preaching postmortem salvation is neither legitimate nor loving

A number on the evangelical left (for evangelical left read neo-liberals) are intent on foisting some version of universalism (that all will ultimately be saved) or quasi-universalism on the evangelical community.  Unfortunately, among many they are likely to find an open ear for not only do many have a woefully inadequate basic knowledge of what the Bible teaches but the salvation of all is naturally appealing.  One example of a quasi-universalism is the belief that in hell there will be a further opportunity to repent and trust in Christ.  We are told that holding out such a hope is surely, at the very least, a generous and loving approach.  Is it not better to hope that all may ultimately be saved than to say that millions will be in hell?

Well, it is only a generous and loving hope if it is true.  If, however, there is no biblical ground for such a hope and every indication that the opposite is the case, it is far from loving.  It is not loving for a doctor to tell a patient with a life-threatening illness that although they would be better to get it treated immediately nevertheless if they don’t they shouldn’t worry for they can get it treated at a later date.  This is not loving, it is criminally irresponsible and negligent.  Doctore are likely to be struck-off for such advice.

Likewise, those who preach that there is an opportunity for sinners to be converted in hell when no such optimism is merited from the biblical revelation (which is after all the basis for all Christian belief) are not acting in love but are being criminally negligent and are also in danger of being ‘struck-off’.

The whole thesis of universalism (that all will be saved) whether as a belief or a hope faces intractable opposition from Scripture.  In the previous post we noted that Jesus himself, when asked about the number who will be saved, is guarded in his response.

Luke 13:22-30 (ESV)
He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.’

His words, ‘“Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.‘ by themselves would lead any responsible teacher of Scripture to be chary of any universalistic inclinations they may cherish.  His immediately following words would be enough to close completely the mouth of any who fear God from positing or preaching postmortem conversion.

‘When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” 

The picture is clear.  There is a time of opportunity but it is not forever.  God’s patience and grace is not extended forever.  The invitation to the heavenly Kingdom is not indefinite.  There is a point when some may wish to enter but find they are too late.   Yes, undoubtedly people from every nation will be in the kingdom (it will be universal in its scope and vision and embrace), but not all from every nation will be there.   Undoubtedly, the ultimate fulfilment of Jesus’ words lies at his Second Coming and his Kingdom is completely realized.  Then the door is shut.    Ironically those who are ‘shut out’, and are on the outside in this text are some who assumed they were on the inside (we ate and drank in your presence and you taught us…).   There is a ‘cast out’ group who wish they were not.  And their bitterness and gall is because they know they will have no further opportunity to enter.  They are told to ‘depart’,  a word pregnant with finality (Cf Matt 7:23).

Jesus (and it is nearly always Jesus who spells out the terrible fate of the damned) says something similar in Matt 25.  In the parable of the Wedding and Ten Virgins the five careless virgins find themselves shut out from the wedding celebrations (another image for the Kingdom of God) with no prospect of a late entry.

Matt 25:10-13 (ESV)
And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. 

Once again (with the arrival of the bridegroom) the door is decisively shut against them and there is no hope of it opening, however much they plead.  Notice again, here they wish to enter and are refused.  At the end of the chapter the parable gives way to plainer language when Jesus says,

Matt 25:41-46 (ESV)
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” 

However, one interprets this text it is clear that on the day of judgement there are two final and unalterable destinies for humanity.  Everyone finds himself in one or the other and there is no further possibility of a switch.

In the story of the rich man in hell (again recounted by Jesus) the rich man in hell is told,

Luke 16:26 (ESV)
And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’

Two points are worth observing here.  Firstly, the chasm or gulf is not the unrepentant heart of the rich man (a weak and specious suggestion some forward).  It is clearly a gulf God has fixed.  Again we are reminded of doors that God has shut;  people do not remain in hell because they want to be there but because their fate is now fixed.   Secondly, from this insight (however parabolic) into the state of the damned, N T Wright’s view that those in hell are effectively de-humanised has a hard time justifying itself.  The rich man seems only too human and that is part of the terror of the picture.

In desperation, some tell us that the gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut (Rev 21:25) so that those outside (the lost in hell) can enter.  But this interpretation is as derisory as it is desperate.  The open gates signify the security of the city – it has no enemies to fear .   Indeed nothing that defiles it can enter (v27).  Only the redeemed can enter (Rev 22:14) while eternal outside are those with unwashed robes – the unholy (v15).  To try to introduce some kind of postmortem salvation here is not only contrary to the rest of Scripture but to the thrust and intention of the text itself.  Indeed, the angel who gives the vision, far from speaking of a postmortem evangelism (salvation after death), speaks of destinies already drawn and decided.

Rev 22:10-13 (ESV)
And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”  “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

The writer goes on to make a very solemn pronouncement.  He says,

Rev 22:18-19 (ESV)
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. 

It is a very serious thing to meddle with what God has revealed, one may find oneself among the ‘shut out’.

This post does not by any means tackle all the arguments of those who espouse a universalitic hope.  But I hope they will help reassure some believers that what evangelicals have taught for centuries is truly biblical; that ‘today is the day of opportunity’, that hell is forever and fixed for those who find themselves there, and that of all things that are unloving the most unloving is to allow sinners to think that they may stall in trusting Christ now for they will have an eternal opportunity to do so, perhaps damnably unloving.

In the words of Mike Wittmer,

‘I wish that God would empty hell, that he would save everyone who has ever lived. But I can’t say I hope for that, because I don’t have a promise from God to hang my hope on. Christians may have lots of good wishes for deceased atheists, but we don’t have hope. Not because we are mean or stingy, but because we dare not offer more hope than God promises in Scripture. That would be false hope, the cruelest hope of all.’

new evangelical myths and monsters

Question

What do the following have in common?

• egalitarianism (the Bible does not teach male leadership in home and marriage; leadership is transgender)
• homosexual practice is not a sin (an almost irresistible corollary to the above)
  
• inclusivism (faith in Christ is not necessary for salvation)
  
• a denial of penal substitution
• God has no wrath
• hell does not exist or will ultimately be empty
• the gospel is primarily a socio-political message for change now
• Gen 1-3 is myth
  

Answer

They are all examples of a hermeneutic of accommodation that is invading evangelicalism. There are more, of course, but this is a fair sample.

Comment

None of these beliefs is an obvious inference from the Bible.  Only hermeneutical sleight of hand can make a (specious) case for any.  None is part of historical Christian orthodoxy (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Eastern) and even less part of Evangelical orthodoxy.  The single unifying  drive for each and all comes from contemporary culture.  These are part of present unimpeachable cultural orthodoxy and by-hook-or-by-crook they must become part of a Designer Evangelical Christian orthodoxy which cannot bear to be inelegant or gauche; and so, the weight of biblical truth must give way to the whim of cultural trends.

We are prepared to abandon core biblical truths in order to be liked and hip and respectable.  Thus we employ creative hermeneutics to accommodate: we create highly-speculative reconstructed backgrounds to problem texts; we play the culturally-conditioned-limitations-of-Scripture card; we pose a trajectory theory; we arbitrarily privilege an aspect of who God is and the gospel that appeals (God is love…) and so on.  These ‘principles of interpretation’ help to make Scripture say what we want it to say (if we don’t look too closely) and we breathe a sigh of comfortable middle-classed relief and sink into the sofa with a stemmed-glass of chilled wine.

And, after all, what the Bible says, let’s be honest, is not that important.  Yes, we like to hear that God loves us, accepts us as we are, and that we will live forever in a new exciting world.  In fact the new exciting world begins now; the gospel means indignation at oil spills, female oppression, greedy corporations and the like. But all that stuff about the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Canaanites, the sons of Korah, the exile in babylon, the rich man in hell, people thrown into a lake of fire… well com’on… we’re the café latte generation… the suburbanites who party and play… we don’t get it… that’s scary stuff… primitive stuff… that’s the God of the OT… all fire and thunder and smoking mountains… stick to the big print and ignore the detail (even if it is not really detail but part of the big print).

Should we have women teaching the church?  For goodness sake woman teach everywhere else in life.  Look at all these women preachers most of them better than men… you say the Bible forbids it, but that’s your opinion, your interpretation, it’s not mine…anyway, its well-known there are lots of views on this… and the Bible’s not clear… though, the trajectory is clear, in Christ there is neither male nor female… time to get past these jaded questions , I have.. get real… concentrate on what really matters… we’re living in the C21 not the C1… what kind of ‘good news’ is it to modern women to tell them they must submit to men… we need a theology to suit, a more refined, nuanced and generous orthodoxy.

And it is a rapidly evolving orthodoxy (an oxymoron).

It is an orthodoxy that increasingly deems it oppressively patriarchal to speak of God as Father…  God is not male… let’s drop male pronouns… he is as much a she as a he… its not enough to be silent about women’s leadership you must be actively for it.. and while we are at it we should avoid psychologically crushing ideas of eternal punishment… notions like these traumatise people… they are toxic… hell is now and what we make it…  and who are we to claim our message is right and other religions have got it so wrong… to tell people their religion is wrong and they must become Christians is simply a power play… we must learn humility and avoid the arrogance of certainty and absolutes… we must avoid hate-crime… we must not try to force people into the Kingdom by fear… fear is a negative unhealthy emotion… it is manipulative and ugly.

And so the Orwellian nightmare is enacted in the church.  The past is reimagined – biblical truth and Church tradition are rewritten.  Evangelical newspeak simplifies language.  God words like head, submit, wrath, hell, holiness, dread, fear and the like disappear.  We are left with love and a few synonyms.

If you really want to see the trajectory of evangelical church life today, then in my view this is it.

Christians who love God and his Word need to wake up to this revolution.  It is happening in a church near you… perhaps in your church.  It will be all too easy to sleepwalk into apostasy.  For that is what it will finally be.  It will be hard to resist.  The tide will be strong and against you. You will be caricatured as a museum specimen, a relic from the past, stingy, hard, prejudiced, loveless, boringly predictable, staid, intolerant, ungracious, unimaginative, a people hater, daft and dangerous, and many other things.  You will be defending what is mocked as passé and oppressive.

But, God knows, we need people to be willing to take such a stand.  Unless we stand against a hermeneutic of accommodation the church and the world will, like the pigs and the humans in Orwell’s Animal Farm, simple fade into each other and be indistinguishable; the church will simply become the world.

Is this what you want for your church?

You may at the moment have embraced only one or two on the opening list, you may not buy the whole package yet.  But you will.  Give yourself and your church time.  Why?  Because you have bought the hermeneutic you just haven’t fully applied it.

Am I exaggerating, being melodramatic?  I don’t think I am.  You must judge.  Of Course, God in grace may interfere and change things radically.  He may stem the haemorrhage of truth.  If he does, are you and I willing to be part of his solution?  Are we willing to be part of it now even if it costs us family and friends and fellowship?  Even if it means being unsophisticated and uncool and impolite?

de young tackles ‘love wins’ by bell

As Rob Bell attempts to pour cold water on hell De Young questions the force of his fire hydrant.  Read De Young’s in-depth review here.

arius, and the roots of heresy

Historians are pretty clear that the Christian Church in the first three centuries was firmly Trinitarian.  Whatever difficulties there were in understanding the Trinity and relations within it that there was one God who was in some sense three seems to have been established orthodoxy; God, who was One, was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.   It is all the more remarkable that a presbyter from Alexandria, called Arius, began to teach that in fact Jesus was not God.  God the Son he insisted was a created being, he had a beginning, there was a time when he ‘was not’.

What made Arius veer so radically from already established beliefs of Trinitarianism?  What led him to adopt beliefs that resulted in him being branded as a heretic and excommunicated as such?  And can we learn from him how to avoid heresy ourselves?

Arius made three cardinal errors.

• He was too readily influenced by the cultural assumptions of his age.

Alexandria lay in the East of the Roman Empire (in Egypt).  The East was heavily influenced by Greek culture.  The prevailing paradigm of the culture was platonic.  That is, it viewed God as too far above the material and created world to be involved in it.  The created world of matter was inferior and evil.  For professing Christians beguiled by this cultural assumption this meant one of two things, either Jesus was not truly human or he was not truly God.  Gnostics of the C2 decided he was not truly human, while Arius, at the end of the C2 decided he was not truly divine.

The point for us to note is that a strongly established cultural belief trumped for many the established teaching of the Bible and the early church that Jesus was both human and divine.  The lesson for us to learn is that in  any given age the accepted cultural values of the age are often a threat to faith.  In our own age we need only consider our culture’s strong commitment to pluralism and egalitarianism and the strain these put on orthodox belief to see how cultural orthodoxy when adopted by Christians leads to Church heresy.  It is worth observing that the cultural orthodoxy of Arius’ world (that matter is evil) seems bizarre in our world today.  Arius and the gnostics are a lesson in the folly of marrying your beliefs to cultural norms… these norms eventually change and seem foolish.

• He placed too much confidence in human logic.

Arius reasoned that if Christ was the Son of God there was a time when he did not exist.  If he was the ‘only-begotten’ he must have had a beginning, an origin and so he could not be God.  Any biblical revelation that suggested he was the Son of God and himself God must be re-interpreted for it failed at the bar of reason: if he is a Son he had a beginning and was therefore created.

For our purposes just now it is not important to explore in detail the faults in Arius’ logic.  Sufficient to say Arius was assuming that what is true of human Father/Son relationships that exist in time must be the same for the divine Father/Son relationship that existed outside of time.  He did not see that Father/Son in God is to do with relationship not the chronology that belongs to time.

Over and over again heresy in the church can be sourced to placing the power of human reason above the plain teaching of biblical revelation.   Christian truth is based on revelation and where revelation and apparent logic come into conflict the Christian submits to revelation.  Revelation is reliable but logic is not.

In every age this is a problem for those professing Christians intoxicated by the power of autonomous reason.  For them their trust in the potency of reason is likely to lead to heresy.  And the greater the mind the more subtle and dangerous the heresy.  Christians need to remember that the human mind is fallen.  They need to grasp that at the cross independent human reasoning is crucified and that in resurrection and new life the reborn mind and reason is one that submits to what God has revealed.  A man in his right minds hears God in Christ, God’s revealed Word (logos) or reason and accepts him as true wisdom and knowledge.

Arius lived in a Greek culture that treated human reasoning and logic more or less idolatrously.  Greek culture prided itself on the power of reason.  Since the Enlightenment, Europe and the West has had the same idolatrous confidence in the power of the mind and reason.  When Christians buy into this intellectual hubris, heresy is the result.

• He used Scripture selectively

Arianism would not have found a foothold had Arius not been able to cite Scripture to apparently support his position.  Christians are not silly.  Heresy only gets a grip because it is plausible.  It is able to appeal to Scripture and persuade the unwary that it has the support of Scripture.  Arius could point to texts such as ‘the Father is greater than I’ (Jn 14:28) or Colossians where we read theat Christ is ‘the firstborn over all creation’ (Col 1:15).  Texts such as these, and his trust in his own logic, and the assumptions of his culture enabled him to dismiss or reinterpret a myriad of other texts that pointed to Christ’s deity.  In such ways heresy is born.

Heresy always is the result of a few Scriptures privileged in such a way as discounts the weight of others.  It inevitably means the selective use of Scripture to beguile the credulous.

Conclusion

We need only look at the way the powerful cultural force of egalitarianism coupled with human logic and a smattering of de-contextualized verses in Scripture enables many to disregard a biblical patriarchy that is crystal clear, and to unabashedly assert a biblical egalitarianism as gospel despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, to see just how stupefying a cocktail, culture, logic and a few Scriptures can be.  The same cocktail in cultural resistance to physical punishment, faulty logic about violence, and a sleight of hand with Scripture, and voilà, the cross is no longer a substitutionary penal sacrifice.  The list can go on.

Arius is a lesson to us.  We can either do what many did then and embrace the trendy new ideas that added a spice of controversy and fed the lust for ‘some new thing’.  Or we can do what others did and try to find a compromise, a fudge that all could subscribe to and would mean different things to different people.   Or  we can decide that its fine for all to believe whatever they wish for truth is not really so important anyway; you can have ‘your truth’ and I can have mine and the bible is so vague we can all believe what we like.  Or we can take the unpopular route; the route that says there are non-negotiable beliefs which if denied label the denier a heretic and demand his excommunication.

This latter view is considered the ultimate heresy by many today.  It is, however, the most basic and clearest of biblical truths and if we evangelicals do not learn to apply it when appropriate, then evangelicalism will simply slide into whole scale apostasy.  It will become a devilish parody of its former self.

How susceptible are you to cultural values?  Is autonomous reason or revelation your ultimate authority?  Are you tempted to use Scripture selectively to justify your predilections?  If you are inclined in these directions you may be open to heresy.