Brian McLaren’s Inferno: the provocative church leader explains his view of hell
Question: Brian, in your book, The Last Word and the Word After That, you focus heavily on “deconstructing” the evangelical view of hell. Some critics think your deconstruction has moved to the point of your embracing a “universalist” position. Are you a Universalist?
McLaren: No, I am not embracing a traditional universalist position, but I am trying to raise the question, When God created the universe, did he have two purposes in mind—one being to create some people who would forever enjoy blessing and mercy, and another to create a group who would forever suffer torment, torture, and punishment? What is our view of God? A God who plans torture? A God who has an essential, eternal quality of hatred? Is God love, or is God love and hate?
It might sound surprising to state it that way, but you’d be surprised at some of the emails I’ve received. For example, someone quoted Scriptures like Psalm 5:5 or Psalm 11:5 and said, “If you don’t believe in a God of hate, you don’t believe in the God of the Bible.” Here’s my concern: if you believe in a god of hate, violence, revenge, and torture, it makes you very susceptible to becoming a person made in that god’s image.
Even though this subject is so controversial and I don’t like controversy, we have to address it because we’re dealing with our view of God, and the consequences of our essential view of God are staggering. The only thing that’s more important, I guess, is God’s view of us!
Anyway, Western Christianity has been overly preoccupied with the question of who’s going to heaven or hell after death, and not focused enough on the question of what kind of life is truly pleasing to God here in the land of the living. We’ve got to look at that. In The Last Word and the Word After That, I wanted to raise the issue of “Judgment,” that all will be judged rightly and fairly by God alone, who weighs the scales rightly, and does this for everyone. Again, when we put ourselves in the position of judge – making pronouncements on the eternal destiny of others – I think it’s pretty dangerous, especially in light of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount.
Campolo: I come out of a tradition that pays attention to George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis, and I’m contending that we need to deal with this question: Is God less just than I am, or is his sense of justice different than mine? It’s very simple, MacDonald and Lewis would say, “There is a hell, there has to be, because if there is no hell, there is no freedom.” In Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce, he says, “The bus leaves heaven every half hour, and anybody who doesn’t want to stay in heaven goes to hell . . . by his own choice!”
What I think we can say is, and this is where I get into trouble, I’m not so sure that when this life is over that all possibilities for salvation are over. I read in Ephesians 4:9-10 a passage that can be interpreted to describe a Jesus who descends into “the depths below the earth” to bring captives up to God. I read in 1 Peter 3:19 about a Jesus who goes to preach to those in the prison house of death, and I believe these Scriptures show Jesus doing something for people after they are dead, as we understand death. This reveals Jesus to be the “hound of heaven.”
Yes, I believe there will be people in hell eternally, but somehow, I believe from Scripture—note I said from Scripture—that in the end everybody gets a chance to choose.
As Paul says, “We prophesy in part and we know in part, and we wait for that which is perfect which is to come.” I’m willing to be corrected. I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong, but as I read Scripture, this is how I see things: You will never be condemned to hell because you didn’t have a chance, you will condemn yourself to hell because you reject Jesus.
There’s no sense of justice found in universalism. If everybody ends up in the same place no matter what they choose, there is no justice. On the other hand, grace says we don’t get justice in the end. So we’ve got both of those truths in tension.
4 comments:
justice possibly, not understood in a Dostoeskian sense but rather in a Gospel-sense is the pefect and most "Godly" (dare I say, for what do I know) sense of grace, mercy, and righteousness , all unified under God Herself.
There need not exist, in turn, an imbalance/or choice between justice and grace, rather justice is found in grace, and grace is found in justice. There is justice, therefore, in an all embracing universalism, because the all embracing universalism is that which embraces, most fully, grace at its fullest, which is justice come down, which is God knocking on our door. If that makes any sense.
anyway, keep it real.
j-rock.
"the hound of heaven" I like that.
my favourite answer to students asking if i think anyone is going to hell is, "i hope not!" i like that answer because we are called to love our neighbour, and not being concerned that one of our brothers or sisters (dare i say one of God's kids?) might suffer eternal conscious torment isn't very loving. i also like it b/c i think it is a pretty good Biblical answer - that is, it reflects the character of God and his efforts towards grace and redemption.
and, frankly, i would rather be wrong about hell in the hopes of a God who is more concerned for grace than justice, than be right about a position that seems best characterized by self-righteousness and condemnation of others.
let's not make the mistake of the Pharisees by sacrificing love of God and neighbour for a tidy theology of who's "in" and who's "out." afterall, it wasn't the "sinners" who Christ said were going to hell - it was the self-righteous "people of God." JW
I hear you pitch like a girl...
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