What About Different Levels of Hell? | Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment ...

An Exegetical and Theological Defense of the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment | Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment

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	• Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment Zondervan, 2004 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

High Octane Theology

This book was written by top scholars from an Reformed, evangelical stance (intelligent folks that believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Full disclosure: as do I). It aims to thoroughly prove that the Bible teaches the traditional doctrine of eternal hell awaits those who do not turn to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and that this is morally just.
They interact with the latest, widespread scholarship within more liberal veins of Christianity (and increasingly more conservative ones) that opts for either annihilationism or universalism. I would recommend this for pastors, lay leaders, and anyone interested in hearing the full arguments for hell - Whether coming from a pro or con position. HUF is a worthy opponent, a counter-balance of any arguments against the traditional doctrine of hell.

Strengths:
Hell Under Fire is one stop shopping for anyone wrestling with the doctrine of hell because of the thoroughness of the writing. The reader should feel that every subtopic is covered well, or is at least footnoted for an easy on ramp to more study. I would recommend this book over Hell on Trial, as editor Robert Peterson incorporates much of the material in his HOT into this book.

The book is particularly strong addressing the Biblical warrant traditional hell, probably because of the super abundance of scripture passages that point to the traditional view that the burden of proof rests with those who would deny the doctrine.
Likewise, the authors make a convincing case that while the traditional view of hell is sobering, it is just and actually promotes justice on earth.

As we should expect from Christian scholars, the authors are gracious with their opponents but firm in their views on truth.

Could be better:
Those with a problem with God's sovereignty over evil and salvation (free will) will probably still have those beefs after reading this. To be fair, these were not the main issues the authors were addressing. Also, no worldview can explain evil without problems (atheists can, but can't call evil 'evil' because they have no divine "ought" that creates moral absolutes- nor can they explain good... but I digress).
For a more winsome, challenging presentation of these issues, see Tim Keller's The Reason for God, particularly the chapters on Evil and Hell.

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What About Different Levels of Hell?

I have read only sample pages in books like this one. First I have always been a traditionalist on the view of hell. However, after reading all the major themes on hell that are supported by scripture for annihilationism, conditional immortality, and eternal punishment, I wonder if all of them are correct and yet do not contradict each other? Why would God choose to describe hell in so many different ways/themes, and leave us scratching our heads on which one is the truth? What if each of these themes is actually a different level and/or different type of punishment? This would be the smoking gun. I have only thought of this spuriously and have not delved into a thorough investigation to see if this could be true, but oh, I will be.

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An Exegetical and Theological Defense of the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment

The doctrine of eternal punishment is firmly established in both Scripture and the Christian tradition, but it also has its detractors within the church, from Origen in the early third century and Arnobius of Sicca in the early fourth to Thomas Talbott and Edward William Fudge today. The principal alternatives to eternal punishment are universal salvation and the annihilation of the wicked, the former represented by Origen and Talbott, the latter by Arnobius and Fudge. Hell Under Fire is an exegetical and theological defense of the doctrine by evangelical scholars.

In Chapter 1, R. Albert Mohler Jr. traces the disappearance of hell. Though once a staple in both Catholic and Protestant - and especially evangelical Protestant - preaching, hell has been downplayed by modern theologians and preachers. Mohler explains why.

Chapters 2-5 provide exegesis of relevant passages from the Bible. Daniel I. Block examines what the Old Testament teaches about the afterlife. Only two passages - Isaiah 66:24 and Daniel 12:1-3 - clearly articulate a postmortem experience of divine judgment, although many passages speak of or hint at life after death. Nonetheless, the OT material is valuable for understanding how Jews prior to Jesus thought of life after death, and one can see a theological evolution of the doctrine from the OT's vague statements to the New Testament's clearer teaching on the subject.

Robert W. Yarbrough (my NT professor at Wheaton College) surveys the Gospels. He opens with a critique of those who doubt that the Gospels accurately convey the teaching of the historical Jesus. He goes on to provide a close exegesis of relevant passages from the Synoptics and John and concludes that they teach the "ceaseless constant torment" of the impenitent, against Fudge's annihilationist reading of those same passages.

Douglas J. Moose surveys the Pauline epistles. Moo concedes that Paul does not use the terminology of "hell" as Jesus did. Nonetheless, based on what Paul wrote about divine judgment, Moo concludes that Paul believed hell was real, eternal, and retributive in nature.

Gregory K. Beale provides, in my opinion, the book's densest and most technical exegesis in his study of Revelation. He tracks down the background of John's visions of hell to the OT and intertestamental Jewish literature, interacts with annihilationist readings of the relevant passages, and concludes that Revelation clearly teaches eternal punishment, hinting that only someone with "a prior theological agenda" could conclude otherwise. Coming as it does in the penultimate paragraph of his chapter, after pages of fair-minded exegesis, Beale's hint strikes me as very plausible.

To my mind, the single most helpful chapter in Hell Under Fire is Morgan's (Chapter 6), which offers a broad survey of the NT teaching on hell using its three primary images: punishment, destruction, and banishment. Morgan's chapter builds upon and frames the previous exegetical chapters. He notes that the NT writers use all three images, sometimes mixing and matching them. The dominant image is punishment, but the other images explain other aspects of hell that the punishment doesn't capture.

In Chapter 7, Peterson surveys the interrelationship of the doctrine of hell with three other doctrines: (1) the Trinity, (2) divine sovereignty and human freedom, and (3) the NT's inaugurated eschatology, in which the kingdom of God - both to save and to condemn - is "already" but "not yet."

Chapters 8 and 9, by J.I. Packer and Morgan, respectively, evaluate the underlying theologies of universal salvation and the annihilation of the wicked, in that order. Packer's chapter was the weakest in the book, in my opinion. To the extent that they rely on biblical exegesis to ground their belief, universalists cite several passages in Paul, which Packer treats in only a cursory fashion. Thankfully, Moo considers those passages in his own chapter and shows why context rules out a universalist interpretation of them. The real strength of universalism, or rather, its real impetus, is philosophical. Unfortunately, Packer does not do as good a job of dealing with universalist philosophical objections as he could have. A philosopher such as Jerry Walls would've done a better job, in my estimation, of answering the universalist arguments of people such as Talbott. I'm not sure why Walls wasn't asked to contribute a chapter, since he has written a book on hell from the standpoint of philosophical theology. Given the Reformed or Calvinist leanings of the authors of this book, my guess is that including an Arminian such as Walls simply wasn't on the agenda. To his credit, Packer notes that Calvinists and Arminians - indeed, open theists! - unite in opposing universalism, though for different reasons, of course.

Morgan's chapter on annihilationism, also known as conditional immortality, takes up five objections to eternal punishment offered by advocates of this alternative position, including the notion that eternal punishment assumes a Platonic or Hellenistic rather than biblical anthropology of the soul's immortality. As in his earlier chapter on biblical theology, Morgan does an excellent job of working his way through the arguments in a clear, accessible style of writing.

Chapter 10 by Sinclair Ferguson addresses the pastoral uses of the doctrine of eternal punishment. This situates the doctrine in the real life of the church, as pastors evangelize and lead the spiritual formation of their congregations. Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, Paul, and John do not discuss the doctrine of hell for systematic theological reasons. They preach it in order to warn sinners and motivate repentance. Ferguson refocuses his readers on these important pastoral tasks.

Although Hell Under Fire contains high-level exegesis and systematic thinking, it was not written for academics. Rather, it was written for them, for pastors, and for patient lay readers with an interest in theology. If the Bible teaches the reality of eternal punishment and encourages people to avoid that fate through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, then Bible-believing Christians should do the same. If you are going to purchase only one book on the doctrine of eternal punishment, this is the one you should buy.

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Great Examination of The Doctrine of Hell

Robert A. Peterson's book, "Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment" is a very thorough examination of the doctrine of Hell. I recommend this book to anyone who has questions regarding what the Bible says about Hell, and how scholars and theologians have viewed the topic over the past two thousand years. Peterson examines the Biblical principles of Hell and why God created such a place, as well as the heated debate regarding annihilationism.
This book is well worth the money and I'm sure it will be a treasured book in anyone's collection regardless of their Christian denomination.

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Inconclusive

This and Peterson's Hell On Trial will feel affirming to those who already agree with him and the others whose articles are present. They will offend those of a clearly liberal mindset who find the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment/torment to be offensive. And they will be very little help to those who are looking for clarity with specific exegetical inquiries into the legitimate questions regarding the imagery and language the Bible uses in regard to Hell and how we are to understand these things systematically. There seems to be a kind of bias in that if you don't accept the traditional view it's because you've been improperly influenced by a culture that doesn't want to believe in Hell. I find this condescending. In fact, many who struggle with this issue struggle because of the language of the Bible and serious contemplation over the nature and attributes of God, which is given short shrift in these books. So much time is spent in these books on anti universalist treatements, which is, in my mind, the easy thing to dismantle with scripture. But there is a constant mixing of positions and illustrations that is not helpful. In Hell On Trial, for instance, we're told that Hell is like a hot stove that burns the hand and not like a hot furnace that destroys what you put in it. In fact, both of these descriptions fit what the Bible says about Hell, and this is why people like Stott, who is no idiot, are not as sure as others seem to be about these things. I am holding to the traditional doctrine at this point because I don't think that this issue has been conclusively dealt with by theologians at any time in history, and when it's not conclusive, I choose to hold to the accumulated concensus of the Church. But I would hope that someone with more smarts than me would take seriously the arguments, especially of final annihilationism, and put them through a rigorous and specific assessment instead of the general approach that has been taken so far (at least in the books I've been able to find). Treating the different non traditional positions as if they're all just different takes on the same bad concept is not resolving any of the issues. There are some excellent points along the way. Peterson's argument that sin is eternal because it is committed against an eternal God is a good example. And I admire anyone who cares enough to defend the faith. I'm thankful for these books and the help they offer, but they are exegetically inconclusive.

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This book provides a biblical, systematic, and practical theology of hell. The contributors to this volume unite in affirming the historic Christian doctrine regarding the final destiny of the unsaved: They will suffer everlasting conscious punishment away from the joyous presence of God.

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