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Hell is Ultimately Empty
[A slightly revised version of an article in DisciplesWorld,
vol. 3, issue 9 (November 2004), pp. 13-15. Posted here 11/2/04.
For an extended discussion of "dual destiny" see Chapter 13
on "Christian Hope and Eschatology" in my A Grammar of Christian
Faith: Systematic Explorations in Christian Life and Doctrine, especially
pp. 709-724.]
I do not question that the New Testament contains references to “Gehenna”—usually
translated as “hell”—and that in early Christian usage
it often refers to a place or destiny of ultimate punishment. And I do
not challenge the fact that many of the references to hell describe the
means of punishment as burning fire.
However, I am convinced that the Gospel of Jesus Christ—with its
grand themes of incarnation, cross, resurrection, and grace—demands
that hell is ultimately empty.
To argue this thesis, I must first address common assumptions about hell.
DUAL DESTINY
The images and concepts in Christian tradition that emphasize hell as
ultimate punishment comprise a pattern of thinking I call dual
destiny—some folk are destined for salvation while others are destined
for damnation. Dual destiny thinking pervades Western Christian
and secular cultures.
Critical to the internal logic of this pattern of thinking is this question:
How is it decided whether one is saved or damned? Two
major responses to this question have developed in Christian tradition
over the centuries.
The first answer pivots around how a person has lived her life,
how she has conducted herself. Usually this is evaluated by whether she
has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior; 2) lived a holy and righteous
life; and 3) has faith.
Each of these criteria raises other questions, such as, ‘how is
it known whether someone has truly accepted Jesus Christ, such that she
would know whether she is saved or not?’ Personal attitude and conduct
become the crucial determining factors for whether one is saved or not.
In one way or another, this first response claims that persons
ultimately get what they deserve. Some deserve hell and others
deserve heaven. I call this pattern of understanding the eschatology
of just deserts. God may be the one who decides the criteria
for the deserts, and God may be the one who administers the deserts, but
it is how a person has lived her life that determines whether she is ultimately
saved or damned.
The second answer to the question of how dual destiny
is determined is quite different. It starts with the judgment that all
persons are sinners and therefore deserving of some punishment. It is
God, however, who determines who will be forgiven and thereby saved and
who will remain unforgiven and thereby damned. Those who are saved
are saved by the grace of God, not by their just deserts, but those who
are damned are just getting what they deserve.
The fourth century theologian, Augustine and the sixteenth century reformer,
John Calvin are the great representatives of this second answer, convinced
as they were that it is God’s grace alone that saves us.
But, unfortunately, they both were limited by their conviction that ultimately
there must be a dual destiny of some kind—there
must be a place of eternal suffering. They did not want
that destiny, however, to be determined by human conduct, which they both
believed would be a form of works righteousness.
The concept of dual destiny, then, requires a belief that God’s
justice is finally retributive: justice entails giving persons what is
their due—meting out rewards and punishments—however
their due is determined. In the first answer, people get finally what
they deserve. In the second answer some people are saved by God’s
sovereign grace, not by their deserts, even though some others are damned
to hell by theirs.
THE LOGIC OF SALVATION
What happens if we were to rethink the logic of dual destiny and
just deserts starting with God’s merciful incarnate work in Jesus
Christ and the logic of salvation?
Consider how we characterize what God has done in Jesus Christ. The
God of Israel becomes incarnate in the Jew Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus’
life, death, and resurrection God encounters the powers of sin and evil
and takes them into the divine Life itself, thereby depriving them of
their power to alienate humans ultimately from God’s gracious love.
Let’s say with the fourth century Apostles’ Creed
that the crucified Christ descended into hell, thereby emptying it of
the power to be the ultimate destiny of any of God’s creatures.
What happens in Jesus Christ affects all humans before God. God will not
longer count their sins against them and extends to all a merciful forgiveness.
Let’s call this, justification—all are forgiven
and justified in Christ, whether they know it or not.
But, of course, the church becomes that community that says “yes”
to what God has done in Christ. The church is comprised of those
folk who are transformed by the grace of God in Christ through the Spirit.
They live differently from the way others might live
who are trapped by the domination of the principalities and powers of
evil. They live as forgivers of enemies and as lovers of their neighbors.
People who know God’s love and grace in Christ find themselves propelled
on a journey of accepting that grace in how they live.
Yet, this is a narrow road less traveled, and few are they who undertake
it in earnestness, relinquishing their inclination for violence, hatred,
and revenge. Let us call this journey sanctification.
There are many, however, who still live under the domination of sin: they
are alienated from God, from their neighbors, and from their own created
nature. They burn under hatred, revenge, violence, despair, and selfishness—they
are stalked by hell! In terms of how folk live their lives in
time, we might even say there is a sort of dual destiny in it—some
folk live now under hellish conditions of alienation from God, from others,
and from their own created nature.
But what about salvation in the next life—that ultimate
destiny awaiting folk beyond death? Do we think that, because
we are followers of Christ, we will be saved as our just deserts for so
following? Note that this implies that those who do not
follow Christ—even though forgiven in Christ—are nevertheless
destined after death for ultimate alienation from God in a consuming,
hellish fire?
This raises the interesting question of whether we followers of Christ
finally trust our own righteousness as we ultimately face God, or do we
trust the gracious forgiveness of God? I think we would have a hard time
saying that somehow we have a just claim on God’s salvation.
Rather, I think we might well re-examine the logic of dual destiny, just
deserts, and ultimate destiny and realize that we proclaim a Gospel
that is rooted in the sovereign ultimacy of God’s love and grace.
Just deserts for all is not what is manifest in the resurrected Jesus
Christ. Instead, it is a resurrected hope quite beyond our reckoning of
what we and others deserve!
HELL IS ULTIMATELY EMPTY
Then we pray and hope that hell is ultimately empty because of
what God has done for all in Jesus Christ and will do in whatever future
might yet unfold.
Does this diminish the importance of confessing Christ and living in discipleship
to him, even though that discipleship does not earn one’s ultimate
salvation? How could the living a life of joyful discipleship,
undaunted by the powers of evil, perpetually striving to love the neighbor
and even the enemy, and repudiating the need for recourse to violence
as the just deserts for some folk—how could that sort of life ever
be regarded as negligible? It is a wonderful life to love God
for God’s own sake and not for the sake of earning God’s favor,
being empowered to love God by God’s own grace and love in Jesus
Christ.
Why was it ever important to Christians that, for their own salvation
to be meaningful, some others—especially those others called evil-doers—must
be truly and ultimately damned? Such thinking undervalues and underestimates
the radical power of God’s grace.
There is a Gospel that arises dramatically from the New Testament’s
testimony to God’s incarnate love in Jesus Christ. It is good news
that unleashes hope for the world and builds up the church’s faith.
Copyright©Joe R. Jones
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