Judgement – Seeing Ourselves in the Light of Love
In around 1995 I was in the early stages of becoming a lay preacher. I was just getting on my feet as a preacher after a wobbly start when I had thought a few times of just giving it up. On one particular Sunday I preached a sermon on a topic I can’t remember, but somewhere in the sermon I had made some kind of illustration by making a rather derogatory remark about time-share salesmen. I don’t know how the timeshare industry is regulated or operated here, but in South Africa, the time-share industry had a reputation of creating contracts that were easy to sign but very difficult if not impossible to get out of. After the service one of the more senior members of the church came past to shake my hand at the door. All he said to me was: Brian, I am a time share salesman. To be quite honest, I don’t think he was a time-share salesman, but was putting himself in the shoes of a time-share salesman I order to make a point. And in that moment I suddenly realised what I had done. It was for me a moment of searing pain in which I instantaneously recognised not only how sweeping and prejudiced a statement I had made from the pulpit, but the potential hurt and shame I may have caused for anyone in the congregation who was a time share salesman or perhaps had a family member who was one. I felt ashamed that the words had come out of my mouth so glibly without having considered what they could mean for some who were listening. One could say that it was a moment of judgement. A very painful moment, that in fact lasted like a dreadful shadow for hours afterwards, and in fact probably for quite a number of days. But it was also a moment of growth. One could say even a moment of salvation from that moment for myself and for anyone who would listen to my preaching from that moment onwards. I would from that moment onwards be far more mindful of how I spoke from the pulpit and hopefully never again make derisive, sweeping and prejudiced comments from the pulpit again. I hope I have never done so again. It is entirely possible that I have, because we all have blind-spots, things we are not fully aware of unless someone points them out to us. Today I would like to reflect on the concept of judgement. What is judgement? What does judgement look like and feel like. In a way, this is an epilogue to the sermon series we have just completed. The idea of the Last Judgement is one that is deeply etched into our Western Psyche. Some of the greatest artworks of Western Civilization are depictions of the last judgement. And I think especially of the scene of the Last Judgement painted by Michelangelo on the Altar Wall of the Sistine Chapel between 1536 and 1541. Interestingly, in Michelangelo’s depiction of the Last Judgement, almost all the human figures in the painting are depicted naked. One might simply put that down to the fact that it is a renaissance painting in which it had become more and more common to depict the naked human form. But in doing so, it appears that he was actually trying to communicate something of the deeper meaning of judgement: The sense that the process or experience of judgement is an experience in which our ability to cover up is removed. Judgement is the experience of no longer being able to hide ourselves from the light of truth, the truth of who we are and what we have done. One gets a sense of that in the Genesis story. When Adam and Eve in the story disobey the Divine command, they feel exposed and vulnerable and so try and cover up their nakedness by hiding in the garden and sewing together fig leaves. It is a story that is true not because it happened, but because it happens to all of us. It conveys an archetypal truth. It is surely symbolic of our human tendency to become defensive in trying to cover over our flaws and faults. None of us enjoy being criticized and having our faults and weaknesses identified, even when we know that the criticism might be true. In fact often it is when the criticism is true that we become the most defensive because we feel so vulnerable. We don’t like to be exposed and so we try to cover over our faults, because we don’t want others to see us as we really are. And more often because we don’t want to see ourselves as we really are. We are afraid of the light, because in it we feel exposed and vulnerable. And so we prefer to hide our flaws and faults in the dark so that we can avoid looking at them in the hope that others won’t see them as well. And this brings us to our passage from John’s Gospel today in which the writer shares his perspective on what judgement is: John 3:19-20 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (And we should note that the Greek word for evil in this passage comes from the root Greek word ponos meaning hurtful. Our tendency to cause hurt and harm. It is not saying we are inherently evil.) I wonder if that gives us a clue as to what the so-called final judgement is about: Is it perhaps that the metaphor of the final judgement refers to that moment when the Light of Truth will shine upon us in such a way that we can no longer hide the truth of who we are and what we have done. It is a searing and painful moment, because we don’t like what we see it and we especially don’t like others to see it as well. The metaphor of the Last Judgement is the experience where we stand naked before God and we can no longer cover ourselves up. I think of someone like Vladimir Putin. No-one likes to think of themselves as a bad person. You can be almost certain that Vladimir Putin does not think of himself as a bad person. In his mind he has a whole lot of stories to justify to himself and to other people why he is doing what he is doing. In his propaganda he constantly tries to show himself in the best light. What will judgement look like for Putin? It will look exactly the same as it will be for each of us. It will be a moment or an experience of no longer being able to hide behind the stories that we tell ourselves, and having the truth about our actions exposed will surely be a most painful experience. But what we don’t realise is that the Light of Truth that illuminates our darkness and exposes it is also at the very same time the Light of Divine Love. And while it might be painful to have the truth about ourselves revealed by Divine Light, it is also in that moment that we can begin to experience the embrace of divine love. What will the judgement and accountability look like? That is a question that is difficult to answer, because we are in the territory of things that are beyond our full comprehension. But what I would suggest is that at the very least judgement and moral accountability when we stand naked before God will look something like my experience standing at the door of the church shaking hands. At the very least the final judgement will be a lifting of the veil of the true nature of our crimes of commission and omission. It will be seeing our acts of cruelty and indifference in the full light of love. It will be a coming to know and to experience the full impact of our actions upon those whom we have hurt, abused or perhaps neglected. And that seeing of ourselves and our actions unveiled completely before us will be an experience searing and inescapable pain for it is a dreadfully painful thing when we have nowhere left to hide and our deeds of darkness are exposed to ourselves and others. But the good news will also be that this searing pain of having our deeds and misdeeds exposed by the Light of Divine Love will also be our healing and for our final salvation. When one thinks of these things in terms of victims and perpetrators, when a victim wishes pain on a perpetrator is it not that what they are really wanting is for the perpetrator to fully know and to fully understand and in some way to fully experience for themselves the full extent of the pain they have caused the victim. And generally, where perpetrators have been able to bring themselves to the point of doing so with deep contrition, then a true and real reconciliation is able to happen between victim and perpetrator. Does that possibly give us a glimpse of what the final reconciliation of all things will be: On the one hand, it will be the experience of the complete healing of the pain and wounds of the victim which will be mirrored and facilitated by the complete accountability and the complete contrition and healing of the perpetrator as well in which the perpetrators of this world will come to fully know and fully experience from the inside the true depth of pain inflicted upon their victims. And this process of healing of the perpetrator will not be without pain or without cost, but it will be full and it will be complete, just as the healing of the wounds and pain of the victim will also be full and complete aided by the fact that the perpetrator has fully understood and experienced in their own spirits the pain that he or she has caused. In Ephesians 5:13 we read: ‘But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes light.’ The exposing of our darkness might be a painful experience, but it is also the experience of our ultimate healing. The Light of Divine Judgement turns out to be the Light of Divine Healing and Love because “...everything that is illuminated becomes light.”
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Questioning Eternal Hell (Part 6) - Free Will & Corrective Punishment
Over the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, I had been inviting us to question the Doctrine of Eternal Hell. I had been using as my guide a book by David Bentley Hart trying to communicate the essence of some of the key points he makes. A question that we began to explore in the last sermon was: Is there any justice? Where is the justice? If the promise of Universal Salvation is true, that everyone, even the worst of humanity will in the end be saved by God’s all-redeeming Love expressed in Christ, is there still room for justice. We saw how David Bentley Hart believes that the New Testament writings point to two horizons: A penultimate horizon, ‘the end of the age’, in which all will be held accountable for our actions in this world, and a final horizon, ‘the age beyond all ages’ when having been purified of our darkness, we will all without exception be brought home to God. George MacDonald was a Scottish Congregational Minister who lived in the 1800’s (born in 1824 – and died 1905). He was the author also of quite a number of fictional stories. He had a very big impact on C.S. Lewis. Now George MacDonald was a Christian Universalist, in other words a believer in Universal Salvation, that in the end, all would be saved. But this did not mean that he had given up on the idea of some kind of judgement, accountability and even punishment in the after-life. MacDonald's universalism was not the idea that everyone will automatically be saved, but is closer to the ancient view of the Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa that all will ultimately repent (come to a change of heart and mind) and thus be restored to God. MacDonald grew up in a very severe Scottish Calvinist tradition and appears to have never felt comfortable with Calvinist doctrine, feeling that its principles were inherently "unfair". Apparently when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him as a child, and that God had created some to be destined to eternal torment, he burst into tears. He could never accept the doctrine even though he was assured that he was one of the elect. As Barbara Amall writes: He was repeatedly quoted saying that when Protestants decided that three places in the afterlife were too many, [hell; purgatory; heaven] he believed that “they got rid of the wrong one.” He believed the early protestants should have got rid of the idea of Eternal Hell and rather should have retained something of the idea of purgatory. It is not to say that his understanding of some kind of purgatory in the afterlife was an uncritical acceptance of the Catholic Doctrine of purgatory. He simply believed that some kind of purgatory, in other words a place or an experience of purification made far more sense of the over-arching Biblical framework and could at the same time preserve the foundational Christian teaching that God is Love, that God’s Love would be triumphant and that no-one would be finally excluded from God’s all encompassing, never-failing love. For George MacDonald, the idea of an eternal hell of sufferings and torment turns God into a monster for whom eternal cruelty is the final word and not eternal love. And so in 1890, George MacDonald, while giving a series of lectures on Dante made the following statement: “I do indeed believe in a place of punishment, but that longing and pain will bring us back to God.” He went on to say “There is a deep truth in the soul undergoing Purgatory [in other words, the sufferings of purification] in order that it may return to God—in whom we live and move—at all times.” From his "Unspoken Sermons: Series I, on Justice" MacDonald said that "If our God is a consuming fire, what will he do but burn and burn until every evil thing is consumed, and creation is awakened pure and free from sin! The fires of hell are but the love of God." He went on to say in the same sermon that "God's fire is not an avenging wrath, but a refining and cleansing flame. He will purge from his creation all that mars its beauty and tarnishes its purity." In God's school, where men [people] are punished for their sins, there is no cruelty, only love. For God cannot be cruel, and he never punishes for vengeance; he only corrects for the sake of the wrongdoer…. Punishment is not vengeance, but a means of reclaiming the wrongdoer and restoring him to his true self." It also needs to be remembered that where the New Testament refer to punishment, the Greek word that is used, kolasis, refers to corrective punishment and not vengeance. The word can be found in Matthew 25:46 at the end of the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the goats, or the ‘unrighteous’, who have not shown care and concern for the poor and the needy, are separated from the sheep and thus destined for what English translations call ‘eternal punishment’. But here the Greek word is kolasis. And as Thomas Talbot writes in his book the Inescapable Love of God, kolasis was a common Greek word for remedial punishment or correction, and that the idea of an eternal correction, would be an event or process of limited duration whose corrective effect literally endures forever. And so for George MacDonald and many other Christian Universalists like him, all the metaphors of fire in the New Testament as we touched on in the last sermon, refer to the purging fire of Divine love burning away all that is false, unjust, unloving and wicked within us in order to reveal that golden essence within of that original true self or the image of God that God has placed with us that has been marred obscured and distorted, by our selfishness, injustice and lack of love. George MacDonald believed that the purifying, purgatorial, love of God is in fact already experienced in this life whenever we are met with the painful consequences of our wayward actions. But there are also a few other metaphors as well in the New Testament, most especially in the Gospel of Matthew and one from the Gospel of Luke, metaphors of exclusion, like sealed wedding doors, accompanied by the gnashing of teeth. And one can think especially of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus where because of the Rich Man’s failure to show compassion and human kindness to Lazarus in his destitution and poverty, he seems to be quarantined off in some experience of suffering and thirst in the afterlife. But there is nothing in the parable to indicate that these sufferings of the Rich Man are in fact eternal. We should also be reminded of the fact that it is a parable, not a literal description. It is but one metaphor among many used in the New Testament. For George MacDonald, if the passages in the New Testament referring to some kind of exclusion and banishment from the Divine Presence are to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, then the purpose of such exclusion is ultimately to awaken a deeper longing for God that would in the end bring that soul back home to God. I am reminded of the words of St Augustine: “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”. The suggestion is that outside the embrace of Divine Love, there is no real happiness, only restlessness. And it is that restlessness and unhappiness that will eventually make all of us turn back to God where we can find our deepest happiness. There are a lot of people who suggest that eternal hell is the choice that some will make to remain eternally separated from God. This is the argument based on free-will. That God respects our free will so much that God will allow us to make the eternal choice to reject God. But David Bentley Hart says that such a choice in fact makes no sense. Because we have been made by Divine Love and for Divine Love, and that our true and deepest freedom can only be found within that Divine Love. To live outside of that Love will forever leave us unhappy, empty and unfulfilled. And it is precisely for that reason that David Bentley Hart suggests that we will all one day find our way back to God, no matter how far we have strayed or how lost and depraved we have become, because as beings who in fact crave happiness and freedom, the desire for that happiness and freedom will eventually lead us back to the only place where that happiness and freedom can be satisfied, and that is in God. And so it could be said that God has created us with a homing device. You can only stray so far and for so long until it begins to chafe and a deep longing is ignited within us to return home. The idea that we can wonder off for all eternity and of our own free will reject God’s Infinite and Boundless Love doesn’t actually make sense, because it goes against the very nature of how we are made at our core. The Divine Image within, what some might speak of as the Divine Spark within all, will eventually bring us all back home. In this view, there is no-one who is dispensable in God’s eyes and there will in the end be no collateral damage in God’s plan to bring all things back to unity in the end. “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”. St Augustine, interestingly was not a Universalist, but if he had pondered his own statement deeply enough, and truly understood the limitless nature of Divine love, he might have realised that one day, all sorry and miserable sinners would turn back to God. And so in the New Testament there are numerous passages, using a variety of images and metaphors that speak of judgement, consequences and remedial and corrective sufferings. None of those need to be dispensed within a Christian Universalist framework. What David Bentley Hart suggests however is that while these passages do exist and need to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, if we simply had the eyes to see them, the number of passages that consistently point to the final reconciliation of all things are in fact far more numerous. I hope this series has been stimulating for you. I would have to concede that perhaps not all have been completely convinced by this series of 6 sermons. There is only so much ground that can be covered in 6 short reflections. The gift of our Non-Subscribing tradition remains that all of us are encouraged to investigate these things for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. If this series has peaked your interest there are a number of books that you can read further. I will put references up on our website. David Bentley Harts book “That All Shall Be Saved” was not the easiest reading as he seems to be writing for people who have a masters or doctorate in theology. But there are a number of other books that you could read: Rob Bell has a very readable book entitled: Love Wins which I would be happy to lend to you. I have another readable book by Kalen Fristad called Destined for Salvation. The most thorough book that I could probably recommend on the subject is by Thomas Talbot, called: The Inescapable Love of God. Thomas Talbott’s Book which is available on Kindle is perhaps one of the most thorough Biblical explorations of the subject. Opening Words by Molly Gordon
You can crush Love down, bury it, cover it over, but it will rise. It will reach for the sun, and we will reach for each other. Love will have the final word, even if that word is just a question, a wild possibility, a whisper to rise and follow wherever it may lead. Prayer O God of Resurrection Life and Light We praise and thank you for this day. This day on which you created light and saw that it was good. This day in whose early morning light we discovered the tomb of life was empty and encountered Christ, the world's true light. This day in which we celebrate the triumph of life over death and the victory of that Light that darkness can never overcome. This is the day that you have made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it. Reading John 20:1-2 & 11-16a 1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” 11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” Reflection In the Easter narrative recorded in John’s Gospel, when the Risen Christ meets Mary, he asks her: Why are you crying? And on Easter Sunday, it is a question that we are all invited to reflect on. What are the tears and the fears that you carry with you today? Perhaps they go back years and years. Perhaps they are more recent? What are the tears and the fears that you carry with you today? And on Easter Sunday, we are invited to imagine the Risen One coming to each us in the garden of our lives and speaking our name. He is indeed the gardener, the one who comes to plant seeds of life and love in the pools of our tears. And to remind us that death and fear are not how the story ends, because Life is eternal and Love can never die! Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed. Amen. Prayers of Intercession In the midst of celebrating Christ risen and in giving thanks for the resurrection life that is within us and all around us we bring these our gifts and with them our prayers. We pray also for the things in our lives and in the lives of people everywhere that are trapped in the tombs of death: For those trapped despair in the midst of loss or confusion For those trapped in bitterness as a result of hurt or disloyalty For those experiencing violence of heart and hand in the face of conflict and opposition. Silence Wherever death is found whether in our minds and souls or in the matter and relationships of our bodies and corporate lives lead us O God by your messengers of light to look for new life, not among the dead but through the pangs of death and beyond it to the One who is alive forever and ever. And in the hope and assurance of the Resurrection, we pause to remember with love, those who have passed from this world into God’s nearer presence. AMEN. Questioning Eternal Hell Part 5: What about judgement and justice?
Over the past few weeks I have been inviting us to question the Doctrine of Eternal Hell. I have been using as my guide a book by David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, trying to communicate the essence of some of the salient points he makes in the book. A question that some may be wondering at this point is: Is there any justice? Where is the justice? If the doctrine of eternal hell is potentially incorrect will the abusers, perpetrators and oppressors of this world ever be held to account, and if so how? In offering some perspectives on these questions, I would like to take us to what seems to be the framework in which most of the New Testament writers worked within. In this regard, David Bentley Hart writes that within in the New Testament you will find two seemingly contradictory lists of statements. On the one hand, you will find statements that seem to support the idea of eternal damnation. A sample of such verses include: • Matthew 25:46 “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” • Jude 13 [These people are] wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. • 2 Thessalonians 1:9 “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” On the other hand, you will find statements that seem to support the doctrine of universal salvation: • For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22) • For when I am lifted up I will draw (or drag) all people to myself (John 12:32) • In Jesus Christ is “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21) How do we resolve these seemingly contradictory viewpoints with two seemingly absolute statements being made on both sides? The way in which advocates of eternal damnation have resolved these statements has been by placing their emphasis on the word eternal as in eternal fire, eternal destruction, eternal punishment. While on the other hand they have had to do some re-interpreting of the meaning of the word ‘all’. And so when the Biblical writers mention the word ‘all’ advocates of eternal hell would say that the word ‘all’, doesn’t in fact mean ‘all’, it actually only means a few. When the New Testament writers use the word ‘all’ they suggest that these writers only mean ‘all’ of the elect… or ‘all’ of God’s chosen, despite the fact that the actual references in the New Testament do not in themselves contain any such qualification. But David Bentley Hart suggest that the reason that these two sets of statements seem to be contradictory is because for centuries, theologians have been relying on defective translations of the original Greek word aionios being translated to mean eternal, forever, infinite, unending. But David Bentley Hart suggests that even thought he word has a certain flexibility of meaning no-where in the ancient world was the word used in that way. Rather the word had the meaning of ‘an age’ denoting a period of time with a beginning and an end. Originally it was a word that described simply the life-span of a human being, but later came to be used to describe much longer periods of time. And in this sense the ancient Greek word aionios forms the root of our English word aeon, which although coveys the idea of an extremely long period of time is still a period of time that will come to an end. Some would suggest that by implication the word aionios could be interpreted to mean eternal or forever and ever, but that was certainly not the standard or normal understanding of that word in the ancient world. And with this, David Bentley Hart says these two seemingly contradictory perspectives in the New Testament no longer need to be contradictory. Instead he says the New Testament writers invites us to see the future as comprising two horizons. The first horizon points us to the end of the age. And within that horizon there is space to understand that there is a cosmic justice according to which all of us will have to give account and experience of the consequences of our actions done in this world. An accountability that will be experienced as a judgement. But the good news is that there is a second horizon to which the New Testament framework points that takes us beyond the first horizon to ‘the age beyond all ages’. And in that second horizon, there is the final promise of the complete healing and restoration of all things. David Bentley Hart would therefore suggest that all those passages in the New Testament that deal with punishment, judgement and consequences are referring to that first horizon and describe penultimate, but not the final state of affairs. While on the other hand, all the passages that point to the final reconciliation of all things, points to the second horizon, the age beyond all ages, when as the writer of Ephesians puts it God “will bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth” (1:10) and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:28 God will be All and in all. What does the judgement and accountability of that first horizon look like? The judgement of the ‘end of the age’. The fact that the New Testament contains a variety of words, metaphors and images to speak of these things should alert us to the fact that they are ultimately beyond our full comprehension for those of us who in this world see as though through a glass darkly. But one of the primary images and the metaphors that is used in the Bible for this process of judgement, and accountability is the metaphor of fire. In Mark 9, Jesus is described as saying: Everyone will be salted with fire. The fire in this passage is the fire of Gehenna, one of the words that is usually translated as hell, but the reference to salt clearly suggests that this fire is a purifying and preserving fire that everyone will go through. We see this image of the purifying fire of Divine Love also near the end of the Book of Revelation. The Kings of the earth, in other words, those who have used power in this world in oppressive and violent ways pass through this fire before the final unveiling of the New Heaven and New Earth where we see them now entering the New Heavenly Jerusalem. David Bentley Hart writes that “...though Paul speaks on more than one occasion of the judgement to come, it seems worth noting that the only picture he actually provides of that final reckoning is the one found in 1 Cor 3:11-15, the last two verses of which identify only two classes of the judged: those saved in and through their works and those saved by way of the fiery destruction of their works”. If the work that someone has built endures, that one will receive a reward; if anyone’s work should be burned away, that one will suffer loss, yet shall be saved, even though as by fire. This reference to fire clearly suggests not the fire of eternal, infinite, unending punishment, but rather a potentially painful purification process for the final purpose of realising that second horizon of the complete restoration and reconciliation of all things. It is a process which Paul suggests will be more painful for some than for others, because it is a painful thing to have our darkness laid bare. And for those who have already entered fully into the grace of God made known in Christ, it will not be painful at all but simply and experience of the full light of Divine Love. And so the more we are able to do the painful work of honestly confronting our own darkness, selfishness, anger or greed in the here and now, (traditionally referred to as the word repentance) the less painful it will be later on. And in addition the more we will even now begin to feel and experience the Divine Love and Grace shining upon us and within us. (This is really the kind of work that we covered in our previous preaching series on the 12 Steps). I hope that this contrast has been helpful, between the judgement passages in the New Testament on the one hand and the universal salvation passages on the other hand? They don’t have to be contradictory or sit in opposition to each other. Instead of placing them side by side, Christian Universalists resolve them by placing them in sequential order, so that while there is indeed room for accountability and justice, however that may be conceived, God’s final word is not judgement and punishment and the unending torture of those who fall short. God’s final word is in fact love and the healing of all things where every tear will be wiped away. If Eternal Damnation is God’s final word, then God’s final word is pain, cruelty and torture… By contrast Paul reminds us that 3 things remain… three things endure… faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. It suggests that God’s final word is Love. I end with a passage of scripture that if read in the light of these things can be understood to be pointing towards both horizons, the end of the age, and the age beyond all ages. 2 Peter 3:10-13 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. 11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.[b] That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. One of the questions some might ask: If all are assured of salvation in a Christian Universalist framework, then Why live righteous, holy and godly lives? But the Righteous is he heavenly life… it is to be in alignment with the wisdom of life and the wisdom and love of God and to be in alignment with our own true nature. The unrighteousness life by contrast is the hellish life. Unrighteousness us essentially to be out of alignment with the truth of our own being, to be out of alignment with God and the Wisdom of Life. The unrighteous life, the life of disharmony is the very life we are being saved from. By contrast, the righteous life, a life of love, wisdom compassion, goodness, is the life we are saved for… it is the heavenly life that we can already begin to taste here and now the more we open ourselves to the Divine Grace. There is so much more that could be said and so on the Sunday after Easter I would like to further explore these ideas a little further. The Nature of Human Beings
I have often heard it said that when a mother gives birth to a child, her heart begins to live outside of her. The pain of the child from then on becomes the pain of the mother. The loss of the child becomes the loss of the mother. The distress of the child becomes the distress of the mother. And this is also true of joy and happiness, the joy of the child becomes the joy of the mother and the happiness of the child becomes the happiness of the mother. (I do believe that this would also be true of fathers also. One has a sense of this in the story of the Prodigal Son. The fathers happiness in the story is linked to the happiness of his two sons. When his younger son leaves home and squanders his wealth and his health on wild living, the father cannot rest. Day and night he remains vigilant, waiting for his lost son to come home. His heart lives outside of himself as he waits longingly for his son to return home. And when the older son refuses to join in the party, again, the father cannot rest. He goes outside to his son to urge him to come in. As long as the older son remains outside, a part of the heart of the father remains outside also.) But there is also something significant about the bond between a mother and a child, in light of the fact that a child lives inside the mother for 9 months. There is an emotional and a spiritual bond. Indeed there is an energetic bond. One of my aunts experienced this bond in a very powerful way. Her daughter, my cousin was pregnant. At the time they were living on different continents. When my cousin went into labour, my aunt already knew, even before the phone had rung to tell her, because she had felt things in her own body that told her that her daughter had gone into labour. Newtonian science is unable to explain that and would pooh pooh it as wives tales, but in the framework of Quantum Physics where everything is connected to everything else at the level of energy, such an experience is in fact not so surprising. Once to particles have been connected together at a quantum level what happens to one of them in one part of the universe affects the other immediately. If the one particle begins to turn in a different direction, the connected particle will simultaneously begin to turn in the same direction, even when separated by vast distances. Human beings are connected to one another in much deeper ways than we have been programmed to think by our materialist, Newtonian scientific world view. Over the past few weeks, we have been on a journey questioning the notion of Eternal Hell. One of the key arguments that David Bentley Hart uses against the notion of Eternal Hell is the nature of who we are as human beings – In the modern world, we have grown accustomed to thinking of ourselves as discrete individuals. We have come to understand ourselves as completely separate beings. But David Bentley Hart suggests that this view of our humanity and our personhood is in fact not accurate. He writes that the nature of our humanity is in fact deeply inter-connected. To be a person he says is to be in relationship. Personhood consists of relationships. And Mother’s Day should give us the clue… a mother’s happiness and well-being is deeply connected to the well-being of her children. And what is true of a mother should ultimately be true for each of us if we truly think about it. And it is precisely for this reason that David Bentley Hart believes that the notion of Eternal Hell is so questionable. The doctrine of Eternal Hell suggests that it is possible for some to be ‘saved’ in the afterlife, and to live some kind of heavenly blissful existence, while there is the potential for their family members and friends, who are ‘not saved’ to live in eternal torment and eternal suffering. He suggests that this formula doesn’t in fact add up. Would it be even possible for a mother to enjoy heavenly bliss while knowing that her child has been condemned to a life of eternal unending torment. For any among us who are mothers, I wonder if that could even be conceivable? If a mother’s heart lives outside of her (as indeed I believe would be true of most fathers too), could a mother ever be ‘saved’ to live a blissful life in heaven, if in the back of her mind she was even vaguely aware that her child had made a wrong choice and would forever more live in eternal torment. This would surely be true, even if her son was a serial murder. Surely such a mother’s happiness is ultimately dependent on on the complete reformation and salvation of her serial killer son, or she would never be able to experience eternal happiness herself? Some theologians who are believers in eternal hell and eternal damnation have tried to do some theological gymnastics to imagine how this might be possible. Some have suggested for example that God will cause the ‘saved’ to have the memory of their condemned loved one’s erased forever from their minds in a kind of spiritual lobotomy. But David Bentley Hart asks what this would really mean? Would a spiritual lobotomy of this kind not lead to a serious diminishing of the personhood of that mother? If a mother’s identity is bound up in her relationship with her children, what would happen to the fullness of her personhood if the memory of a child she had given birth to were just deleted from her memory bank? This would not be an enhanced life for such a mother. It would surely be a seriously diminished life. David Bentley Hart asks the question Is not the heavenly life meant to enhance our being and our happiness rather than diminishing it? Another way theologians have suggested coming to terms with the possibility of eternal hell is that those who are saved should have no sympathy for the damned simply because such pity is fruitless, just as it is forgivable to avert one’s eyes from a frightful accident on the roads from which one cannot rescue the victims, and to cease to think about it entirely. But David Bentley Hart invites us to ask: Is this also not in fact a diminished state of people who are unable to feel the pain of others? Again, this is surely true even if we were to think of the example of a serial killer. While most of us may not feel sympathy for the suffering of a serial killer, it is surely true that the murderers brother, mother, father, sister, child, wife or friend must think of him and must suffer grief at the thought of what he has become and the end he has reached. This means suggests David Bentley Hart that our indifference to his fate must also logically be an indifference to their sufferings as well. And when projected onto eternity this would amount to an eternity of indifference to the suffering of others. David Bentley Hart asks, Does not the state of hell consist of those who are incapable of showing or feeling sympathy or compassion towards other beings. If in order to experience the bliss of heaven, the saved are no longer able to feel compassion for those suffering, have they not in so doing become no different from those living in hell? And so David Bentley Hart writes ‘There is no way in which persons can be saved as persons, except in and with all other persons.’ He goes onto to suggest that ‘No soul is who or what it is in isolation; and so no soul’s sufferings can be ignored without the sufferings of potentially limitless number of souls being ignored as well. And so it seems, if we allow the possibility that even so much as a single soul might slip away into everlasting misery, the ethos of heaven turns out to be ‘every soul for itself’ – which is also curiously enough precisely the ethos of hell. While it might indeed lead us back into childish and simplistic anthropomorphisms, if the parable of the prodigal son is anything to go by, then God too would never be able to dwell in blissful happiness and contentment if even one of God’s creatures were to dwell in unending torment and suffering. And on Mother’s Day we remember also the analogy used by the prophet Isaiah who compares God to a mother who is unable to forget the child of her breast: “Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, and walk away from the baby she bore? But even if a mother could forget, I would never forget you—never. Look, I’ve written your names on the palms of my hands.” Would it ever be possible for God, the source of all mother-hood, to abandon the children of Her creation to an eternity of suffering and torment? Surely this would not be possible even for God, or perhaps, especially for God? I end with a few passages of scripture that invite us to continue to think more deeply on these things Matthew 18:11-14 – 12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” 1 Timothy 2:4 – “It is the will of God our Saviour that all people should be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” “But God would not take away a life; He would devise plans so that the one banished from Him does not remain banished.” 2 Sam. 14:14 “With God nothing is impossible.” (Luke 1:37) “Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:8)
This week I cam across some rather funny misunderstandings: One person writes that when he was around 5 or 6, he was told to watch his baby cousin as she was laid on the couch. He watched her roll off the couch. Everyone was angry at him. He watched her roll right off the couch. Another tells how as a child his mother popped out while she was cooking. She was boiling some potatoes. She said to him “Watch the potatoes” as she left. He writes: I watched them. They burnt! But misunderstandings can sometimes be of a far more serious nature: This week, I learned the shocking information that a misunderstanding and a mistranslation led to the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During World War II, when asked if Japan would surrender, the Japanese ruler used the word “mokusatsu” which meant “we withhold comment – pending discussion.” However, it was mistranslated to mean “We are treating your message with contempt” when sent to Washington. This mistake spread quickly through the media. Frustrated by what he thought was Japan's response, President Truman decided to use atomic bombs, causing the deaths, injuries, and radiation exposure of 150,000-250,000 people. It is tragic that a mistranslation of a Japanese word could have had such devastating consequences. Over the past two weeks I have been inviting us to question the notion of Eternal Hell. Most of the thoughts in these reflections are taken from a book by David Bentley Hart called “That All May Be Saved”. David Bentley Hart essentially believes that when the Church began to teach the notion of Eternal Hell or Eternal Damnation, the church began to take itself down a wrong path. He believes that traditional teachings on eternal hell undermine every other claim that Christians make about God, most especially the central idea that God is love. He writes that much of the teaching on eternal hell he believes is a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of how to read and translate Scripture. In the course of these early arguments in the book, David Bentley Hart examines the theology of John Calvin, one of the major theologians of the Reformation, who had a particularly strong influence on ‘subscribing’ Presbyterians (as opposed to non-subscribing Presbyterians). John Calvin's assertion was that God made some to be predestined to heaven and some to be predestined to eternal hell as an expression of God’s Power and Sovereignty. But David Bentley Hart writes, that such a position is based on what he describes as a notoriously confused reading of scripture, based on an inability to read Greek and relying on defective Latin translations. And so he describes the Calvinist account of predestination as unquestioningly the most terrifying and the most severe expressions of Christianity. To Calvin's credit, writes David Bentley Hart, Calvin makes no effort to deceive us as to his views. Calvin quite openly proclaims that God created some to be the object of God’s love and others to be the object of God’s hatred. For John Calvin, this predestination of some to be damned and to be the objects of his hatred is nothing more than sheer absolute power exercising itself for power’s sake and therefore comes across as a manifestation of boundless cruelty: that God, of God’s own free and sovereign will would create beings for torturous and unending suffering. What boundless cruelty says David Bentley Hart and goes on to say that Calvin at his worst produces a picture of God as resembling an omnipotent cruel and mad dictator. But he writes however that he does not hold Calvin necessarily accountable for this dismal and distorted theology, since in this matter he was the product of centuries of bad scriptural interpretation and even worse theological reasoning. Bentley Hart writes that Calvin differed little in this respect from many of his contemporaries, both Protestant and Catholic alike. Where in particular did Calvin go wrong? David Bentley Hart suggests that Calvin’s primary error is his misinterpretation of chapters 9-11 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Like St Augustine a few centuries before him Calvin’s error came in treating chapters 9-11 as comprising a series of separate ideas with separate conclusions, instead of reading these chapters as a whole in which Paul is wrestling with a single question that had clearly haunted him for a long time. What preoccupies Paul from the beginning to end of these chapters is the agonizing mystery that the Messiah of Israel has come and yet so few of the house of Israel have accepted him, while on the other hand so many gentiles have. How can the promised messiah of Israel fail to be the saviour of the people of Israel? Has God abandoned his promises the people of Israel? In the process of wrestling with this question he begins by firstly trying to entertain the possibility that indeed God has abandoned the people of Israel. What if God has kept some people (namely Israel) solely for destruction in order to show just how glorious his salvation lavished on the people of his mercy. It is a terrible possibility, and horrifying to contemplate, but for a moment, Paul wonders if this is simply how things are. But he does not stop there, because he knows that this cannot be the correct answer. It is so obviously preposterous that he decides that a completely different solution must be found, one that makes sense and in which God remains faithful to God’s promises. And so writes David Bentley Hart, Paul spends the next two chapters unambiguously rejecting the initial provisional answer that he came to in the previous section, so that he reaches a completely different and far more glorious conclusion, that in the end through Christ, God will bless everyone. 32 God has given all people over over to their stubborn disobedient ways, so that God can show mercy to all. And having come to this glorious conclusion, Paul explodes with joy as he says: Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!... “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been God’s counsellor? For from God and through God and for God are all things. To God be the glory forever! Amen. You can almost feel Paul’s joy and his relief as he comes to the conclusion that all will be saved by God’s most amazing grace. But this is an answer that he already knew in his heart… For in his earlier letter to the Corinthians a few years before his letter to the Romans, he already came to this same conclusion when he wrote: 1 Cor 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. For Paul, God’s saving work in Christ will eventually completely undo the sin and death which all human beings participate in, symbolised in the person of Adam. And so, David Bentley Hart believes that Calvinism, makes a monster out of God, because of misreading Paul’s letter to the Romans and building his theology on an idea that Paul himself rejects in his own letter, namely, the idea that God has created some for salvation and some for destruction. David Bentley Hart suggests that if it is read correctly, then the story of God in the New Testament a story of infinite and universal love which suggests that God will never leave anyone in the mire of slavery to sin with all its destructive consequences. God’s intention is to save all. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. For those who might still be struggling to shake off the ideas of God who is a monster who predestines some to eternal torment, Bentley Hart suggests that sometimes childish imagery – even childish anthropomorphisms can help to bring clarity. And in this sense Christ instructs his followers to think of God, the Great Universal Intelligence of the Cosmos, using the analogy of a human father and in doing so Christ encourages his followers to feel safe in assuming that God’s actions toward them will display something like – but also something far greater than paternal love. In Matthew 7:9-11 Jesus says: 9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! David Bentley Hart suggests that at the very least, when Jesus refers to God in this way, we gain an idea of what NOT to expect from God. For instance, Jesus implies that God, the Universal Intelligence, will not be like a father who punishes his children for any purpose other than the child’s correction and moral improvement. Punishing simply as an arbitrary display of power over a child created as an object of hatred is not behaviour one would ever expect from a father worthy of the name and therefore should not be something we should expect from God either. In addition, Bentley Hart suggests that a father who surrenders his child to the fate of an eternal suffering is surely also not a truly loving father. He writes: It is surely the responsibility of a father [or parent] to continue to love their children in all conditions and to seek their well being and if need be their reformation and to use whatever natural powers they posses to save their children from ruin. He adds – what a happy circumstance if a father happens to possess infinite power to do these things and to carry them out. Questioning Eternal Hell (Part 2)
Last week We began a series of reflections in which I invite us to question the notion of Eternal Hell. Most of the thoughts in these sermons are taken from a book by David Bentley Hart called “That All May Be Saved”. David Bentley Hart believes that traditional teachings on eternal hell undermine every other claim that Christians make about God, most especially the central idea that God is love. David Bentley Hart not only critiques the teaching on Eternal Hell from a Biblical Perspective, he also tackles it from the perspective or moral philosophy. One of the moral arguments against the doctrine of eternal hell is that these teachings are psychologically damaging. Illustrating this in a very vivid way, David Bentley Hart tells the story of his friends’ son who was only around seven or eight years old at the time. It was just a year before this that the young boy had been diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome. He was an extremely intelligent child, shy, gentle and quiet, although on occasion he could be emotionally volatile – as tends to be the case with many children classified as being “on the spectrum”. David Bentley Hart reminds us that such children, are often intensely sensitive to, and largely defenceless against extreme experiences: crowds, loud noises, overwhelming sensory stimulation of any kind, but also pronounced imaginative, emotional and moral dissonances. And so writes David Bentley Hart, it should have surprised no-one when he fell into a state of panic for three days, and then into an extended period of depression, after attending the families local Roman Catholic Parish Church when a visiting priest happened to mention the eternity of hell in a sermon. His reaction however did surprise his parents who realised that up until that point, the little boy had never really absorbed the traditional Christian teaching on eternal damnation. But now having heard it preached explicitly in a sermon, the little boy had fallen into a deep anguish and despair. David Bentley Hart writes that “All at once he found himself imprisoned in a universe of absolute horror, and nothing could calm him down down until his father finally succeeded in convincing him that the visiting priest had been repeating lies for the sole purpose of terrorising people into submission.” This helped the little boy regain his composure, but not his willingness to go back to church. If his parents even so much as suggested the possibility to him, he would slip away into a narrow space where they could not reach him. Soon they came to see the whole matter from his perspective. And as a result they made the conscious decision to not go back to church except on odd occasions as guests to a few weddings. And since that time, as a result of coming to understand their son’s reasons for not wanting to go back to church, they too have long since lost any interest in doing so either. It should go without saying that such a story could have taken place in any number of different Protestant Churches. The teaching on eternal hell is by no means unique to Catholicism. In fact there are quite a number of Protestant Churches who seem to specialise in the subject, and many other’s who subscribe to the doctrine, but, because of the horror of its teaching, actually very seldom speak of it. David Bentley Hart writes that to him at least it seems obvious that this story is more than sufficient evidence of the spiritual bankruptcy of the traditional concept of eternal hell. He suggests that another description for a “spectrum” child’s “exaggerated emotional sensitivity” might simply be “acute moral intelligence”. It is precisely because a child on the spectrum lack’s strong emotional protection and coping mechanisms that such children may be unable to sufficiently shield themselves from the true horror of traditional teachings on eternal hell. Such a child’s response should be like the warning of a canary in a coal-mine that traditional teachings on eternal hell are leading us into morally and psychologically dangerous territory. And so one of the moral arguments against the doctrine of eternal hell is the potential it carries with it for real psychological harm: Belief in eternal hell can instil fear, guilt, and anxiety in individuals instilling deep within them the sense that the universe is a profoundly unsafe place and that the very source of life is profoundly dangerous. This deeply indoctrinated fear may lead to psychological distress which can be detrimental to a persons mental well-being. While I believe that such an underlying psychological distress is in fact experienced by many Christians, if not for themselves then for their loved one’s, I can only talk with authority from my own experience. In my early 20’s I found myself sliding into a deep depression when confronted with the injustices of the Apartheid system in South Africa and the recognition that my relatively privileged life as a white South African had been built on the unjust treatment of the majority of the South African population. Recognising the depth of my own complicity in that system, I was faced with a crisis of faith. And at the root of that crisis of faith was a deep fear that God would disown me for all eternity. I have experienced first hand, the crippling psychological damage that belief in eternal hell can bring with it. The fear of eternal hell can also have a serious impact on moral development: The concept of eternal hell may hinder moral development by fostering a fear-based compliance rather than genuine moral understanding and empathy. Morality motivated solely by fear of punishment may lack real depth and authenticity. There is an enormous difference between being motivated to behave morally out of fear and being motivated to act morally out of genuine love. Moral action motivated by fear leads to outward compliance but quite often with an accompanying inner resentment or rebellion that seeps out in other unhealthy ways. Moral action motivated by love carry’s with it none of these secondary dangers. Getting back to David Bentley Hart’s story of that little boy, he writes that for most of those who hold onto a doctrine of eternal punishment, there is an utter failure in imagination, a failure to consider the utter horror of what they supposedly believe. He says it is an utter failure to really consider what the word eternal actually means: an eternity of punishment. An eternity of suffering… never ending. Going on for infinity to infinity. What purpose could such an infinity of suffering ever serve anyone? Surely if God were God, then, a more compassionate option would be for God to simply snuff out the lives of the damned, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe, rather than keep them suffering to infinity (although that options also raises moral and theological questions). If one really thinks about it, the idea of eternal punishment is an absolutely morally reprehensible idea that makes the horror’s of the holocaust seem like child’s play by comparison. (And in putting it like that I in no way wish to diminish the true horror of the holocaust.) Closely related to the psychologically damaging idea that eternal hell can have on people is the fact that the concept of eternal hell does not match up to even very basic concepts of proportional justice. One of the most prominent moral arguments against eternal hell is that it involves infinite punishment for finite actions committed during a finite lifetime. It is completely morally disproportionate that the consequences of a limited number of actions or beliefs in a finite life-time would result in eternal torment. Infinite punishment for finite crimes committed during a finite lifetime. It is an outrageously disproportionate sense of justice. The only conclusion that one can come to that the very concept is completely devoid of any sense of justice at all. And so David Bentley Hart writes that it takes an almost heroic suspension of moral intelligence to believe that a soul can earn for itself a penalty that is both eternal and just. It requires a total failure to think through what the word eternal actually means. How can a finite being committing a finite temporary sin justly earn an infinite eternal, unending torment forever and ever and ever and ever… without ever ending. He says it defies even the basics of moral thinking of people who don’t even have a particularly advanced conscience. In Exodus 21 we read of how an ancient and a pretty violent Hebrew people were wrestling with questions of proportional justice towards even their enemies. It is a chapter that contains those well known words: An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth, which implies that if someone took your eye out, it would be completely disproportionate to kill the person and their family in response. Rather it should be proportionate – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If such an ancient and barbaric people, inspired by God’s Spirit, can believe in proportional justice, why should we expect less of God. I’d like to end again with a few passages of Scripture that will keep us thinking and that may help to pose some kind of biblical counter-point to what has just been shared: Psalm 30:5 For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning. Matthew 18:14 So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. 1 Timothy 4:10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of those who believe. (That is a very interesting verse. The original Greek doesn’t say, ‘only those who believe’, but ‘especially those who believe’. It suggests that faith and trust in God’s saving purposes is helpful and beneficial, but not essential to God’s saving love. ) John 12:32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. How would it change our thinking and our being in the world if we came to believe that God’s saving purposes embraced all people, even the very worst of humanity and in the end no-one would be left out? Next week we will continue this exploration as we question the inherited doctrine of eternal hell or eternal lost-ness. Questioning Hell (Part 1) - That All May Be Saved
I have recently been reading a book entitled: That All May Be Saved, Heaven, Hell and Universal Salvation. It is written by one of the USA’s leading theologians, David Bentley Hart who grew up as an Anglican in the Episcopal Church in America. As an adult he became a member of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. It is a book that suggests that at some point Christianity went astray when it began to preach and teach the concept of eternal hell and eternal damnation and in doing so created a depiction of God that was distorted and not in keeping with the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament as a whole. These misconceptions which he believes are rooted in a mistranslation of and incorrect reading of Scripture include Roman Catholics and Protestants as well as many in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. And so in the book, David Bentley Hart makes a number of arguments against the idea of Eternal Hell and Eternal Perdition which he believes undermines every other claim that Christians make about God, most especially the central claim that God is love. David Bentley Hart shares his journey and recounts a story from early Christianity. As a teenager within the Anglican tradition, he encountered the tale of Abba Macarius, a revered hermit known for his life of prayer in the desert. One day, while walking alone in the wilderness, Macarius stumbled upon a human skull. To his amazement, the skull began to speak when he moved it with his staff. The skull identified itself as a pagan high priest who once served the people of the area. It acknowledged Macarius as a holy figure whose prayers could alleviate the suffering of the damned. Upon hearing this, Macarius inquired about the suffering experienced by the damned. The skull described how they endured being engulfed in flames, packed tightly together day and night, suspended over a fiery abyss that stretched infinitely below them. Additionally, they were unable to make eye contact with one another, condemned to gaze at each other's backs for eternity. Despite their plight, the skull noted that whenever Macarius prayed for them, they briefly glimpsed each other's faces, bringing them immense gratitude as it provided a fleeting relief from their ceaseless torment. Upon hearing this, Macarius was overcome with sorrow and proclaimed that it would have been better if the unfortunate priest had never existed. He then inquired whether there were others in hell enduring even worse torments. The skull affirmed this, explaining that the suffering endured by him and his fellow pagans was relatively mild because they had never known the true God and thus never had the opportunity to choose to serve Him. The skull described the incomprehensibly more terrible punishments faced by those who had rejected God despite knowing Him. With a sense of dread, Macarius buried the skull and hurried on his way. David Bentley Hart, first read this story when he was just 14 years old. And, Interestingly, by coincidence, he heard the story again that same week in the sermon when he went to church that Sunday. He said the priest spoke with wonder and awe at how beautiful this story was in portraying the mercy and compassion of Abba Macarius extended even to the souls of the damned and how his prayers could bring momentary relief to their sufferings. But for David Bentley Hart what really stood out for him was that the mercy and compassion expressed by Macarius’s was far greater than that of God in the story, for the story implied that it was in fact God who had created hell as such a vicious and vindictive form of torture for the apparent sin of not knowing God. And this it seemed to him to be completely unjust and cruel. As a teenager, he reasoned that if God knows everything and knew beforehand that the high priest would suffer forever, then creating him was surely and act of limitless cruelty on the part of God. As a result of his distaste for Christian teachings on eternal hell, David Bentley Hart says that in his teenage years he began distance himself from Christianity… But quite early into his adult years, David Bentley Hart came to see that there were better Christian answers to these questions. He soon came to see that in the first 300-400 years of the existence of the church, the majority of Christians of that period did not believe in the concept of eternal hell, damnation and perdition (meaning utter destruction). The majority of Christians in these centuries believed in what is generally called universal salvation, that God’s saving purposes were universal, and all embracing, excluding none. This was the belief that Divine love is limitless and ultimately inescapable and that in God’s great compassion expressed in Christ, God would save all people from whatever the hellish sufferings they had created for themselves and that therefore, eventually, God would bring all of His lost children home, no matter how far they had strayed. And so these early Christians believed in Love’s final victory over sin and death and hell and that everyone without exception would be saved. And they held these convictions on the basis of verses of scripture like the following: 1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (There are no exceptions there, not ‘some will be made alive’, but ‘all will be made alive’). Over the next few weeks over this season of Lent, I hope to explore the arguments of David Bentley Hart further as we are invited to wrestle for ourselves whether the dominant inherited Christian framework, with it’s emphasis on Eternal Hell or Eternal Lost-ness accurately portrays the teaching and message of the New Testament, and whether the doctrine of Eternal Hell can stand up to a moral critique. Traditionally, possibly going back to as early as the 1700’s, but certainly back to the early 1800’s, many Non-Subscribing Presbyterians across Ireland had come to reject the idea of eternal hell based on their own sensitivity to the spirit of Christ’s teachings, and in their analysis of Scripture. Thus, these perspectives are not new to the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian tradition. I am simply re-stating a long standing position of many in this denomination. I end this reflection by reading a selection of verses from Luke’s Gospel, and in doing so I invite you to listen out for the word ‘all’ and it’s equivalents. Teachings on eternal hell suggest that not all will be saved. But these verses suggest the contrary - Luke 2:10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Luke 3:5-6 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Luke 16:16 “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. |
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