling Christian Broadcasting “Political” re Christian radio and television better known for their theological precision, or for their political crusades?

Which word, “justification” or “impeachment,” do you suspect has been uttered more over those airwaves in the last half decade?

One might have thought that such questions could prompt some healthy soulsearching at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), the 1,500-member, Manassas, Virginia-based association which controls most of evangelical broadcasting. But one would have been wrong.

Just ask Wayne Pederson.

A former executive at Northwestern College Radio in Minnesota, Pederson became head of the NRB in January, but was forced to resign less than two months later simply for worrying

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aloud to a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter that “evangelicals are identified politically more than theo-logically. We get associated with the far Christian right and marginalized.”

In an interview with Modern Reformation and in multiple articles, Pederson emphasized both that he understands that theology informs politics, and that he is not only a theological conservative but also a political conservative person-ally. He simply wondered if politics are overemphasized and theology under-emphasized in most Christian programming.

If people out-side the Christian subculture think first of politics when they hear of Christian broadcasting, Pederson said, then I am afraid we have “missed our main calling.”

Even with such dis-tinctions clearly offered, however, he had crossed a line, according to critics such as

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Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery and the American Family Association’s Don Wildmon, two men who apparently helped engineer Pederson’s demise. Rumors quickly began circulating on talk shows that the cash cow of Christian radio, Focus on the Family, would leave NRB if Pederson were allowed to stay. And Wildmon issued statements claiming that Pederson’s comments were an attack on the people who made Christian broadcasting popular.

Though such representations of Pederson’s comments were clearly inaccurate, power politics carried the day as the heavyweights of evangelical media gave Pederson “the opportunity to resign.”

When the Salt Loses Its Savor ust how unhealthy is American Protestantism?

A spate of new surveys paints a disturbing picture.

Most notably, the Barna Group recently reported that only 22% of Presbyterians nationwide agree that people do not earn their way to heaven by their good works.

Even fewer Lutherans (21%), Episcopalians (20%), and Methodists (18%) affirm this core Protestant doctrine.

This rate of affirmation is not significantly higher than the 9% of Roman Catholics who recognize that fallen humanity

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cannot merit God’s favor.

Beliefs about the divinity of Christ among lay Protestants are just as shocking as their views on salvation. For most of the twentieth century, a con-siderable percentage of mainline clergy subscribed to a naturalistic theology which considered Jesus a mere good man, rather than the Son of God. Nonetheless, survey data generally showed that these clergy were wildly out of touch with the man and woman in the pew, who continued to affirm much of the orthodox Faith even in the absence of faithful shepherds.

But those days of substantial orthodoxy among lay mainliners appear to be gone. For now only 33% of Lutherans (across all denominations collectively), 33% of Methodists, and 28% of Episcopalians believe that Jesus was without sin.

Affirmation of this essential Christian doctrine is much more common among Baptists, fundamentalists, charismatics, and nondenominational evangelicals, but still surprisingly low— ranging from 55 to 73%, depending on the group.

To Paul Hinlicky, a Lutheran theologian at Roanoke College, these figures “signal a complete breakdown of catechetical instruction.” If this information is accurate, he told the UPI, it reveals “an

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absolute collapse of mainline Protestantism.” There has been “zero theology” in huge segments of American Christianity since the 1960s.

Episcopal theologian Gerald McDermott, also at Roanoke College, concurs: “This happened because in the last thirty years American pastors have lost their nerve to preach a theology that goes against the grain” of the culture. “They are afraid to preach and teach anything that challenges what people already think. The result is a belief in a meek, mild-mannered God who does not want to judge us.”

McDermott’s own Episcopal tradition provides a particularly unsettling glimpse into American Protestant capitulation to cultural assumptions.

Episcopalians around the world have begun to take note of the widespread apostasy among clergy of the Episcopal Church in America (ECUSA). For one thing, the ECUSA has not disciplined John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark, in spite of his repeated denials of virtually every significant Christian doctrine, both in interviews and in his own publications. Additionally, many ECUSA dioceses blatantly ignore the 1998 Lambeth Resolutions (passed 529-70 by the world’s ruling Episcopalians). The Lambeth vote affirmed biblical teaching against homosexual activity, and prohibits the ordination of clergy involved in so-called “same-sex unions.”

Because of the rampant heterodoxy in the ECUSA,

An accurate diagnosis of American Protestantism can be made by noting that clerics like Bishop Spong (pictured above) are almost never brought up on ecclesiastical charges, in spite of writing books explicitly denying the resurrection of Christ and other core Christian doctrines.

there has been concern among other Episcopalians around the world—chiefly in Africa and Asia—that the faithful minority within the American Episcopalian community lacks godly spiritual oversight and governance.

Consequently, early in 2001, the Arch-bishops of Rwanda and Singapore took the “irreg-ular” step of consecrating Revs. John Rogers and Chuck Murphy to serve as “Missionary Bishops” to America. The move of sending Episcopal mission-aries into a region with a recognized Episcopal hiera-rchy is nearly unprecedented in that tradition.

But many Episcopalians outside the United States argue that

there is no alternative to this “emergency” measure given the dire state of Protestantism in America.

Dr. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church and a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, has equated the state of many churches in America to a beautiful home with a splendid gate at the bottom of its sidewalk—but with no fence on either side of the gate. “There’s a way in. You have to fulfill some sort of membership requirements (whether it is attending a class or being baptized or being confirmed…). But once you get in, there is no distinction between the church and the world;

between the yard and the sidewalk.”

While it is difficult to find much humor in the apostasy of so much of American Protestantism, a fake press release has begun to circulate on the Internet which makes light of the anemia of mainline Christianity. With a Chicago dateline, the news release begins: “In a stunning announcement today with President Bush, National Council of Churches President Elenie K. Huszagh announced the mass conversion of all mainline Protestant leaders to Islam.

“The conversions were orchestrated in a joint agreement between the federal government and the National Council of Churches. The mainline leaders will be given lifetime government pensions and relocated to Afghanistan in various teaching and administrative ministries with important-sounding titles. “‘It seemed the perfect bit of synergy between our plummeting American influence and the United States’ interest in putting a damper on radical Islam overseas,’ said Huszagh.

“President Bush called the mass conversions a measure of ‘true patriotism.’ ‘We need people who can go over there and just suck the life dry out of a religious tradition. Who better than these guys?’”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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Torture, pain, and (worst of all) feeling abandoned by every other creature and the Creator besides. These experiences of countless victims—particularly during and since the Holocaust—can hardly be compared with the experiences of well-fed and even overfed consumers in highly developed democratic societies. Whereas the twentieth century is often regarded— especially by those of us too young to remember most of it—as a golden era of prosperity, it was also an epochal graveyard filled with the collateral damage of ideological tyrants.

Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” was the most infamous, but there was also Bosnia, and even now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the breathtaking evil of terrorists who regard themselves as the agents of divine judgment on the world’s infidels.

HELL | Putting the Fire Out?

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Very Idea of It Into this situation, we are supposed to announce, on God’s behalf, a judgment to come that will reach its apogee in the everlasting punishment of vast numbers of people in hell. It is a difficult time in history to talk about hell. Better to play along with the national assemblies of religious leaders gathered for prayer than to play the prophet.

Aside from the subject’s indelicacy, the concept of hell is also under attack from various quarters in the Christian church. The most popular objections fall into three categories. What follows is an overview of these objections.

God’s Justice Does Not Require It idely regarded as the definitive treatment of “conditional immortality” or “annihilationism,” Edward Fudge’s The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment reflects a concern to be biblical and engage in serious exegesis (see the “Free Space” interview with Edward Fudge in this issue). Whatever we make of that exegesis, Fudge’s book breathes a high respect for biblical authority; consequently, we cannot dismiss him out of hand by claiming that he can only reject eternal conscious punishment if he ignores Scripture. The same is true of Anglican John Stott, the late Gordon-Conwell professor Philip E. Hughes, and others. While not committing himself to Fudge’s thesis, New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce wrote the original preface to Fudge’s book.

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Central to Fudge’s argument is the claim that the Greek doctrine of the soul’s immortality has influenced the traditional Christian view more than Scripture. “Eternal” or “everlasting” death and judgment is then taken by Christians to mean unending conscious torment because they erroneously view the soul as inherently immortal. Fudge insists, however, that Scripture uses the Greek word aionios (“everlasting”) with greater flexibility than traditional theology has recognized. He knows that the Protestant reformers rejected the Greek doctrine as one of Roman Catholicism’s errors, but he complains that the notion that the soul is unconditionally immortal continues to undergird the traditional doctrine of hell.

But what about the biblical passages where hell is described as a place of eternal conscious torment? Surely one is not simply adopting Greek views in the face of such texts? In answer to these questions, Fudge responds to each text. (In addition to those discussed briefly below, see also Matt.

8; 10:28; 13:30, 40–43; 25:1–46; Jude 7; Rev. 14:9–12; 19:20; 20:10, 15; and 21:8.)

First, there is Matthew 3:10, 12: “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire…. His winnowing fork is in

judgment. Fudge draws upon both Old Testament and apocryphal traditions to illuminate this place of torment. He acknowledges that intertestamental rabbis disagreed over its duration and that Jesus speaks of throwing people—body as well as soul— into hell (Matt. 5:29ff.), but this hardly justifies the traditional doctrine of endless punishment, he maintains.

What about the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16? Here, it seems, is a clear example of a person in hell: “In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’” The rich man even refers to his abode as “this place of torment.” Yet, in spite of his pleas, Abraham replied, “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”

To be sure, this is a parable, and doctrine should not to be based on parables, but what is this parable getting at that we should take seriously? Fudge does not believe that its context indicates in any way “concern with the final state of the wicked.”

Rather, it involves lessons concerning the rich and the The horror that Christ endured on behalf of sinners is meaningless if we as sinners poor. Jesus, he claims, is drawing on rabbinical folkare not in ourselves worthy of suffering the same fate. How could the Substitute’s lore (in part imported from Greek mythology) to tell a torture on the cross be taken seriously if those for whom he substituted himself story and to make a point— and, as such, he is not assuming the truth of such torment could not be justly sentenced in the same manner? God’s mercy embraces his itself. So “Luke 16 supplies no clear exegetical basis for justice at the cross. any conclusions concerning the final end of the wicked.” his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathWhat should we make, then, of Fudge’s case ering his wheat into the barn and burning up the against everlasting torment? He has, undoubtedly, chaff with unquenchable fire.” Fudge comments: engaged in serious exegesis. But that doesn’t end “As in the Old Testament, ‘unquenchable fire’ the discussion. Focusing only on Fudge’s treatment [here] represents a fire of judgment which cannot of Luke 16, I would say this: True, it is unsafe to be stopped.” And, like the Old Testament writers, build doctrines on parables, but it is difficult to John the Baptist “sees [the fire] as ‘burning up’ the believe that in the parable of the rich man and chaff.” In other words, the fire is eternal, but the Lazarus, Jesus was merely exploiting a pagan fable chaff is not. The fire “burns up” the damned rather in order to make a point about stewardship. Fudge than sustaining them in conscious punishment. himself acknowledges that many of Jesus’ Jewish Jesus first refers to hell, or “Gehenna,” as a fiery hearers would have understood this “fable.” pit in Matthew 5:29. A transliteration of “Valley of Granted, Jesus might exploit a fable that everyone Hinnom,” a “deep and yawning gorge” on the knew to be such, but this parable (by definition a southwestern side of Jerusalem where fires con- fable of sorts) seems to work precisely because sumed the city’s refuse, Gehenna was an apt earth- Jesus and his audience agreed about the reality that ly analogy for “the fire that consumes” in the day of the parable depicts. The parable’s point is made

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only if the terrifying reality Open Theism and Arminianism: “…Both Calvinists and of hell it depicts actually exists.

Arminians have, as a whole—along with virtually all Fudge does not spend a lot of time laying out philoChristendom—affirmed God’s foreknowledge of human choices. sophical arguments for the justice or injustice of his John Calvin wrote, ‘[God] foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that view. He obviously does not believe that God’s justice they take place’ [Institutes, 3:23.6]. And Jacobus Arminius wrote, ‘[God] has known from eterrequires eternal or everlasting punishment. He may also nity which persons should believe … and which should persevere through subsequent grace.’ think that God’s justice cannot require it, but the burden Denying God’s foreknowledge of human choices [open theism] has never been an option with of his book is not taken up with that question. Fudge orthodox Christianity.” simply does not believe that — From John Piper’s “Why the Glory of God is at Stake in the Foreknowledge Debate,” the Bible teaches—and therefore that God has in Modern Reformation, September/October 1999. planned—the everlasting conscious punishment of the wicked. They will be annihilated once and for all, would we think of a human being who satisfied his thirst for revenge so implacably and insatiably?’ …. but not tormented forever, he is convinced.

Torturing people forever is an action easier to assoGod’s Justice Cannot Require It ciate with Satan than with God, measured by ordiith this objection, we encounter a dif- nary moral standards and/or by the gospel. And ferent approach. A growing circle of what human crimes could possibly deserve everprofessing Christians reject the tradi- lasting conscious torture?” tional doctrine on speculative rather than biblical Here we are clearly in a different orbit than grounds. For instance, Marilyn McCord Adams, a with Fudge’s concerns about scriptural exegesis. noted philosopher of religion, has recently written This is the realm of pathos, where those who hold a theodicy—that is, an attempt to explain why God the traditional view must be sadists. But notice has permitted the evils our world actually con- that each of Pinnock’s questions give human spectains—where she argues that it would be unjust for ulation a normative role. “What would we think of God to punish anyone eternally (for more on a human being who satisfied his thirst for revenge Professor Adams’s views see Paul Helm’s Hell and the so implacably and insatiably?” We would, of Nature of God in this issue). Abandoning the usual course, think terribly of a human being who exereasons that we have heard from modernists with cuted everlasting punishment on other human their high view of human worth, she argues that it beings. As for a “thirst for revenge,” surely is not that human beings are too important or Scripture says that God’s motive is justice and not morally perfect to deserve such punishment but revenge. Even God’s vengeance and wrath serve that they are too insignificant, and, therefore, their his justice and righteousness; they are not negative actions are too insignificant to merit God’s instances of selfishness and caprice. Fudge argues everlasting displeasure. strenuously that God really does exercise his just Although a professing evangelical, theologian vengeance, but Pinnock follows modern theology Clark Pinnock has repeatedly expressed revulsion more generally in demanding that no doctrine can at the traditional doctrine as well. In fact, person- be regarded as true if it challenges his understandal revulsion seems for Pinnock to take on the qual- ing of God’s love. ity of an unassailable logical demonstration. Like Pinnock claims that the traditional view Fudge, he defends “conditional immortality,” but “offends our moral sense.” Scripture tells us that for different reasons. After rehearsing the most God is love and “[o]ur moral intuition agrees with provocative descriptions of hell in the tradition, he this. There is a powerful moral revulsion against concludes that they give “one the impression of the traditional doctrine of the nature of hell. people watching a cat trapped in a microwave Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point squirm in agony, while taking delight in it.” He of view…. How can one love a God like that?” But then says this: “Hans Kung [German Roman this is not argument, exegetical or otherwise. We Catholic theologian] poses a hard question: ‘What are supposed to reject the traditional doctrine sim-

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ply by the repetition of Pinnock’s moral revulsion at the very idea.

God’s Love Conquers All s its leading representatives have made abundantly clear, open theism’s central conviction is that God is love. Of course, no Christian can deny the significance of John’s glad announcement (1 John 4:16). Yet, we must bear in mind that this scriptural truth is to be understood in the light of the rest of Scripture and not in the light of the supposedly “neutral” understandings of love and justice that are preferred by modern societies. Otherwise, whatever else God might be—just, righteous, holy, merciful, wise, sovereign, and so forth—the bottom line is, his love will always triumph over his other attributes.

God is simple. In other words, he is not composed of separate attributes, some of which are more definitive of who he is than others. In denying this, open theists, such as Pinnock, risk denying that God is anything other than love. But then God’s love dissolves into sentimentality. Instead of worshiping God, we then risk worshiping an abstract attribute. Instead of saying, “God is love,”

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we end up saying, “Love is God.” At the end of the day, God’s love trumps everything else. Perhaps this is why Pinnock nowhere wrestles seriously with key biblical passages on everlasting punishment.

But does love conquer all? Fudge strongly affirms annihilation as the destiny of the wicked.

Pinnock is not so sure. In fact, he wonders out loud whether purgatory is a better answer because it “appeals to the Arminian streak in me.”

We should note that, in Pinnock’s view, God’s love is not really “pure” love after all. Nor is it pure justice. If annihilation or purgatory await the wicked (and the latter perhaps even believers as well), then isn’t this still morally offensive? For the same objections that critics of the traditional doctrine raise can again be raised if God punishes at all.

For Pinnock, it seems that justice can only be restorative: after death, humans must not be judged but purged. And this implies that the doctrine of hell must be abandoned. For how can hell reform people? How can it improve their lives? Here, I suspect, is a more than modest dose of modernity.

The “triumph of the therapeutic” that has transformed our view of civic punishment has also deeply affected our understanding of divine justice.

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nquestionably, irresponsible speculation about hell on both sides of the debate have made the discussion considerably more difficult. Whether it is vivid descriptions of Dante’s Inferno or revivalist “hellfire and brimstone” sermons, the impression is too often given that we must go beyond biblical description to alert people to avoid such a dreadful place. The problem here is that hell, rather than God, becomes the object of fear. Think of Jesus’ sober warning: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Hell is not horrible because of alleged implements of torture or its temperature.

(After all, it is described variously in Scripture as “outer darkness” and a “lake of fire.”)

Whatever the exact nature of this everlasting judgment, it is horrible ultimately for one reason only: God is present. This sounds strange to those of us familiar with the definition of hell as “separation from God” and heaven as a place for those who

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have a “personal relationship with God.” But Scripture nowhere speaks in these terms. Quite the contrary, if we read the Bible carefully we conclude that everyone, as a creature made in God’s image, has a personal relationship with God. Therefore, God is, after the fall, either in the relationship of a judge or a father to his creatures.

And God, who is present everywhere at all times, will be present forever in hell as the judge. “Hell reigns wherever there is no peace with God,” John Calvin wrote, refusing to speculate on its salacious horrors. When our conscience condemns us, “We carry always a hell within us” (Gen. Epp. 167). Just as heaven is not purely future, but is breaking in on the present through the kingdom of God, hell, too, is breaking in on the present: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” But they are left without excuse (Rom. 1:18-19). Their tortured consciences drive them to expel the thought of God entirely from their horizon, but they cannot

In response, we must declare frankly that there are some things that God cannot do. He cannot acquit the guilty. He cannot simply let bygones be bygones. There must be payment for sin, whether by the sinner or by a Substitute. Even if it offends our moral sensibilities, the truth is that “God is jealous, and the Lord avenges; the Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserves wrath for his enemies; the Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked…. Who can stand before his indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him” (Nah. 1:1–3, 6). We need to remember the church father Anselm’s reply to his friend Boso, when Boso questioned the propriety of an infinite punishment for sin: “You have not yet considered the greatness of your sin.”

But there is good news, the news that God is love because he loves justly as well as mercifully: Now we know that whatever the Law says, it says to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore

no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the Law; rather, through the Law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:19–24).

The horror that Christ endured on behalf of sinners is meaningless if we as sinners are not in ourselves worthy of suffering the same fate. How could the Substitute’s torture on the cross be taken seriously if those for whom he substituted himself could not be justly sentenced in the same manner?

God’s mercy embraces his justice at the cross.

Pinnock, however, risks collapsing mercy and justice into each other and thus emptying mercy of its mercifulness. This does not by itself settle the question of whether everlasting punishment is required. But it does answer the objection that hell

ion from God? evade the revelation of God’s wrath. Hell is not ultimately about fire but about God. Whatever the exact nature of the physical punishments, the real terror awaiting the unrepentant is God himself and his inescapable presence forever with his face turned against them.

A measure of our own ongoing sinfulness is that we just don’t understand the beauty of God’s holiness, righteousness, and justice and the equal ultimacy of these attributes with his love. But one day we will not have a problem with eternal punishment. It will make perfect sense. We are not entitled, much less required, in our present condition to defend the doctrine of eternal punishment in any way that either exceeds Scripture or reflects a perverse delight in damnation. Since God does not delight in the death of the wicked, neither can we. Hell is both the vindication of God’s justice and the prerequisite for his creation’s restoration.

But it is also a tragedy and will forever memorialize the tragedy of human rebellion.

God justifies the wicked: this is the astonishing and counterintuitive claim that distinguishes Christianity from every other

religion. In any defense of the traditional doctrine, we must let our interlocutor know that, unlike the terrorist’s “Allah,” God “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” for the salvation of every believer. Islam has no concept of the fall, original sin, or the impossibility of attaining righteousness by good works, and consequently, knows nothing of justification, sanctification, and redemptive mediation. For Islam, it’s simple: good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell; it is self-salvation from beginning to end. In sub-Christian versions, the “good news” is that sinners can be partly saved and partly condemned; they can atone for at least some of their sins by their own suffering. But the genuine “good news” of revelation is that God justifies the wicked who place their trust in Christ and find God a reconciled friend now and forever, world without end. Amen.

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cannot be required. A denial of the necessity of damnation itself in any form is tantamount to a denial of the substitutionary atonement. On Pinnock’s principles, we can no longer confess that our Savior “descended into hell,” since infinite divine punishment cannot be just.

Is Hell Believable? e end where we began: How can we believe in hell after the Holocaust and profound human suffering? To ask this is to forget the Son of Man hanging on the cross, crying out in dereliction. Our suffering as fallen humans may certainly be unjustly perpetrated by evildoers, as occurred in the Holocaust and on September 11, 2001. But we are all—victims as well as perpetrators—participants in human rebellion’s tangled web. At Calvary, there was One who was no part of the mess, One who had no guilt and who yet was willing to become flesh and endure our just sentence. So great is the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! It is not the Holocaust that measures human evil. It is the cross. And yet there God was reconciling the world to himself, so that “whosoever believes may not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). ■

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lighieri Dante’s work, The Inferno, is recognized as one of the finest poems in the Western tradition. In it, Dante explores a journey into nine circles of hell including: limbo, lust, gluttony, avarice, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, and treacherous fraud.

— Editors.

“The gateway to the city of Doom. Through me The entrance to the Everlasting Pain.

The Gateway of the Lost. The Eternal Three Justice impelled to build me. Here ye see Wisdom Supreme at work, and Primal Power, And Love Supernal in their dawnless day.

Ere from their thought creation rose in flower Eternal first were all things fixed as they.

Of Increate Power infinite formed am I That deathless as themselves I do not die.

Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of apologetics and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and chairs the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear.

All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here.”

This scroll in gloom above the gate I read, And found it fearful. "Master, hard," I said, "This saying to me." And he, as one that long

In writing this article, Dr. Horton has quoted from Edward Fudge’s The Fire that Consumes (Fallbrook, CA: Verdict Publications, 1982) as well as from Clark Pinnock’s defense of conditional immortality in Four Views on Hell, edited by William Crockett (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

Was customed, answered, "No distrust must wrong Its Maker, nor thy cowarder mood resume If here ye enter. This the place of doom I told thee, where the lost in darkness dwell.

Here, by themselves divorced from light, they fell, And are as ye shall see them." Here he lent A hand to draw me through the gate, and bent A glance upon my fear so confident That I, too nearly to my former dread Returned, through all my heart was comforted, And downward to the secret things we went.

— Dante, The Inferno, Canto III.

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HELL | Putting the Fire Out?

Speaking Soberly and

Sensitively about Hell ow should preachers communicate about hell and eternal punishment? Today these truths strike some as comical and others as cruel. In conservative Christian circles, serious scholars of evangelical reputation have created significant doubts about the traditional doctrine in the minds of some of our finest young preachers. Others ignore it in reaction to its misuse in their fundamentalist youth. And some churchgrowth practitioners have banished hell from their evangelistic lexicon because, they say, it doesn’t speak to

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our generation and it drives some away.

So how do we address these difficult truths? Does the reality of hell and endless punishment make a difference in our preaching? How can we tackle these difficult subjects in a responsible and appropriate way?

What should we avoid when treating them? How exactly should we preach hell and eternal punishment?

Address Hell Textually f we do not follow a systematic plan for biblical preaching, we will probably avoid this topic. Here’s where lectio continua preaching

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Address Hell Pastorally reachers ought to talk to people about hell like they would to a family about a tragic death. As with the loss of a child, a suicide, a murder, cancer, or some other dread disease, we must be sensitive but frank. Often people try to cope with such tragedies by denial or circumlocution or euphemism. But ministers must be neither uncaring nor tiptoe around the obvious. We must draw attention to the elephant in the room that no one is acknowledging. Strangely, this often brings great relief to those who have already spoken with friends who will not directly address the cause of Address Hell Decisively death or its manner or its timing—or who even fail e must also be completely convinced to acknowledge that death as a fact. of this doctrine’s biblical origins. If a Similarly with hell, a minister’s willingness to break minister steps into the pulpit with the silence and speak directly to people’s hidden fears and slightest doubts about it, it will show. So if our questions—lovingly and carefully to be sure, but with certainty about it is undermined by academic prej- courage and conviction—can breed receptiveness to and even confidence in his words. Speaking with strength Pelagianism: “Named for the monk Pelagius (who lived in the and kindness enables us to address the subject compre4th century) and who was the arch-foe of St. Augustine, hensively, probing into areas where less honesty might othPelagianism is that teaching which emphasized human freedom, erwise function as an effective prophylactic against the truth sees original sin not as corruption and guilt, not inherited from our first father, but simply of God’s Word. helps, for this forces the minister to treat the most difficult truths even as it alleviates him of the charge of picking morbid subjects or fixating on certain issues. The minister, who preaches through Bible books chapter by chapter and verse by verse can look at his congregation and simply say: “This passage follows the one we studied last; and, as uncomfortable as its contents may be for some of you, integrity demands that we consider it.” It is surprising how sympathetic nervous Christians and intelligent inquirers can be to such honesty.

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Address Hell Correctively ome in our congregainfluence enticing us to act upon proper information. And it is only natural that rugged, selftions may have grown up in circles where made, independent, frontier Americans would naturally gravitate to a theology that empha- Christian discipleship is viewed as little more than an sized human ability and natural freedom to act.” escape route from hell. Their “decisions” or public profes— From Kim Riddlebarger, “Grace Alone: sions of faith may have been An Evangelical Problem?” www.alliancenet.org made only to give them a definitive sense of relief from the prospect of eternal udices against it, then we must study until we are damnation—“fire insurance” against a future possithoroughly convinced of its truth. We must also bility. But their interest in Christ and Christianity begin to see unbelievers with the same kind of stops right there. To be sure, they don’t want to go compassion that Jesus and his disciples demon- to hell, but give them a biblical view of Christian strated when they encountered immortal souls discipleship or even of heaven as a place of endless threatened by eternal darkness. The word hell is delight in God and their hearts are not in it. To tossed about glibly in our culture as a low-rent make matters worse, some preachers actually foster swear word or a thoughtless threat. Consequently, this error by assuring their listeners in funeral serwe must always speak of it with both gravitas and mons and elsewhere of the absolute certainty of the mercy, or else we risk stoking the people’s general salvation of some notoriously immoral and godless cynicism. As Princeton theologian A. A. Hodge persons because they “walked the aisle” when they said, “A man who realizes in any measure the awful were ten. What better way is there to convince force of the words eternal hell won’t shut up about it, people that Christianity is all about avoiding an unpleasant end, rather than about glorifying God in but will speak with all tenderness.” this life and the next? Faithful ministers must tack-

the bad example introduced into the world by Adam. Pelagianism sees grace as simply an

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le this error in their preaching on hell. While God’s Spirit has used preaching about hell and everlasting punishment to shake many awake from a lethal slumber, the truly regenerate always have an accompanying set of spiritual motivations and desires.

Ministers must address this error because it frequently results in a truncated view of what Christian salvation actually entails. This has been especially true for children of nominal Evangelicalism.

of our more serious Bible students, such as: What does the Old Testament teach about hell, death, judgment, and punishment? What are the continuities and discontinuities between Old Testament and New Testament teaching? How do the ideas of Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna relate? What sort of a hope for the resurrection was entertained by old covenant believers? So we have our work cut out for us! Yet if we let the text set our agenda and speak for itself, God’s Word will not return empty.

Address Hell Apologetically e must also respond to popular suspi- Address Hell Christologically cion of this doctrine as well as to intelost crucially, we must approach this lectual contempt for it. On the one truth with deliberate reference to the hand, we may have intelligent evangelical laypeodoctrine of Christ. First, we must stress ple in our congregations who have been unsettled that hell is an unavoidably christological doctrine, about the traditional doctrine by their teachers. So learned from Jesus’ lips. Our Lord is primarily some of our preaching on it must be designed to responsible for laying out the main lines of the buttress their belief in it, even while we must not teaching about hell that is so despised in our day. lose sight of the main matter of faithfully expound- He addressed the subject more than anyone else ing the text, by our responding briefly to some of and gave it more attention during his ministry than the popular/academic/evangelical criticisms of the many other important themes. And it is no wonbiblical doctrine. der he spoke of it so often and so earnestly, since On the other hand, we may be blessed with the he created hell and he alone of redeemed humaniattendance of open, inquiring pagans at our public ty has experienced its torment! In the final analyservices, some of whom may react very negatively sis, we believe in hell because we believe—and to the very idea of a place of eternal torment. We must then acknowledge the exisAnabaptists: “Anabaptists rejected the Reformed understanding tential angst that many have about this doctrine while of justification by faith alone. They denied the forensic nature of turning the tables (as John Piper and C. S. Lewis have justification and insisted that the only ground of which sinners done) by reminding them that it is our own peculiar zeit- can be acceptable to God is a ‘real’ righteousness wrought within the justified person.” geist, or spirit of the age, that puts God on trial for hell and — The Hall of Church History that questions his existence because of this world’s suffering. In fact, however, believe in—Jesus. Those who want to take issue if the moral universe depicted by the Bible is real, with hell have a quarrel not with us but with the then the real problem is not our pain but rather our Creator-Savior. And that’s not a quarrel anyone happiness. It is not God’s justice and love but ought to be eager to join. rather our undeserving experience of them. It is Secondly, our preaching on hell must be Christnot human suffering but human sin without imme- centered in the sense that it must be set in the condiate divine reprisal. It is not the sentence of hell text of the cross. To many, hell poses a problem for but the gift of the cross. theodicy. Just as some suggest that the problem of evil calls into question either God’s existence, goodAddress Hell Exegetically ness, or sovereignty, so also hell is put forward as ost of our listeners have high views of the ultimate trump card against the love, mercy, and scriptural authority; and so if they are grace of the Christian God. These objectors shown from Scripture what the Lord demand, How can you believe in a God who sends says about hell and eternal punishment, then that people to hell? Well, the correct answer is: Look at will settle it for them. Thus, we must carefully the cross, and you’ll have a bigger problem to think adduce the true doctrine from the New Testament’s about. Christ’s dereliction, abandonment, and fortexts themselves. While doing this, we should also sakenness on the cross is a far greater philosophicaladdress some of the issues that will be on the minds theological problem than the problem of hell.

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Why? Because at the cross, the wrath of God is striking out at the one person in the universe that he seemingly has no right to strike—the incarnate and sinlessly perfect Son of God. It is a far greater injustice than we can conceive. No plight was ever less merited. Hell, on the other hand, is deserved. It makes perfect sense. Its logic is inexorable. Those who reject God in this life, reject him also in the next.

Hell involves sheer justice, sheer justice that is even, to a certain extent, self-imposed. Hell is the ultimate quid pro quo, the eternal reward of all Pelagians.

The puzzle of hell, as complex as it is, cannot compete with the puzzle of grace. Hell is humanity’s subconscious fear because we inherently know we deserve it, even if we grind our teeth at God about it. But grace is counterintuitive. It’s the hardest thing to believe in the world.

that one day his soul will be required, and there will be a reckoning when God’s justice will be done. Then the gospel comes alongside this truth and says, Yes. God’s justice will be done, but it can be done in either of two ways. You may stand before God’s tribunal in your own goodness, or you may stand before it dressed in Christ’s righteousness. You can receive the wages you have earned, or you can receive the wages Christ has earned.

Choose you this day! For the difference is final and eternal. ■

J. Ligon Duncan, III (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, Scotland) is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, and is an adjunct professor at Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Mississippi). He is also a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Last Thoughts any of us are perfectly familiar with the oft-quoted counsel of British Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon that one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar.

But that is no justification for ignoring the truth about hell in our preaching. Spurgeon certainly didn’t ignore it. Preaching the truth about hell puts heaven-by-grace in bold relief. It proclaims to the sinner by special revelation what he already knows by general revelation and the imago Dei; namely,

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Hades: “Is virtually synonymous with the Hebrew Sheol, the place-name of the abode of the dead. Thus the word has in itself no doctrine of reward or punishment (see, e.g., Acts 2:27, Rev.

20:13). It appears, however, in Matt. 16-18 as the locus of opposition to the Church, and this leads on to Matt. 11:23 (Luke 10:15) and Luke 16:23 where Hades is the place of punishment of the wicked dead. This New Testament development is to be noted. The Old Testament only begins to suggest a diversity of eternal destiny. However, when the Lord Jesus Christ brings life and immortality to light (11 Tim. 1:10), he reveals both eternal gain and eternal loss. Even Hades, otherwise equivalent to Sheol, cannot resist this further significance. This simultaneous maturing of truth is ignored by every attempt to divest the New Testament of its grim, but dominical, doctrine of eternal punishment.

— (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, S.V. “Hades”)

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HELL | Putting the Fire Out?

Lewis’s Reflections on

Hell S. Lewis did not write as a theologian; his works touch on Christianity in a popular vein. Yet as a foremost apologist of the last century, he continues to have an enduring influence. This brief review of his “doctrine” of hell, therefore, faces numerous obstacles, most notably that of genre. Although his fiction brilliantly illustrates many Christian themes, it does not intend to teach doctrine. Even the more didactic prose of Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain must be read in the context of apology. It answers objections, only

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occasionally producing a doctrinal by-product. Our task, thus, requires eliciting doctrine in an indirect manner—more bluntly stated, reading Lewis as he did not intend to be read.

The great strength of Lewis’s description of hell is apologetic, piquing our moral consciousness. Hell is always discussed in the first person, illustrating the threat sin poses to our own hearts.

This threat is most terrible in its deceptive subtlety; the most commonplace acts of selfishness possess the ultimate power to enslave. Not surprisingly, hell is satirically portrayed in a similarly bland manner:

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In Print May/June Book Recommendations Two Views of Hell: A Biblical & Theological Dialogue Edward William Fudge and Robert A. Peterson A debate between two evangelicals who take opposing views on hell. Peterson defends the traditional idea that the wicked will experience perpetual, conscious torment after death; Fudge argues that the wicked will experience a limited period of conscious punishment and then they will cease to exist.

B-FUD-1 $13.00 The Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell Paul Helm Arguing against being preoccupied with life in the present world, Helm’s book is a good introduction to those aspects of the future life, including the nature of hell.

B-HEL-1 $8.00 The Battle for Hell: A Survey and Evaluation of Evangelicals’ Growing Attraction to the Doctrine of Annihilationism David George Moore An examination of traditional teaching on the doctrine of hell, intended to give Christians a deeper understanding of the doctrine and a stronger persuasion that hell really exists.

B-MOOR-1 $38.00 Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England Philip C. Almond A historical account of life after death and the changing concepts of heaven and hell in a critical period of English thought.

B-ALM-1 $70.00 Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell Edward Donnelly A good overview of traditional Protestant teaching on the eternal life.

B-DON-2 $10.00 Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment Robert A. Peterson Gives a careful, exegetical defense of hell.

B-PET-1 $13.00 To order, complete and mail the order form in the envelope provided. Or, use our secure e-commerce catalog at www.alliancenet.org. For phone orders call 215-546-3696 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. ET (credit card orders only).

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives PCRT 2002: The Promised Holy Spirit.

A biblical view of the Holy Spirit is essential today more than ever. All of us are exposed to false views of the Holy Spirit and the false spirituality that inevitably follows. Christians who look for sound Bible teaching therefore need to understand and reflect upon what the scriptures teach concerning the Spirit. Equally important, an understanding of the Holy Spirit’s present role in our salvation is a catalyst for great spiritual growth. More than anything else, realizing what God has promised and given in his Spirit is a cause for praise to him and a renewal of our faith. The 2002 Philadelphia Conference on Reformation Theology includes addresses by Michael Horton, Hywel Jones, Philip Ryken and D. A. Carson.

C-02-POA, 6 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $33.00 CD-02-POA, 6 CD’S IN AN ALBUM, $33.00 THE Heaven and Hell WHITE HORSE INN In this two-part White Horse Inn series, hosts Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt—with their usual wit and wisdom—tackle the thorny theological questions surrounding the final states of both the righteous and the unrighteous.

C-W435-36, 1 TAPE, $5.00

Parables of Judgment HE In this four-part radio series on The Bible BIBLE Study Hour, Dr. James Boice explores Jesus’ STUDY stark and sometimes disturbing parables of HOUR future judgment. You’ll appreciate Dr. Boice’s careful exegesis and pastoral concern for those whom Jesus prophesied against.

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Whatever Happened to Sin? Sin is a serious thing. American culture has done everything possible to banish sin from our experience—with a predictable increase in the very thing we are avoiding. For this frank conference about the problem of sin and the gospel solution, Dr. James Boice is joined by Rebecca Pippert, Roger Nicole, and Sinclair Ferguson.

C-89-OA, 7 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $38.00 THE Worship That Pleases God WHITE HORSE INN The latest tape series from the hosts of the White Horse Inn. Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, Rod Rosenbladt, and Ken Jones discuss some of the challenges to a biblical doctrine of worship by addressing such questions as, “Why do we worship?” “Why can church be boring?” “What does God do in worship?” “Can we worship and evangelize at the same time?”

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The Alliance Cassette Catalog In each issue of Modern Reformation the editors suggest tape resources relevant to the topic. For more selections of tapes from the Bible Study Hour, the White Horse Inn, or the annual Philadelphia Conference on Reformation Theology, visit the Alliance website: www.alliancenet.org or call 215-546-3696 to request a copy of the resource catalog.

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“Hell is something like a bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern,” Lewis writes in the preface to The Screwtape Letters. The Problem of Pain was written during the Battle of Britain, with evil personified on London’s doorstep, yet in his chapter on human wickedness, Lewis prefers to discuss evil in its domestic aspect, warning of superficial self-righteousness. Until we know hell as our own potential destiny, we cannot know our deliverance: “Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of his to be true, though we are part of the world he came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom his words are addressed.”

Lewis loved the idea that we will be surprised by who is in heaven, and who is not. Thus, the judgment scene in The Last Battle, where Emeth, a pious pagan whose name means “truth,” is saved because he served Aslan under another name. This is often cited as evidence that Lewis was a pluralist—and he may have been. Indeed, this view is more explicitly stated in Lewis’s God in the Dock, in the essay “Christian Apologetics,” “Of course it should be pointed out that though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that he cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted him in this life.

And it should (at least in my judgment) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected.”

However, the purpose for this in Lewis’s fiction and apologetics is clearly to generate surprise in the reader at the remarkably unpredictable nature of divine grace. Lewis has the mind of an apologist living in a purportedly Christian land, always careful to remind the Baptized what surprises might await them in the day of judgment.

The extended dreamlike description of the afterlife in The Great Divorce is similarly calculated for self-examination, in order to get the reader to ponder his own damnation. The heart of this purgatorial travelogue is a series of conversations between wicked ghosts and their saintly companions, which serves to prove the point that hell is earth’s petty grudges writ large. Lewis’s ghosts are unable to bend a single blade of heavenly grass—a clever portrayal of the idea that evil is the privation of Good, unreality in the face of reality. “All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.” This view that hell is primarily a

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mental reality led to the criticism that Lewis didn’t believe in an “actual Hell,” to which he responded in The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, that “One’s own mind is actual enough.”

The Problem of Hell n The Problem of Pain, Lewis argues that “Pain plants the flag of truth within a rebel fortress.”

As such, it serves a remedial or corrective purpose by conquering error. Here hell comes under special consideration as a type of pain that does not lead to repentance. Lewis first defends the “most repellent” form of the doctrine, hell as retributive punishment. The just core of retribution is that evildoers may know their own wickedness, even in those cases where it doesn’t lead to a fuller conquest by the good. Given that men are in hell, it is better that they know why they are there than remain blissfully ignorant in their sins.

However, he quickly shifts from hell as “positive retributive punishment inflicted by God” to an alternate view: Hell as the self-determined end of wicked men. “We are therefore at liberty—since the two conceptions, in the long run, mean the same thing—to think of this bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.” The damned are enslaved by their own desires, lose all taste for the other, and live “wholly in the self.” Lewis affirms the moral defensibility of both “forms” of hell, but he clearly prefers the latter view. However, the assertion that the two forms of the doctrine mean the same thing is by no means apparent, since the latter is partially defined “not as a sentence imposed.” The implication is that God suffers hell as an unfortunate consequence of human freedom. Given that his offer of forgiveness is freely rejected by sinners, all that remains is to “leave them alone.”

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Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat….I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside (The Problem of Pain).

Lewis’s rebel has succeeded in cutting himself off from God and the external world. As compelling—and horrific—as Lewis’s preferred form of the doctrine is, it leaves unspoken God’s full counsel concerning his coming wrath. Christ warns his listeners to fear him who has the power to throw us into hell; Paul tells us that unrepentant men are

storing up divine wrath against themselves; and Peter says that God is holding the unrighteous for the day of judgment (see Luke 12:5; Rom. 2:5; 2 Pet. 2:4). Everywhere in the scriptures, God is an active party in final judgment, both in its preparation and execution. His power is neither restrained nor defeated in the judgment of sinners, rather it is demonstrated (see Rom. 3:3-7). In short, the damned do not attain the distance they desire from God; he is not absent from hell, but horribly present.

Rebels they surely remain, but success eludes them.

The Curse of God’s Wrath n all discussions of Hell we should keep steadily before our eyes the possible damnation, not of our enemies nor our friends (since both these disturb the reason) but of ourselves” (The Problem of Pain).

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“Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them” (Ps. 69:24).

In Reflections on the Psalms, Lewis confronts headon a difficulty he shares with most modern readers of the Psalter, namely, what to make of the curses by which the Psalmist calls down God’s judgment on his enemy. Lewis discerns here a “spirit of hatred” that is at once frightful, terrible, and contemptible—yet, “not entirely contrary to the will of God.” He does not merely want to explain away these curses, but neither does he approve of them.

It is plain to him that the psalmist must be in error, for to condone such “vindictive hatred” would be wicked. The cursing of God’s enemies is judged to be a sub-Christian reflex, yet as inspired Scripture it retains for him a beneficial use. First, they may serve as negative examples: Thou shalt not curse your neighbor in such manner. They also remind us how we tempt others to vengeance when we injure them, thus, leading to an even greater evil.

In both cases, the psalmist manifests indignant passion for God’s justice gone wrong.

As usual, Lewis’s moral reflex is correct. These psalms are in no way a model for ideal behavior, either for the Christian or for the Jew. Lewis’s failure lies in judging them, therefore, to be in error.

One can, of course, warn against vindictiveness without condemning it in its entirety: “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” (Rom. 12:17-21). The Christian solution lies in putting these curses in their proper redemptive historical context, and in recognizing their ultimate referent to be christological and eschatological. The Psalter presumes a running battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. In this battle, blessing and curse are always intimately related. First Noah

then Israel were delivered by God through the curse of a watery death, and the apostle Peter concludes that godly men will be rescued from fiery trials just as Lot was (see 2 Pet. 2:9, 3:7). Lewis correctly recognizes Christ as the only fitting referent of the sinless psalmist, yet he fails to grant that the Psalter’s wrath and vengeance is properly his as well: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment,” (Ps. 2:12). Both Christ and his apostles take these curses on their lips in pronouncing eschatological woes (see Matt. 23; Rom. 2-3; 2 Pet. 2-3; et al).

It is no coincidence that Lewis’s application of the cursing Psalms is similar to the use he makes of the doctrine of hell. They both serve as law, truly terrible portrayals of our own sin, merely tolerated because they may serve as a fearful goad unto obedience. He writes in The Problem of Pain, “We are told that [hell] is a detestable doctrine—and indeed, I too detest it from the bottom of my heart…I am not going to try to prove the doctrine tolerable. Let us make no mistake; it is not tolerable. But I think the doctrine can be shown to be moral….” What is utterly lacking in his writings is an appreciation for coming divine judgment as Good News, “a great comfort to the righteous”—a view common to the Psalms and Prophets, Christ and his apostles, as well as the Protestant confessions. The Belgic Confession states, “Therefore, with good reason the thought of this judgment is horrible and dreadful to wicked and evil people. But it is very pleasant and a great comfort to the righteous and elect, since their total redemption will then be accomplished.”

In his concern for self-righteousness, Lewis overlooked the one instance where the Creed compels us to consider the damnation of another. That at Calvary our Savior, our friend, would actually suffer the punishments of hell on our behalf does indeed disturb the reason. That by such substitution we could be utterly freed from the fear of our own condemnation far outstrips our wildest hopes.

Yet the Christian hope and one source of true faith lies precisely in this knowledge—that if we are in Christ, we will never know the flames of hell. ■

Brian J. Lee (M.A., Westminster Theological Seminary in California) is a Ph.D. candidate at Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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HELL | Putting the Fire Out?

Hell and the Nature of God t is easy to meet Christians today who reject the traditional doctrine of hell. Many of them think that, in the end, everyone will be saved.

Some Christians support this new position by arguing that we can know very little about hell with certainty, and that the Church’s traditional doctrine was embraced by extrapolating from what are only hints in Scripture.

Theologians then took up these hints, our friends believe, and embellished them in line with certain assumptions that they made about God’s character. Yet, these revisionists claim, the Bible also contains other clues that support belief in universal salvation; and these clues, combined with different assumptions about God—and especially the assumption that God is love—yield a very different view of the last things.

It often follows, from these opinions, that any view of the last things—of heaven and hell and death and judgment—is as legitimate as any other. For in the absence of any clear biblical teaching, each view depends on one or another of the contradictory sets of hints allegedly found in Scripture. And in the absence of a clear biblical doctrine of God, any idea of God may be as legitimate as any other.

For, it is assumed, there are also several competing and inconsistent ideas about God

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from which Christians are free to choose. So there are many competing Christian ideas about God, heaven, and hell. And we must decide, on extrabiblical grounds, which of them is credible.

The Episcopal philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams of Yale Divinity School is one of these revisionists. She has argued in a series of articles spanning almost thirty years, as well as in a new book, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, that the traditional doctrine of hell is indefensible, that it flouts fundamental tenets of justice, and that it ought to be replaced by a version of universal salvation. She thinks that beginning in this life, but continuing into the next, each of us is invited into a personal, loving relationship with God. And each of us will accept this invitation, either before our deaths or when the invitation is renewed afterwards, for God will hold out his invitation for as long as it takes for the last of us to accept it.

How the Traditional Doctrine of Hell Actually Developed xamining Adams’s arguments will allow us to see how revising the traditional Christian doctrine of hell strikes at other fundamental Christian doctrines. Her arguments against the traditional doctrine of hell involve errors about God’s nature, the atonement, sin, and what sort of punishment is fitting for sinful human beings. But first we should note that the foregoing account about how the traditional doctrine has developed is a travesty of the truth. For in developing its doctrine of the last things, and particularly its doctrine of hell, the Church has not started with scriptural “hints” but with the unmistakably clear teaching of the Lord Jesus himself, supported by the teaching of the apostles. No doubt some of what Jesus taught about hell is figurative and nonliteral, and these teachings about heaven and hell carry various difficulties with them. But what theological doctrines do not?

Nevertheless, the main outlines of what Christ and his apostles taught are clear and undeniable.

Faced with this biblical teaching, the Church has not cast around for sets of assumptions about God’s nature and purposes from which predictions about the last things can be made. Rather, it has pursued the only responsible, consistently Christian approach. It has asked, What theological outlook—what ideas about the character and ways of God—best account for the biblical teaching on hell? And it has looked for answers to this question not by experimenting with various assumptions about God’s character and purposes (as if one set of assumptions might be as valid as another), but by examining the biblical record of God’s character and then attempting to tie togeth-

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er, in consistent fashion, the doctrine of God found there with the biblical doctrine of hell. Only by thinking in this way, the Church has maintained, can a faithful Christian doctrine of hell be identified and held as a matter of faith. No doubt other sets of assumptions about God than the biblical set will lead to different conclusions, but this is beside the point.

Errors about God’s Nature and Christ’s Work ome of Adams’s arguments for her revisionary doctrines involve errors about both God’s nature and Christ’s work. These include unorthodox views about what the traditional doctrine of God means and about the atonement.

Adams regards the traditional doctrine about God as an arbitrary assumption by perpetrators of the traditional view of hell. She discerns rightly that the traditional view of hell is retributive and depends upon a view of justice as giving someone what he or she deserves. Yet she thinks this doctrine was embraced because Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and the reformers identified God’s “primary moral virtue” with “perfect retributive justice.”

This is curious because actually this idea that God has a primary moral virtue and that this virtue is perfect retributive justice is not found in these theologians. And there is a ready and obvious answer why not. They all held to some version of the doctrine of divine simplicity. This doctrine maintains that God does not possess separate virtues or attributes; he is, instead, one glorious unity, and what we call his virtues or attributes do not correspond to real distinctions in God but are our finite ways of mentally ordering and articulating his glory. But if God does not have separate virtues or attributes, then he cannot have a primary moral virtue or attribute. So what we call God’s justice is but one refraction of the divine glory, while his love is another refraction.

Given divine unity and simplicity, God’s justice must be consistent with his love, his mercy, his wisdom. His justice is a loving justice; his love a just love. This means that his love (unlike many expressions of human love) cannot be expressed as an indulgence of—or encouragement in— thoughts and behavior that are immoral. God’s love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It also means that he lovingly receives penitents—those who acknowledge and repudiate their sin (as the Prodigal Son did)—without limit.

Where God’s love and justice differ is not in their intrinsic natures but in their exercise. In particular, mainstream theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin stressed that there is something in the exercise of justice that must distinguish

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it from the exercise of love and mercy. Justice has an inexorable character. The very idea of justice would be flouted if it were exercised in a selective or arbitrary way, if two people equally deserving of divine praise or divine punishment were (other things being equal) to be treated differently.

guilty person who says, “Although I deserve divine punishment, God has justly waived it, and God loves me because he had to,” misunderstands the nature of both justice and love. How we think about God’s justice and love matters because it can lead to such misunderstandings as this. Justice is part of the divine nature, and it is by nature inexorable. But In the atonement, God’s love and justice come together. The Son offers himself in this does not make justice a “primary virtue” of the divine response to the initiative of the Father’s love for sinners—an initiative in which he nature.

Because God’s justice is wholly concurs. intrinsic to his immaculate holiness and inseparable from it, we may be assured Blameworthiness before God inexorably calls for that no morally relevant character trait or circumjustice, and (other things being equal) justice stance will be overlooked in God’s assessment of must and will be exercised, for that is what jus- any human life. We often borrow our notions of tice—and especially supreme, divine justice—is. justice from the imperfect justice of human courts, If God did not exercise his justice in such circum- which is justice as administered by fallible and corstances, then he would be failing to act justly; and rupted judicial systems. But God’s justice will be this would amount to God failing to be what God administered according to truth. Justice will be essentially is. accomplished.

By contrast, divine love or mercy is exercised optionally, or at God’s discretion. It is essential to The Atonement s the Church has traditionally understood the exercise of these divine virtues or attributes it, God in his mercy has visited his inex(though not of their possession, as we have seen) orable justice on Jesus Christ as his people’s that they are discretionary or optional. God is not required to be loving, or to have mercy, or to exer- substitute. Jesus bore God’s wrath, being made sin cise grace. Yet he is required to be just. Were God for us although he knew no sin, so that God might required to love, then such love would not be true be just and at the same time the justifier of him who love. Rather, God chooses to act graciously, lov- believes in Jesus (see 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 3:21–26). ingly, and with mercy; and in so choosing he Divine justice is vindicated in Christ’s death; and reveals the true contours of what grace and love love is expressed first in the giving of the Son and then in the receiving of God’s love by those who and mercy are.

The question of the ultimate distribution of are “in Christ.”

Adams has unusual ideas about Christ’s atoneGod’s love, grace, or mercy is irrelevant here, although it often clouds discussion. God may ment and particularly about its substitutionary choose to bestow his love, grace, or mercy upon character. In the first place, she thinks of the only some people or all of humankind. Some peo- atonement as explaining how God circumvents the ple may enjoy God’s love and its effects more dilemma he faces of either consigning the sinful intensely than others. Scripture teaches that God’s race to perdition or simply forgiving us our sins, love, grace, and mercy are unequally distributed, “because this would be to treat us better than we and it discourages us from trying to pry into the deserve and hence to contravene the standards of reasons why this is. But even had this not been so, retributive justice.”

But according to Scripture, to forgive the and God’s love, grace, and mercy had been equally and universally distributed, the distinctive charac- wicked their sins by divine fiat would not best be ter of these virtues’ expression would not have been understood as a case of treating them better than affected. For each individual case of love, grace, they deserve but rather as condoning their wickedand mercy would still be optional. Thus, the ben- ness. Adams thinks that Christ’s substitutionary eficiaries of such divine virtues are able to say, “God death is explained by “a theory of collective might not have loved me or given me his grace, responsibility” being “temporarily invoked” so that even though he did. God might justly have not any member of the human race may make satisfachad mercy on me.” This awareness involves a true tion on behalf of the whole. But this view involves understanding of the exercise of such virtues—and a fundamental misunderstanding. Christ’s substituso evokes expressions of gratitude and love. But a tion is understood not by invoking a theory of col-

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lective responsibility, but by recognizing the centrality and uniqueness of the merits and righteousness of the God-man (surely not an average member of the human race!) being imputed not to a collective body but to individuals. Christ takes the place of individual sinners, and his righteousness is justly reckoned as theirs, for Christ has taken their place in obedience to the Father’s loving will.

As traditionally understood, Christ’s substitutionary death does not explain how God gets himself off the horns of a dilemma. Part of the atonement’s mystery is that it does not allow a just God to love sinners, but that it is itself an expression of God’s prior love for them. In the atonement, God’s love and justice come together. The Son offers himself in response to the initiative of the Father’s love for sinners, an initiative in which he wholly concurs.

Errors about the Nature of Sin and Its Just Punishment dams also falters concerning the nature of sin and the kind of punishment that is fitting for sinful human beings.

We approach the heart of things when we ask about the biblical basis for how finite rational creatures are, by their actions and omissions, liable to infinite punishment, and so in need of atonement by the God-man.

Adams makes unnecessarily heavy weather of this. In her writings, she emphasizes that the normal, everyday administration of punishment is often not strictly proportionate to the offense. The principle of “an eye for an eye” might sanction a man losing a tooth for knocking out someone’s tooth, but it cannot sanction the loss of thirty of his teeth if he knocks out one tooth of thirty different people. If this is so with one person’s relation to thirty others, then, says Adams, it is certainly so if the number of people affected is extremely great or infinite. How then can it be in accordance with justice that one offense against God should merit infinite punishment?

There are three elements which, it seems to me, ground the Church’s traditional view of what the Bible teaches on hell and which answer effectively Adams’s question.

First, theologians have grounded the doctrine of hell in the infinite perfection of God. Perhaps Anselm of Canterbury was the first theologian to defend this insight formally and at length, in his Why God Became Man. In spite of Adams’s claim to the contrary, the status that Anselm ascribed to God has nothing crucially to do with feudal ideas of social status. Rather, it has everything to do with the ontological distinction—or, the difference in being—between the Creator and the creature.

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Because God’s kind of being as the Creator and our kind of being as a creature are so utterly different, the moral status of the Creator cannot be measured against the moral status of the creature, however fine and exalted that creature may be. This is why an offense against an infinite God merits infinite (or unmeasurable) punishment.

Adams thinks that “the fact that liability to punishment is not proportional to the offended party’s greatness, where finite degrees of greatness are concerned, casts doubt” on Anselm’s suggestion.

But why? Is it plausible to argue that because the notion of “proportionate return” breaks down in ordinary cases, it also breaks down in the extraordinary case of the relation between the Creator and his creatures? The very incommensurability of divine and human honor is crucial to Anselm’s argument. Adams’s counterarguments ridiculing the idea that punishment ought to be not strictly proportionate but related to the victim’s social status cut no ice here.

In order to see this point, we must grasp the distinction between commensurability and proportionality in this discussion. Commensurability—the notion that two or more things can be measured against each other—has to do with the status of individuals. For example, Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, because they are two human beings, are commensurable; their comparative status can be measured on a common scale. But Mr. Jones and God are not commensurable. The Creator’s status is different in kind than a creature’s status, and so between these two kinds of being there can be no common scale.

Proportionality, in contrast, has to do with the relationship between an offense and a punishment. If the offense and the punishment have equal value, then the punishment is strictly proportionate to the offense. If they have unequal value, then they are not strictly proportionate. Adams is, in effect, arguing that justice does not—and cannot— require that punishment be strictly proportionate to an offense, even though sometimes it may be.

Adams shows how proportionality breaks down in certain cases of administering punishment where one person offends another, even though there is commensurability between the two persons’ status.

But Anselm shows that where there is incommensurability, as in the case of the relation between the Creator and his creatures, hell is the nearest proportionate punishment for an offense against God’s infinite majesty.

In her later writings, Adams continues to appeal to incommensurability—and remains confused about its relation to the proportionality of punishment. She thinks that the traditional account of hell puts human beings in the position where the conse-

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quences of their acts are utterly disproportionate to the acts themselves. This, she claims, is manifestly unfair. It is as if “the powers that be threaten a nuclear holocaust if I do not always put my pencil down no more than one inch from the paper on which I am writing.” But it is clear what Anselm’s reply would be: Sin against God is not trivial. It is the very incommensurability between Creator and creature that makes sin against God the gravely seri-

for his glory. It is this feature of human desires and intentions, rather than features such as their intensity or duration, that merits eternal punishment.

Adams’s argument, which rests on analogies drawn from human systems of culpability, fails, once again, to capture the uniqueness of the Creator–creature relationship.

Thirdly, this idea of intention links with another feature grounding the doctrine of eternal punishment. It is that the Imputed Righteousness: “A gift of perfect righteousness, in this rationale for divine punishment, unlike the rationale for case none other than Jesus Christ, reckoned or credited to the sin- systems of human punishment, is not social control ner through faith alone.” based upon limited information regarding socially harmful behavior. The rationale — From Kim Riddlebarger’s “Faith Alone: An Evangelical Departure?” for divine punishment is that www.alliancenet.org God must uphold his divine honor based upon his infallious concern that it is. And this makes the infinite ble knowledge of the human heart. For as a man punishment of hell not a case of strictly proportion- thinks in his heart, so is he. What matters is a perate justice, but of as proportionate a measure of that son’s character, his matrix of intentions and their grounding in his “heart.” And if someone’s characenormous seriousness as can be.

Secondly, there is the relationship of the human ter is one of resolute and impenitent defiance heart to God. Adams considers whether the prin- against the Creator, then Scripture maintains that ciple “to will it is as bad as to do it” provides the eternal punishment is fitting. moral basis for divine retributive justice. She argues that it does not. She writes that in a situa- An Error about Heaven and tion where an intense desire to harm someone else the Need for Purgatory n place of the traditional and, I have argued, is thwarted, “No matter how intensely someone biblically based account of the reality of hell, desires at a given time to make someone else totalMarilyn McCord Adams, along with many othly unhappy forever, it is always possible that he will eventually relinquish that ambition.” In such a sit- ers (including C. S. Lewis), argues for a gradual uation, proportionality obviously does not call for post-mortem development of personal relations the eternal punishment of the one who has such a with God. This, she believes, is the only view of desire because his desire may not last forever. So, human survival that is compatible with human freeshe appears to be arguing, no desire, however evil dom and divine love. Endorsing this prospect and however enduring it may be, can merit eternal amounts to a defense of one version of the doctrine of purgatory, although Adams does not identify her punishment.

But in the traditional Christian view, “desire” has proposal by this name. Since the Reformation, the to do with more than the intention that grounds an doctrine of hell, as confessed by Protestants, has act, whether or not the act is thwarted. It concerns carried with it a denial of the doctrine of purgatothe relation of the “heart”—or a person’s spiritual ry on the ground that Scripture does not support it. center—to God. This relation may justify the So in concluding this review of some current argudescription of an act as “sinful,” whatever other ments against the traditional doctrine of hell, it is descriptions it may carry. An act of murder, appropriate to say something about this view.

The traditional doctrine of heaven—and with it grounded in an intention to harm another, is not sinful simply because it intentionally results in the denial of the doctrine of purgatory—carries another person’s death. And a murderous desire is with it, in Adams’s words, the need for a “miracunot sinful simply because it is an intention to harm, lous, instantaneous” transformation of the personaleven though that intention is thwarted. The ity that involves the replacement of vices by their desires and intentions that matter here are those corresponding virtues. She questions whether such which, at a deeper level, are expressions of defiance “externally imposed, instantaneous character transagainst the Lord, failures to act not only in accor- formation is compatible with human freedom.” dance with his law, but also out of love for him and And she rejects the idea because, in her view, it isn’t.

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But this verdict is based upon a somewhat startling misunderstanding. The issue is not whether the idea is compatible with indeterministic human freedom. It is whether this idea of heaven can reasonably constitute the divinely bestowed fulfillment of a certain kind of virtuous desire that Christians already possess. The point is not that, in this supposed transformation, vices will be unwillingly exchanged for virtues, but that virtues in their present incomplete form in the lives of God’s people will be transformed into fully developed virtues.

Paul’s cry, “What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24), has, as its natural answer: The Lord will, when in response to that cry he instantaneously transforms Paul and his body, and the characters and bodies of all the saints, at the Last Day. ■

SPEAKING OF

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his first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man’s disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was

placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, in the

Paul Helm (D.Phil., Oxford University) is a professor and J. I. Packer Chair in Theology and Philosophy at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

great deep….

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit In writing this article, Paul Helm has quoted from the following pieces by Marilyn McCord Adams: “Hell and the God of Justice” (Religious Studies, 1975); “Divine Justice, Divine Love, and the Life to Come” (Crux, 1976–77); “The Problem of Hell: A Problem for Christians,” in Eleonore Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man, Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherded who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

— Milton’s Paradise Lost, excerpt from “The Argument,” by John Milton which precedes the first few lines of Book I of Paradise Lost.

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HELL | Putting the Fire Out?

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Consummation of the Law ell was a prominent theme in Jesus’ preaching, but the same is not true in contemporary Christianity. The Revised Common Lectionary, used in many mainline churches, has trimmed articles dealing with hell, condemnation, and wrath from its cycle of readings. The universalism that has come to characterize the popular piety of our nation was implicitly assumed in the “Prayer for America” interfaith service presided over by Oprah Winfrey in Yankee Stadium shortly after the tragedy of September 11. Incredibly, a district president from the conservative Lutheran Church–

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Missouri Synod took his place alongside religionists who deny Christ and who boldly proclaim that there is strength in such a union, as though the power of human love could remedy sin and death. Any mention of hell, beyond a purely metaphorical reference to the September 11 tragedy, would have been seen as a breach of ecumenical sensitivity. So Christian clergy, by their participation and their silence, assented to the universalism of civil religion there presented.

Commenting on the theology reflected by the Second Vatican Council, Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse once quipped

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that in post-Vatican II Rome, it is hard for even a self-respecting pagan to go to hell. Hell is not a popular topic in contemporary theological discourse. German Lutheran systematician Gerhard Sauter’s recent book, What Dare We Hope?, does not even include an entry for “hell” in its index. Among many it is believed that Christianity must be understood as inclusive; inclusive even of “anonymous Christians”—of those who are Christians even though they do not yet know it. And, some argue, the scope of God’s mercy is so wide that the thought of hell must be dismissed altogether, replaced by universalism or reduced to a merciful annihilation of obdurate unbelievers.

Discomfort with notions of unquenchable fire and the undying worm are not confined to modern theology. The early Church father Origin’s speculation of an apokatastasis—a divine restoration of all things that finally brings even the demons into the realm of God’s kingdom—has in various ways plagued the Church throughout the ages. This fanciful eschatology was also asserted in Anabaptist theology in the sixteenth century. Against this biblically unwarranted hope, Article 17 of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession speaks: It is also taught that our Lord Jesus Christ will return on the Last Day to judge, to raise all the dead, to give eternal life and eternal joy to those who believe and are elect, but to condemn the ungodly and the devils to hell and eternal punishment. Rejected, therefore, are the Anabaptists who teach that the devils and condemned human beings will not suffer eternal torture and torment. Likewise rejected are some Jewish teachings, which have also appeared in the present, that before the resurrection of the dead saints and righteous people alone will possess a secular kingdom and will annihilate the ungodly.

At that time, Rome voiced no opposition to this article, as the Lutheran Book of Concord’s Apology notes: “The opponents accept this article without qualification. In it we confess that Christ will appear at the consummation of the world and will raise up all the dead, giving eternal life and eternal joys to the godly but condemning the ungodly to endless torment with the dead.” But five centuries after Augsburg there is no such unanimity among Lutherans or Roman Catholics; and there is a resurgence among some evangelicals of the belief that unbelievers will not suffer hell.

The challenges raised by those who either espouse universalism or advocate a doctrine of annihilation have been addressed by Lutherans

since the Reformation. Early in the twentieth century, the Lutheran dogmatician Franz Pieper summarized the position of Lutheran orthodoxy: “The claim that the punishments of hell are intended to be remedial or restorative is just as unscriptural as the claim that these punishments are a means of annihilation.” Centuries before, Johann Quenstedt railed against the so-called “mercy theologians” (misericordes theologi) who denied Scripture’s clear teaching by arguing that the doctrine of hell is unworthy of God. And while opinions have varied regarding the nature of hell—is the fire physical or hyper-physical?—Lutheranism’s classical theologians agree that hell is both real and unending. As Pieper quotes Johann Gerhard, “It is wiser to be concerned about escaping this eternal fire by true repentance than to engage in unprofitable arguments as to the nature of the fire.”

Lutheran theology understands hell as “the consummation of the law” in those who are finally impenitent, according to John Stephensen in Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics: Eschatology.

Rejecting the doctrine of eternal damnation diminishes Christ’s work. Unlike Reformed theology, Lutheran theology teaches universal atonement: Christ Jesus suffered and died for the sins of the whole world (Matt. 20:28; 1 Tim. 2:6; 1 John 2:2). By the atoning death of his Son, God reconciled the world unto himself (2 Cor. 5:18–21). To refuse the gift of the gospel of reconciliation is to be left only with the Law that accuses and finds its final consummation in a hell prepared for the devil and his angels (see Matt. 25:41). Indeed, hell is utterly inhuman. The finality of this banishment is aptly expressed by Werner Elert in Last Things, “But in the last Judgment even the most obstinate ear will be opened, not to give man a chance to reconsider his decision but to shut the door to that possibility forever.”

Lutheran theology takes hell with utmost seriousness because it takes Christ’s work utterly seriously. The Son of God came in the flesh as the friend of sinners, to seek and to save the lost. He did not come to boost self-esteem, to provide psychological wholeness, or to establish a new social order. He came to redeem sinners from God’s wrath by his blood. This is confessed in the Explanation to the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed in Luther’s Small Catechism: “He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being. He has purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.

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HELL | Putting the Fire Out?

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hen we gather for worship on Sunday, many of us confess our faith in the words of the Apostles’ Creed. The Creed’s most puzzling statement has always been that our Lord “descended into hell.” What does this mean? Is it true? Isn’t it enough simply to affirm the observable facts of Christ’s passion, his suffering under Pontius Pilate, crucifixion, death, and

burial? In Church history, this article of the creed has received many interpretations; but, most straightforwardly, it attempts to represent briefly the depths of Christ’s suffering and humiliation during both his earthly ministry and his death.

Christ’s redemptive suffering remains close to the Christian consciousness. It was, especially, part of the Church fathers’ reflections on Christ’s significance. For instance, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement of Rome emphasized Christ’s humiliation.

He quotes Isaiah 53:1–12 and then explains that “[T]his is he who bears our sins and suffers pain for our sakes…. The chastisement that resulted in our peace fell upon him…. In his humiliation justice was denied him…. And the Lord desires to take away the torment of his soul, … because his soul was delivered to death and he was reckoned as one of the transgressors; and he bore the sins of many, and because of their sins he was delivered up.”

Ignatius of Loyola also used Christ’s torments to assert, “[T]here is only one physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, true

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life in death, both from Mary and from God, first subject to suffering and then beyond it, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Likewise, the Epistle to Diognetus reminds us that our wages—namely, “punishment and death”—came to the one who was a “ransom for us, the holy one for the lawless, the guiltless for the guilty, ‘the just for the unjust,’ the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal.” It reinforces the idea of this exchange between Christ and us with beautiful biblical images: “For what else but his righteousness could have covered our sins? In whom was it possible for us, the lawless and ungodly, to be justified, except in the Son of God alone? O the sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous man, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”

Such reflections help to explain the original intent of the assertion, “He descended into hell.”

The central doctrinal truth articulated in this phrase is that the Son of God in his incarnation

by TOM J. NETTLES

ded Into Hell experienced the full range of suffering necessary for our redemption. In his humanity, and even though he himself never personally sinned, Jesus Christ embraced life and suffered death—including the pain of hell itself—as the “wages of sin,” so that he might redeem sinful human beings.

As the reformer John Calvin notes, the Apostles’ Creed is deliberately pithy in asserting the profound truths revealed in Scripture. Knowing this warrants our dismissal of such an ambiguous idea as Christ descending spatially into hell itself. If it is maintained that Christ’s descent was literal or geographical, then irremediable issues of theology and biblical interpretation arise. For instance, issues expressed by questions such as, Wasn’t the cross a sufficient punishment for sin or did Christ also have to go to hell to satisfy divine justice? What about Christ’s body? Did it descend or was it simply his soul that descended into hell? If it was only his soul, then does that mean that the punishment of the body is somehow less important than the punishment of the soul?

If, however, we maintain that Christ’s descent into hell is simply his literally experiencing God’s wrath at the time when he was made a curse for us (see Gal. 3:13), then Scripture abundantly supports this claim and these questions disappear.

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Consequently, we should recite this phrase as a statement about the propitiatory nature of Christ’s suffering. As Calvin explains, “Nothing had been done if Christ had only endured corporeal death,” because his suffering had to be greater than any human could inflict in order to “interpose between us and God’s anger, and satisfy his righteous judgment.” “He descended into hell” is, then, a way of stating how heavy was the “weight of divine vengeance” on Christ. In this experience he engaged, “as it were, at close quarters with the powers of hell and the horrors of eternal death.”

and collectively require us to understand that Christ finished his propitiatory work in enduring the Father’s wrath while he hung on the cross.

While buried, he experienced separation of his spirit from his body (see 2 Cor. 5:2–8), living consciously in his Father’s presence with the saints until his resurrection. His descent into hell had already taken place as he experienced in his whole person—body and soul—the merciless infliction of wrath from the omnipotent hand of the Father’s justice. So as Francis Turretin, one of the greatest Reformed theologians, noted, when Christ cried at last, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” he The Apostles’ Creed: For hundreds of years Christians “wished to proclaim that nothing more remained to be believed that the twelve apostles were the authors of this wide- done by him, both as to freeing others and as to undergoly known creed that bears their name. According to an ancient ing new torments. But as the body was about to enjoy its theory, the twelve composed the creed with each apostle adding a clause to form the whole. repose in the sepulcher, so the soul also was about to rest Today, practically all scholars understand this theory of apostolic composition to be leg- from all its labors and be bathed in the greatest joys.” endary. Nevertheless, many continue to think of the creed as apostolic in nature because its The Creed’s Perspectival basic teachings are agreeable to the theological formulations of the apostolic age. The full Ordering his concern about the form in which the creed now appears stems from about A.D. 700. It has maintained in modsequence of the phrases in the ern times its distinction as the most widely accepted and used creed among Christians.

Apostles’ Creed is useful, however, for it helps us to — (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, realize that the creed’s artiS.V. “Apostles’ Creed”) cles are ordered not sequentially but perspectivally. As Calvin explains helpfully, Thus, we should not hesitate to say that Christ what Christ endured in the sight of man finally descended into hell since, as Calvin puts it, “[H]e gave way to “the invisible and incomprehensible endured the death which is inflicted on the wicked judgment which he endured before God, to teach by an angry God.” Calvin even said, “[S]hould any us that not only was the body of Christ given up as still scruple to give it admission into the Creed,” it the price of redemption, but that there was a must be made plain that the place which this arti- greater and more excellent price—that he bore in cle “holds in a summary of our redemption is so his soul the tortures of condemned and ruined important, that the omission of it greatly detracts man.” Question 44 of the Heidelberg Catechism underscores Calvin by affirming that “my Lord Jesus from the benefit of Christ’s death.”

Some people object that if this phrase is meant Christ, by his inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors, to show the severity of Christ’s earthly passion, and hellish agonies, in which he was plunged durthen it should not follow the phrase “he was ing all his sufferings, but especially on the cross, buried.” But since it follows that phrase, the creed hath delivered me from the anguish and torments must mean that Christ descended literally into hell of hell.” As Zacharius Ursinus, one of the authors after burial. Yet such a descent subsequent to his of the Heidelberg Catechism, notes, “[I]t is proper that death would render Christ’s words on the cross the severe torments and anguish of soul (which unintelligible. Those words— “Today you will be were the heaviest part of his sufferings) should not with me in paradise,” “My God, my God, why hast be unnoticed in the Creed.” But if the phrase “He thou forsaken me,” “It is finished,” “Father, into thy descended into hell” does not refer to those sufferhands I commend my spirit”—each individually ings, then they are not noticed, for the creed’s pre-

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ceding phrases “speak only of the external sufferings of the body.”

Although Jesus did not experience the gnawing worm of conscience in the same way that unforgiven sinners will, the effect of his experience in his conscience was infinitely more severe. Our consciences accuse or excuse us based on our knowledge of God’s righteous requirements and of the punishments justly demanded for their violation. Unredeemed sinners, aware either by general or special revelation of their culpability, may experience pangs of conscience now and will experience its undying condemnation in hell.

Because the pain of conscience is not strictly an active infliction of God’s wrath, it is not part of the hell that Jesus had to experience in his reconciling work. Yet, his soul’s turmoil in the garden of Gethsemane far transcended what any single sinner experiences either here or hereafter. For Christ was perfectly aware of the just requirements of God’s law. His knowledge of the punishment that violations of it demand was also exactly commensurate with that punishment’s infinite and eternal dimensions. So as he, in his human spirit, became increasingly aware of the severity of his coming passion, he said, “My soul is exceedly sorrowful, even unto death.” He who knew and loved everything that was his Father’s will, found his knowledge of what awaited him so horrific that his life fluids seeped through his pores, coagulating on the ground. Our Lord desperately sought any just way around this unimaginable punishment and yet finally discerned that nothing else could restore sinners to favor with God. And so he submitted with the words, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done” (Matt.

26:42, NASB).

We know that this severe test was not a part of our Lord’s experience of abandonment to God’s wrath because an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him during it (Luke 22:43).

It arose, then, from Jesus’ conscience as he sensed the judgment that he would endure when he bore our sins in his own body on the tree.

Hell entered Jesus’ soul in the hours when God the Father’s “not sparing his own son” seemed utterly interminable and unbearable (see Rom. 8:32).

The words “not sparing” indicate that all mercy was past and judgment was fully come (see 2 Pet. 2:4, 5). No angel ministered to him then. Each sin of all the elect in all ages received its full recompense (see Heb. 2:2) as our Lord “gave himself for our transgressions” (Gal. 1:4; see Rom. 4:25). And

when he said, “It is finished!,” his descent into hell was past.

In the end, this article of the Apostles’ Creed answers more questions than it raises. For it offers believers several insights as we try to understand our salvation in relation to Christ’s suffering and death.

As Reformed writer, Herman Witsius suggests, it

FYI

Propitiation: The turning away of wrath by an offering.

— (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, S.V. “Propitiation”)

teaches us to shake off carnal security for “nowhere are the malignity of sin, and the severity of God’s great wrath against it, more clearly discerned, than in our Lord’s descent into hell.” But it also encourages us: “[B]ecause he descended into hell, the principal gate of heaven stands wide open to us; and the lower his descent, the higher in consequence, is the glory which he has merited for us.” ■

Tom J. Nettles (Ph.D. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky) is professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

He is the author of Teaching Truth, Training Hearts, and is an editor of Why I Am a Baptist.

In writing this article, Professor Nettles has quoted from Michael Holmes's edition of J. B. Lightfoot's The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House (2nd Edition), 1990); Calvin's Institutes, Francis Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1992); Zacharias Ursinus's Commentary of the Heidelberg Catechism (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1992); and Herman Witsius's commentary, The Apostles' Creed in Two Volumes (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1993)

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An Interview with Edward Fudge

Hell: The “Minority” View MR: For those unfamiliar with your teaching on hell or eternal punishment, would you please summarize it briefly? Is it fair to call your view “conditional”?

EDWARD W. FUDGE

Author, Lawyer Houston, TX

EF: First, let me say, I appreciate the desire of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals to call us back to Scripture, and to distinguish authentic scriptural teaching from the pollutions of later human creeds and culture. Those are also my own goals in ministry. I share most of the conclusions expressed in the Cambridge Declaration.

There is one point, however, on which we still disagree. That point concerns the precise nature of eternal punishment. Or, to say it another way, it concerns the effect of hell’s fire on those who are sentenced to it. The Cambridge Declaration upholds the majority traditional view, that “eternal punishment” means that the lost will be kept alive forever in hell, where they will endure conscious torments forever and ever without end.

I do not believe that the Bible teaches that the lost will be made immortal, or that they will suffer torments without end. Instead, I believe Scripture teaches that God will “destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28), and that “eternal punishment” means being “punished” with “eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9). Our God is a “consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). Because hell’s fire cannot be extinguished (“unquenchable”), it will eventually “burn up” those sentenced to it (Matt.

3:12). In the end, the wages of sin really is “death”—to which the contrast is “eternal life” (Rom. 6:23; Rev. 21:8).

This view is neither eccentric nor cultish, having being advocated, held, or allowed by such faithful luminaries as F. F. Bruce, Michael Green, W. Graham Scroggie, Dale Moody, Clark Pinnock, John Wenham, E. Earle Ellis, Philip E. Hughes, Homer Hailey, and John Stott. That it is a minority view, which contradicts several

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ecclesiastical creeds, should not matter, since we all agree that truth is learned from Scripture and not from polls or human creeds. (It is entirely consistent, by the way, with the truly universal Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed.)

This understanding of Scripture is sometimes called “conditional immortality” and those who hold it are sometimes called “conditionalists.”

These labels point to the truths that God alone is inherently immortal (1 Tim. 6:16) and that any human who finally enjoys immortality will do so as God’s gift, conditional on receiving his grace in Jesus Christ.

This position rests on hundreds of scriptures from throughout the entire Bible. I have summarized that scriptural teaching in Two Views Of Hell, which I coauthored with Robert A. Peterson (IVP, 2000), and set it out in detail in the much larger book, The Fire That Consumes.

This scriptural base includes messianic texts from the Old Testament, which picture the wicked’s final destiny as perishing and being shattered like earthenware (Ps. 2:9, 12), as corpses (Ps. 110:5–6), as slain (Isa. 11:4), as corpses devoured by maggots and by fire (Isa. 66:24), and as chaff that burns until nothing is left—ashes under the feet of the righteous (Mal. 4:1, 3). It includes the entire recorded teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, who warns that God can destroy soul as well as body, and who compares the wicked’s end to that of a house destroyed by a hurricane or typhoon (Matt. 7:27). It includes all that Jesus said about “hell” or Gehenna (an eschatological name borrowed from the Jerusalem garbage dump, a disgusting place of perpetually smoldering fire and stomach-turning putrefaction).

Such a scenario completely satisfies Jesus’ statement that some will go away into “eternal punishment.” The word punishment says that there will be penal consequences for wrongdoing, which are imposed by judicial authority. It does not say anything about the nature of that punishment itself, however. Paul explains what Jesus left vague, when he says that Jesus will “punish” the wicked with “eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9). This punishment of eternal destruction is eternal punishment in two senses. Qualitatively, it is eternal because it pertains to the age to come.

Quantitatively, it is eternal because it lasts forever.

The wicked, once destroyed, are gone forever.

This destruction is fully as long-lasting as the eternal life and blessing of the saved.

MR: How different is your objection to the doctrine of eternal punishment from someone like Clark Pinnock’s?

EF: First of all, neither Clark nor I object to the doctrine of eternal punishment, a teaching which comes from the mouth of Jesus himself. We do, however, object to the traditional interpretation of that doctrine. Those who argue for unending conscious torment often call their interpretation “the doctrine of eternal punishment.” Whether intentionally or unwittingly, they equate a particular human understanding with scriptural doctrine—assuming what they need to prove.

That said, I believe that Clark and I share the same understanding of Scripture on this subject, as well as the same critique of the traditional doctrine’s evolution through the course of Church history.

MR: What is your chief criticism of the doctrine of eternal punishment? Is it mainly a question of what the Bible teaches?

Or are your concerns apologetic, such as does hell keep nonbelievers from accepting the truth of the gospel?

EF: See, you did it again! I have no criticism of “the doctrine of eternal punishment.” I teach the doctrine of eternal punishment. What I criticize (and totally reject) is the interpretation of eternal punishment, which says that God will make the wicked immortal in order to torment them forever and ever without end.

The reason, and the only reason, that I reject that interpretation of eternal punishment is that I do not find it taught anywhere in the Bible.

Instead, I find the Bible to teach—from Genesis to Revelation—that the wicked will finally die, perish, and be destroyed. That fate stands in sharp contrast to the destiny of the saved, to whom God will give immortality (deathlessness) to enjoy

eternal life with him forever.

After I had reached these conclusions, during a year of intensive exegetical study of pertinent passages throughout the whole Bible, I began to discover several of their implications. One of those implications involved both apologetics and missions.

There are many people, I came to realize, for whom the traditional doctrine of unending conscious torment seems to contradict (if not to blaspheme) the character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. For many individuals, learning that eternal punishment means conscious suffering according to precise divine justice, then ceasing to exist forever removes an offense to the gospel. I have always insisted, however, that such implications must follow exegesis. We cannot start with our conception of what we think ought to be (as people holding both these views sometimes do). We must begin by asking what the Bible actually teaches, then let the implications follow however they might.

MR:: How do you explain Christ’s teaching in Matthew 25: 31–46, especially verse 41, where he says of the King that he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”?

EF: I have briefly discussed eternal punishment in this passage. As for “eternal fire,” Jude tells us, in verse 7 of his epistle, that Sodom and Gomorrah “are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire” (NASB). The NIV says that those cities, which were totally and irreversibly destroyed by (probably volcanic) fire and burning sulfur, “serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” What does eternal fire do? It destroys forever, and Sodom is an example of that. Of course, in the Matthew passage in particular, “eternal” probably also has connotations of the age to come.

MR:: What do you make of Mark 9:48, which says of hell that it is a place “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

EF: Jesus quotes this language from Isaiah 66:24, where the prophet portrays the age to come (“the new heavens and the new earth,” v. 22). Borrowing imagery from the literal Gehenna, ancient Jerusalem’s garbage dump, God portrays the saved as they observe the destruction of the lost: “They shall go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched;

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and they shall be an abhorrence to all mankind” (NASB).

This is not a picture of living beings suffering torment, but of dead people (“corpses”) being consumed by maggots and by fire. The worm keeps eating and the fire keeps burning until nothing is left to eat or to burn. In this scene, the lost are already dead. They have been “slain” by God (Isa. 66:16). They have “come to an end altogether” (Isa. 66:17). They are nothing but “corpses”—corpses already being consumed (Isa. 66:24). This picture elicits stomach-turning disgust and revulsion (“abhorrence,” v. 24; the same Hebrew word used of the lost in Dan. 12:2). By the time of the scene portrayed in Isaiah 66:24, only the saved are still alive. “All mankind” worships God (Isa. 66:23). Those who are not saved are dead in the second death.

Jesus certainly could have changed this imagery or its meaning if he wished to do so. However, he merely quoted it and did not change it at all. In fact, Jesus confirmed Isaiah’s meaning when he warned that God is able to destroy both soul and

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nothing about the events that will follow Christ’s return and the final judgment.

The Bible does teach ongoing punishment following the judgment. That is the punishment of everlasting destruction, the second death. The person who suffers this fate will truly “die,” “perish,” and be “destroyed”—forever and ever without end.

That destiny—not eternal conscious torment—is the eternal punishment of which Jesus solemnly warned.

MR: You have said that the doctrine of hell as involving eternal torment is inconsistent with the character of God revealed in Scripture. If so, what does Christ’s suffering and descent into hell reveal about the character of God? Wouldn’t his death indicate that in addition to being a God of love, he is also a God of righteous anger?

EF: The doctrine of hell is not inconsistent with the character of God, but I believe that the traditional interpretation of that doctrine is wholly inconsistent with God’s character as revealed in Jesus Christ. The Bible clearly teaches that God is also a God of righteous anger. The New Testament hat it is a minority view, which contradicts several ecclesiastical creeds, should contains many references to the wrath of God. “It is a not matter, since we all agree that truth is learned from Scripture and not from fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!” I polls or human creeds. would never minimize God’s wrath, and I would chide anyone who does. At the body in hell. Only later did certain Christian same time, we cannot use our own imagination or commentators interpret this standard biblical sense of propriety to define what the outworking picture of destruction to mean a life in torment that of divine wrath against the wicked will be. For never ends. The traditional view of everlasting that, we must be bound by, and limited to, Holy torture in hell contradicts this passage in Isaiah Scripture.

As you know, scholars are not of one opinion which Jesus quotes but does not change. about the meaning of the creedal phrase MR: How about the parable of the rich man in Luke 16, concerning Christ’s descent into hell. It is possible that the original meaning was that he truly died. which suggests a person undergoing ongoing punishment?

Whatever the creed means, the Bible makes it EF: Hell’s destructive process (which culminates in absolutely plain that Jesus Christ did die on the the second death) will involve whatever conscious cross as a substitute for all his people, vicariously torment God determines to be necessary in each bearing the punishment of all who finally will be individual case. The parable of the rich man and saved. That is entirely consistent with my Lazarus does not teach us anything about that understanding of eternal punishment, since the torment, however. Its whole story occurs while the wages of sin is “death” and the wicked finally rich man’s brothers are still living on earth, during experience the “second death.” an era when Moses and the prophets represent God’s final authority. If the parable’s context and MR: What happens to the souls of those who experience its “punch line” mean anything, they suggest that punishment and do not go to heaven? Is it possible for souls to Jesus’ point involves the importance of making be destroyed? If so, does this involve a denial of the right choices while one is living, because afterward immortality of the soul? will be too late. Even if this story were taken literally, which practically no one does, it says EF: Jesus warned that God is able to destroy both

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soul and body in hell (Matt. 10:28). The clear implication is that he intends to do just that. I am glad that you asked this question, however, because it goes to the origins of the notion of unending conscious torment within Christian doctrine. During the second century, several notable Greek philosophers became Christians.

They brought with them into the Church the pagan Greek teaching that every person has a mortal (dying) body and an immortal (deathless) soul.

These apologists, as they came to be known, admitted that the Bible teaches that only God has immortality in himself. They argued that God created the human soul immortal, but admitted that, as its creator, God could even destroy an immortal soul if he wished to do so. But when they talked about hell, they forgot their earlier admissions. The soul is immortal, they reasoned, and it cannot be destroyed. When Jesus warned that God can destroy the soul in hell, for example, Tertulllian explained that the soul is incapable of destruction because it is immortal. He then concluded that “destroy” must really mean to keep alive in perpetual torment forever. I document all this in both of my books on this subject.

Whenever the Bible uses the words immortal or immortality of human beings, it always does so in terms of the resurrection (never of creation); always in terms of the body (never of a disembodied soul or spirit); and always of the saved (never of the lost). Most Bible scholars today, evangelical and nonevangelical alike, acknowledge that the Bible does not teach the immortality of the soul in the sense Tertullian spoke of it.

The traditional interpretation of unending conscious torment originated from the notion that souls cannot die, perish, or be destroyed. Now that we know that notion to be false, we are free to accept at face value the multitude of Scripture verses that use those very terms to describe the final destiny of the lost. The Bible teaches eternal punishment; it is the punishment of everlasting destruction.

but he came under death’s sentence on the day he ate the forbidden fruit.

Adam was not immortal by nature, and neither are we, for only God possesses immortality.

However, Adam could have received immortality if he had obeyed the Creator (symbolized by eating from the tree of life). Instead, Adam sinned and came under penalty of death (mortality)—a state shared by all persons whom Adam represented (everyone except Jesus Christ, the “last Adam” and representative head of a new humanity).

When Christ returns, God will give immortality to all who belong to Christ, either by resurrection (if dead) or instantaneous transformation (if still living). As noted earlier, the Bible speaks of immortality only in terms of the saved, never of the lost. Although God will raise the wicked dead, they are raised to be judged and, finally, to experience the second death. The saved are raised immortal, for eternal life.

In closing, thank you for this opportunity to dialogue with your readers. I encourage each one to study the Bible afresh on this topic, and to allow Scripture (rather than any human creed or statement of faith) to have the final word. That is all anyone has the right to ask. As evangelical Christians, however, it is also our duty which we have no right to avoid.

Edward W. Fudge (J.D., University of Houston Law Center, M.A., Abilene Christian University) is the author of The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment now reprinted by iUniverse.com and available online or through any bookstore. He is also the coauthor of Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000). More information from Edward Fudge can be found at www.EdwardFudge.com.

MR: Since it was possible for Adam after he sinned to die and still be alive, isn’t it also conceivable that perishing or being destroyed could also involve continuing existence for those in hell?

EF: In Genesis 2:17, God prohibits Adam from partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, warning that “in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.” Our modern idiom would say: “the moment you eat from it, you are a dead man!” Adam actually died at age 930 (Gen. 5:5),

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Response from T. David Gordon [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 6 ]

human existence, whether in its biological or social senses. They meant what their Shorter Catechism says about Scripture’s teaching—that it principally teaches “what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.” God’s revelation regarding what we are to believe about him (“faith”) and about what duty he requires of us (“life”) is to be found in Scripture alone, apart from any additions of tradition or private revelation.

Many other matters, useful in our quest to exercise dominion over the created order and to frame productive societies, will only be discovered by what the divines called “the light of nature.” The letters resist what our earlier Protestant tradition would have called “natural revelation” or “the light of nature” more strongly than I would have initially expected. The expression “light of nature” appears in the very passage of the Westminster Confession that I am citing (1:6) and it appears eight more times elsewhere (WCF 10:4, 20:4, 21:1 and WLC Questions 2, 60 [twice], 121, and 151).

Confessionally, we affirm both the existence of such natural light and its necessity for properly ordering our lives. We affirm that the Creator has given us “light” not merely, not exclusively, and not sufficiently for all tasks in Scripture; he has also given us “light” in the natural order he created.

Many other matters, useful in our quest to sustain and nourish human life and existence, will only be discovered from the natural order or by the additional sources of a multitude of counselors, the counsel of older/wiser people, etc. We will not cure cancer (the cure to which is necessary for biological “life”) by reading Scripture; we will cure it by investigating molecular biology, organic chemistry, and other related disciplines.

The Confession’s own qualification regarding Scripture’s sufficiency. “Nevertheless, we acknowledge … that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed” (WCF 1:6). What is most surprising in some of my respondents’ communications is their apparent concern about any qualification of scriptural sufficiency. This is odd because the very text where the Confession teaches the doctrine also qualifies it. Thus before investigating whether my qualification is identical to that of the Westminster divines (as I believe it is), let us concede that qualifying the doctrine should not be a cause for alarm. If the confessional standards qualify the

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doctrine, ministers ordained within communions that embrace those standards may also qualify the doctrine; indeed, their ordination vows require them to do so.

My reading of the Confession consists of an a fortiori argument: if Scripture does not even address every circumstance of the government and worship of the Church, then—all the more strongly—it does not address every circumstance of life outside of the visible covenant community. I find it virtually unimaginable that the scriptures, which must be supplemented by the light of nature and prudence/wisdom regarding some circumstances concerning the government and worship of the Church, need not be supplemented regarding other circumstances, such as marriage and civil government.

What, then, is the value of the Confession’s statement? It teaches us that Scripture sufficiently guides our common faith and life. We do not need papal bulls or private revelations to know what is common to our faith and duty as believers. Church officers, led by Scripture’s sufficiency, may learn both what they may require of church members and what they may not require of them. Our well-being and productiveness as creatures requires a good deal more, however. It requires a thorough understanding of the natural order, of human nature, and of ourselves as individuals— which are things that we will not find sufficiently revealed in Scripture. Thus I understand the matter as James Bannerman and Charles Hodge understood it: And they [the scriptures] are sufficient to bear out the general proposition, that there is enough in the Word of God to be, and which was intended to be, a distinct and complete guide for the Church in the exercise of its powers of action and administration [James Bannerman, The Church of Christ. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960, vol. I, p. 215]. By the completeness of the Scriptures is meant that they contain all the extant revelations of God designed to be a rule of faith and practice to the Church…. All that Protestants insist upon is, that the Bible contains all the extant revelations of God, which He designed to be the rule of faith and practice for his Church; so that nothing can rightfully be imposed on the consciences of men as truth or duty which is not taught directly or by necessary implication in the Holy Scriptures…. If we would stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, we must adhere to the principle that in matters of religion and morals the Scriptures alone have authority to bind the conscience [Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977, vol. I, pp. 182-3].

MR: You supported your definition of “faith and life” by specifying what it does and does not apply to. For instance, you say that “The Bible is sufficient to guide the human-as-covenanter, but not sufficient to guide the human-as-mechanic, the human-as-physician, the humanas-businessman, the human-as-parent, the human-as-husband, the human-as-wife, or the human-as-legislator.” But does classifying what Scripture has to say about the human-as-mechanic or the human-as-physician with what Scripture has to say about the human-as-businessman or the human-as-husband encourage us to slight the specific guidance that Scripture gives to marriage and business roles?

TDG: No. Some of the unrest over my article appears to have been due to some misunderstanding of terms. In retrospect, I might have introduced the article with a definition of “sufficient.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “sufficient” as: “As much as is needed; enough; adequate.” If Scripture is sufficient for a task, it is the only thing needed for that task; Scripture alone is “enough.” I do not believe Scripture is enough to enable us to fulfill many of our creaturely tasks; for most of them, we need some knowledge of the created order and often the wisdom of those who have more experience. To deny that Scripture is sufficient for a task is not to deny that it is useful or helpful for that task; it is merely to affirm that it needs supplementation. Scripture is true, helpful, and authoritative about everything it addresses; but there are many matters that it is not “enough” for.

For instance, Scripture addresses marriage truly, helpfully, and authoritatively but not sufficiently. It requires a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church. But it does not address the practical question of whether to give one’s wife everything she might desire. How do I know when to accede to one of my wife’s requests and when not to?

When is doing that an act of Christlike love, and when is it merely a cynical way of avoiding a controversy? Does Ephesians 5 answer that question? No; nor could we answer it categorically for every wife. We could not say “It is always sinful to buy a blue sweater for your wife,” nor could we say “It is always sinful not to buy a blue sweater for your wife.” To answer the day-to-day questions of life, we must be informed by the great comprehensive principles of special revelation, but also by natural revelation (how one’s specific wife has responded to previous gifts, whether they appear to have helped or hurt, etc.) and wisdom.

Scripture also addresses the issue of the civil magistrate truly, helpfully, and authoritatively (e.g., Genesis 9 and Romans 13), but not sufficiently. It teaches us truly, authoritatively, and helpfully that the civil magistracy comes from God, that it exists

because of human sin, and that the magistrate may employ capital punishment. It does not tell us whether there should be three branches of government, whether the legislature should be separate from the judiciary, or whether any of its houses need be bicameral.

MR: With regard to wisdom for marriage, most of our readers would share your angst about evangelical divorce rates and agree that some of the blame should be placed on inappropriate attempts to make Scripture’s general counsels about marriage all-sufficient. The practice of some Christian ministers and counselors amounting to “read two verses and call me in the morning” is a travesty. Yet aren’t the causes of evangelical divorce complex? Isn’t it likely that many marital troubles arise from unfamiliarity with the scriptures?

TDG: Other evangelical distinctives may also contribute to our divorce rate. For instance, a misplaced belief in miracles may contribute if it leads some people to pray about their marriages without doing what is necessary to strengthen them. This would be analogous to praying for daily bread without going out and learning how to hold down a job. Further, I think we Bible-believers have (and should have) higher ideals for marriage than many of our non-believing friends, and so perhaps we feel the pain of imperfect marriages more acutely and become disillusioned more quickly than they do. So I don’t think an exaggerated view of the sufficiency of Scripture is the entire culprit. However, if Scripture is potentially helpful to marriages (and it surely is), then why is the divorce rate of Bible-believers so high? Shouldn’t we be extremely concerned that, even armed with the light of Scripture, evangelicals divorce as frequently as those who are not so armed?

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church” is profoundly and comprehensively helpful.

Every decision a husband makes regarding his wife should be informed by this great command. Yet as helpful and comprehensive as this command is, it is not sufficient for becoming a good husband. A husband must know more. He must know which actions and words communicate love to his particular wife; he must know which behaviors have the intended effect on his particular beloved. Purchasing the same gift for my wife as my father purchased for my mother may not be helpful and encouraging for her as it was for my mother. Making these kinds of decisions involves my learning not merely what is common to women, but also what is specifically true of my wife, with her particular personality, family background, and life experience. I need to learn from older men who have been married longer than I, from younger men whose marriages are better than mine, and from authors and observers of human

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nature who have insights I lack. I need to learn from attentive conversation with my wife and diligent reflection about which of my efforts to love her in the past have had their intended effect and which have not. I cannot learn these things from the Bible.

MR: Scripture is adequate to guide our lives and callings as humans, but it is not the sole or complete guide regarding the particulars of those lives and callings. Doesn’t this mean that, rather than framing this discussion in terms of Scripture’s sufficiency, it would be better to ask about Scripture’s “primary purpose”? Would this language help avoid some false dichotomies?

TDG: Yes. That is why I take WCF 1:6 as, in many ways, analogous to the Shorter Catechism’s “what do the scriptures principally teach,” cited above.

MR: In your piece you answer the question, “How does one acquire wisdom?” like this: “Well, in part, by heeding God’s commands in Scripture. But more commonly, wisdom comes from listening to advice, from entertaining the opinion of a variety of people, by listening to older people, and by observing the natural order itself…. Most importantly, it does not come exclusively or perhaps even primarily through Bible study.”

How do you interpret those scriptures which seem to support the claim that wisdom and insight and understanding come primarily through Bible study (see, e.g., Ps. 119:97; 100; 19:7)?

TDG: My “or perhaps even primarily” follows my statement about “more commonly.” “Primarily” can be used differently. If it is used to mean actual frequency, I think that many of our day-to-day decisions—and perhaps the majority of them—require the kind of wisdom we get from listening to others. However, if it is used to refer to what is most trustworthy, then the answer is entirely different. Divine wisdom is always infallible; it is incapable of being wrong. Human wisdom, on the other hand, is always capable of being wrong. So we should place entire confidence in divine wisdom and only tentative confidence in human wisdom. But as we actually live, day-by-day and hour-by-hour, many and possibly most of the decisions we make are matters of wisdom that we probably won’t find addressed in Scripture. Do I let the same student ask three consecutive questions in class? If three student organizations ask me to be their faculty advisor, then which one do I choose? Vast numbers of these daily decisions are not specifically addressed in Scripture. They must be answered not only with Scripture’s great comprehensive principles (the Golden Rule, 1 Corinthians 13, etc.), but also with the additional specific counsel of others who have encountered similar issues and reflected on them.

MR: Some of our readers thought you treated theonomy dismissively. Would you respond to that concern?

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TDG: I will let the editors assume partial responsibility for that perception. Due to the demands of space, they omitted some material from my article which made it appear that I was just dismissing theonomy. I had originally included a footnote that said that space did not permit a thorough evaluation of theonomy and that referred readers to a lengthier critique I had already published (Westminster Theological Journal 56 [Spring, 1994]: 23-43). The editors also omitted quotations from Calvin (see Institutes IV.xx.14) and James Henley Thornwell (see his Collected Writings, IV, 449) which corroborated my assertions: For there are some who deny that a commonwealth is duly framed which neglects the political system of Moses, and is ruled by the common laws of nations. Let other men consider how perilous and seditious this notion is; it will be enough for me to have proved it false and foolish [Calvin, Institutes, IV.xx.14 (Battles translation)].

The Constitution of the Church is a divine revelation; the Constitution of the State must be determined by human reason and the course of providential events. The Church has no right to construct or modify a government for the State, and the State has no right to frame a creed or polity for the Church. They are planets moving in different orbits, and unless each is confined to its own track, the consequences may be as disastrous in the moral world as the collision of different spheres in the world of matter [James Henley Thornwell, Collected Writings, IV.449].

Of course, anyone is entitled to disagree with Calvin and Thornwell (and Cunningham and Dabney, for that matter, whose similar words I might have cited). But my point was that theonomy was considered erroneous by the Reformed tradition.

This claim rightly requires justification, the tip of whose iceberg I tried to supply. Theonomy is a serious and significant departure from the Reformed tradition’s formal and material principles; as such, it must be carefully evaluated and refuted, not dismissed outright. In my unedited article, I made reference both to acknowledged representatives of the Reformed tradition as well as to my own published effort to evaluate it carefully. Finally, I would note that I am friendlier to theonomy than Calvin was: he thought it was “perilous, seditious, false, and foolish.” I think it is perilous, false, and foolish; but I don’t consider it seditious.

MR: What do you consider to be the causes of what you consider to be an exaggerated view of the sufficiency of Scripture?

TDG: Fundamentalists have migrated to the Reformed tradition in such numbers as to have significantly reshaped the host culture. A tradition that once believed, with Calvin and Westminster, in the light of nature now appears hesitant to affirm such. A tradition that was once, like Calvin, neither socially nor intellectually separatist (read his references to unbelieving authors in the Institutes) appears to have become somewhat so. A tradition that was once intellectually aristocratic rather than populist (preferring arguments and reasoning that were sound, albeit nuanced or sophisticated, rather than arguments and reasoning that appealed to the common person of common training and intelligence) has apparently become intellectually populist. Fundamentalism, a product of both Pietism and Separatism, has always believed that the safest thing to do is to read and consider only what is written in the Bible and has thus founded Bible colleges rather than true liberal arts colleges.

It has recoiled from a candid examination of the thought of uninspired men and has been almost forced, consequently, to exaggerate Scripture’s sufficiency. J. Gresham Machen was aware of this tendency and of its potential to injure the historic Reformed tradition and its witness to the world. He thus warned against it in what I still consider to be perhaps the most prescient address he ever gave: Is it not far easier to be an earnest Christian if you confine your attention to the Bible and do not risk being led astray by the thought of the world? We answer, of course it is easier. Shut yourself up in an intellectual monastery, do not disturb yourself with the thought of unregenerate men, and of course you will find it easier to be a Christian, just as it is easier to be a good soldier in comfortable winter quarters than it is on the field of battle. You save your own soul—but the Lord’s enemies remain in possession of the field [“The Scientific Preparation of the Minister,” delivered September 20, 1912 at the opening of the 101st session of Princeton Theological Seminary. Reprinted in Education, Christianity, and the State, ed. John W. Robbins, The Trinity Foundation, 1987, p. 53].

Editors’ Conclusion: In some circles, an erroneous view of the Bible’s purpose has emerged. It is often overlooked because it seems so pious, but it actually undermines God’s revelation by ascribing to it

purposes it does not claim for itself. This hypersufficient view of Scripture asserts that Scripture is a complete guide for virtually all areas of life—from where to move, to whom to marry, to what career one ought to pursue. Accepting this erroneous view of the Bible’s purpose allows a new kind of trivialization of Scripture to take root because the more particular directives discovered by this view are not based on plain readings of the relevant texts. Unfortunately, what some of our readers saw as a caricature in Dr. Gordon’s article—“read two verses and call me in the morning”—is a sad reality in some Christian circles.

In addition to the over-emphasis that Rome placed on tradition and church hierarchy in interpreting the scriptures, the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura also set itself against this notion of the Bible as a magical wisdom book. The Reformation reminded the Church that Scripture’s primary purpose is to point people to Christ, to tell his story of redemption, and to provide general guidance for Christian life and faith rather than to serve as a sourcebook of proof-texts that can help individual Christians settle the daily details of their lives. As Dr. Gordon points out, the authentic Reformational view of Scripture is presupposed by the Westminster Confession’s appeal to the light of nature and Christian prudence for guidance even in the worship and governance of the Church.

Reformation views of “common grace” should also come into play here by reminding the Church that there is wisdom outside her confines and encouraging Christians to seek out and appreciate the good work of non-believers.

Modern Reformation erred by allowing Dr. Gordon’s article to be more provocative than it should have been. Our choice of title, especially, kept some of our readers from understanding and embracing his central thesis, which we think must be reaffirmed if we are to be faithful to the revealed purpose and intent of the Word of God. We believe that the sufficiency of Scripture is undermined both by making it say more and less than it actually does.

We have consistently defended the Protestant Reformation’s view of Scripture. Indeed, our insistence on Scripture’s sufficiency has characterized our debates with Roman Catholics and evangelicals. We remain committed to sola Scriptura and regret that Dr. Gordon’s original article caused some to question his dedication and our dedication to this most central of Reformation doctrines. This is precisely the kind of vigorous discussion we need to encourage in our pages and we thank you for your participation.

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Ex Auditu

Preaching from the Choir

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[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10]

and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus was already interceding for his own when he was on earth. He was praying for our faith, that it would not fail. This is also apparent in his high priestly prayer in John 17. Furthermore, he knows that his prayers will be effective, for he tells Peter, “When once you have turned again,” not, “If you turn again.” Even though Peter stumbled in denial, his faith did not fail utterly. And this is what the Lord is praying for us, a cornerstone of the great security and hope found in this epistle of assurance.

sung, was to be the gospel. In his commentary on Psalm 118, he writes, “They [the righteous] praise only God’s grace, works, words, and power as they are revealed to them in Christ. This is their sermon and song, their hymn of praise.” His Christmas hymn, Von Himmelhoch, expresses it this way:

God Bids Us Come Is it not a wonderful thing to know that God bids us come? This great, holy God of righteousness and wrath says, “Draw near to me through my Son, your High Priest. Draw near to me.” This is his closing invitation this morning: “Draw near to me through your High Priest. Draw near to me in confession and prayer and meditation and trust and praise. Come. I will not cast you out.”

For Christ “is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

John Piper (D.Theol., University of Munich) is the senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN. More information on Dr. Piper’s books and resources can be found at www.desiringGOD.org.

From heav’n above to earth I come To bear good news to every home; Glad tidings of great joy I bring, Whereof I now will say and sing.

Thinking about music ministry today in such terms would change the Church.

There are clearly significant changes needed.

My contention is that the first changes should occur in the minds and hearts of pastors and musicians who have, for too long, understood the purpose of music to be something other than what the Bible declares. The implications of adjusting our misconceptions about worship to match what the Scripture teaches, and what theologians such as Luther, Watts, and Boice championed, will be explored in more detail in future columns.

Dr. Paul S. Jones serves as organist and music director of historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA and is director of music and worship for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

In this article Dr. Jones quoted from the Fortress Press edition of Luther’s Works, Paul Westermeyer’s Te Deum (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), James Boice’s commentary Psalms: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), and Horton Davies’s The Worship of the English Puritans (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997).

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The Consummation of the Law [CONTINUED FROM PAGE 37]

He has done all this in order that I may belong to him, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in eternal righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally.”

With this same confidence, the writers of the Formula of Concord found profound comfort in Christ’s descent into hell, confessing that “we believe simply that the entire person, God and human being, descended to hell after his burial, conquered the devil, destroyed the power of hell, and took from the devil all his power…. Thus, we retain the heart of this article and derive comfort from it, so that ‘neither hell nor the devil can capture or harm us’ and all who believe in Christ.” ■

John T. Pless (M.Div., Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio) is assistant professor of pastoral ministry and missions at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is a contributor to Lutheran Worship: History and Practice.

In this article, John T. Pless has cited Lutheran doctrinal standards which can be found in the Lutheran Book of Concord, translated by Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert. His quotations of Pieper, Quenstedt, and Gerhard are all found in Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950–1957).

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On Being a Seeker of the Truth: Sic et Non

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've been thinking lately that as Christians we often do a pretty poor job of evaluating the

stronger by our having said "yes" when that was warranted. spiritual truth claims of others, whether inside or outside Christian circles. Everybody, it seems, But learning to say "yes and no" also means that we should has an opinion about God or spiritual things. But what should we say when confronted not accept everything others say uncritically. Although an by theological opinions different from our own? idea may sound interesting or we're intrigued by its In our assessment of contemporary theological novelty, it isn't enough to commend it to us. We must or religious thinking, we too often demonstrate an do the difficult task of determining whether, on the undiscriminating approach. Either we reject every basis of Scripture, it is right. new way of thinking or speaking out of hand, or we Just as clearly as we must affirm the truths others embrace all new ideas with open, uncritical arms. hold, we must also reject their errors. Too many of Either way is wrong; we need a better way. us are extremely naive in our acceptance of the Despite the "all or nothing" approach that truth claims of others. Too often we allow seems to hold sway, I think we need to learn to say ourselves to be misled by others' false notions "yes" and "no" (sic et non, as the old Latin because we are convinced that their motives are J. A. O. PREUS theologians used to say it) to the truth claims of pure, unaware of the damaging (and damning!) others: "Yes" to what is good and right and true; spiritual effects of every false doctrine or teaching.

What I am suggesting is not that we should adopt "no" to what is bad and false and untrue. a middle road, as if we prefer sitting on the fence and Notice, I didn't say "yes or no."

We need to say President of both as we assess the truth of what others are saying. are unable to take a position on an issue. Truth is not Concordia University Irvine, California We should learn to affirm what others are saying that found simply by merging two opposing positions is biblical and conforms to the truth of the gospel. But and seeking the lowest common denominator. The we also must reject what is unscriptural and contradicts truth is the truth wherever it is on the spectrum, and we only compromise it if we treat it as if it were the gospel. This is the only proper approach.

This means, first of all, that in our approach to merely a conflation of all viewpoints.

How do we do a better job of engaging the contemporary claims we need to learn to say "yes."

We need to avoid an attitude of hyper-criticism, which increasingly diverse religious opinions we are hearing assumes that if any idea is new (or, if we've never heard today? By teaching our minds and our lips to say "yes it said that way before) it is, ipso facto, false. No and no." "Yes" to what is good and right. "No" to particular church body or theological tradition has all what is bad and wrong. I am not pointing out an easy the truth. True, biblical ideas are also found, more way or a shortcut. This will require that we use our often than we might think, outside our own circles. critical facilities and actually listen to people as they Our task, then, is to seek the truth wherever it may speak. It will also require us to search the scriptures be found, even if it comes from the lips of those who more carefully and fully to be in a better position to may also, in other respects, hold ideas that are make a valid assessment of others' truth claims. No, erroneous. What is true is true, even when spoken by this is not a shortcut. It is the more difficult way-and a heretic. In fact, our "no," which we must also say the more excellent way. But, the truth demands it, if with clarity and conviction, will be made all the we truly wish to be seekers of the truth.

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