God's Justice?
Helloooo fellow Socratics in lands far and wide. I miss arguing, listening, learning, and laughing with you guys (and few faithful gals). I hope that all is well- for those that have graduated, and for those that are soon to be back in the grind of Duke Div.
On my way into town this morning, after listening to my usual bit of NPR news, I put the radio on scan and came across the meditation of a preacher-- David Jeremiah. I couldn't help myself, and I had to stop to listen!
According to Mr. Jeremiah, God's justice = hell... "if God is a God of love, God also is a God of justice, which means that hell is definite eternal dwelling place for those who choose not to believe."
I have some issues/concerns with this logic, but I'm interested in your thoughts! Anyone?
On my way into town this morning, after listening to my usual bit of NPR news, I put the radio on scan and came across the meditation of a preacher-- David Jeremiah. I couldn't help myself, and I had to stop to listen!
According to Mr. Jeremiah, God's justice = hell... "if God is a God of love, God also is a God of justice, which means that hell is definite eternal dwelling place for those who choose not to believe."
I have some issues/concerns with this logic, but I'm interested in your thoughts! Anyone?
posted by Rev. Sarah Moody at 10:38 AM
16 Comments:
Sarah,
Glad someone is still reading and writing on this blog besides me. :)
Hell? I wonder if the phrase you're picking up on here isn't so much and "if...then" kind of logical conclusion but more an "if...also" kind of statement. For example, if I am a man of few emotive facial expressions, then I also am a man of deep feeling as well.
But I doubt you really care about exegeting this guy's phrase but rather the idea of hell itself. Or is it love and justice?
Here's a couple of positives on hell:
1. It takes injustice seriously.
2. It takes a biblical world view seriously (when overall the culture isn't very keen on the idea of hell...though I'm not sure any culture ever has been).
I'm inclined to like C.S. Lewis' conception of Hell in the Great Divorce being a place you choose to go to. In other words, if one doesn't like God in this life, what makes one think they'll like God anymore in the life to come? If one runs from God in this life, what makes one think one will run to God in the life to come?
Thoughts? Anyone?
Thoughts?
What is with the hesitancy about this topic? Come on, people.
The issue, for Christians, is not the existence of hell but the population of hell. It is not a statement of belief that people who have died are in hell right now, but that without Christ death bears down totally.
Many caveats come from this, exempli gratis, who is without Christ? Balthasar plays with this a lot in "Dare We Hope" but two things from that work i would like to bring out. One, hell is not the same as Gehenna in the OT and so must always be understood Christologically. Hell only exists because of the Incarnation. Two, the eternity of hell is different from the eternity of heaven. No one can speak of coequal eternities because then one would have to speak in dualistic language.
Now Lewis's description in The Great Divorce (which comes from one of Newman's sermons which probably comes from one of the Father's sermons) is nice and could be correct, but the hard part is that there isn't a model of hell or the after life that we (or anyone) can claim as authoritative. Most times (that i can think of, at least) that Jesus describes the afterlife it is in either a parable or with figurative language and so should be read in such a manner.
So models like Lewis's should be given to people as alternatives to a belief in the population of hell, but they should still be understood as speculative. It is hard to counteract firm belief in hell with the fuzziness of eschatological speculation but that is the job of the pastor. Enjoy your labor.
Beautifully put, Wilson. Amen.
My reaction to Sarah's quote was similar, Matt. I wonder about the understanding of justice (and, therefore, of God) presupposed in such thinking. What I hear is an understanding of justice that is like our legal system: retributional. But I think a better way to think of God's justice is "creation." That is, God reaches into history to re-direct us toward him because God's purpose is to draw/redirect all creation into into right relation with the Creator. Justice is that which achieves that purpose. Justice therefore is resurrection. (Or, as Hays taught us, judgment is salvation).
Matt, I don't use the language of righteousness at all myself. I can't get my arms around whatever that is supposed to mean, anyway, and I am convinced by Campbell that the language Paul uses is best translated, "rectification." And "rectification" fits with this notion of justice that is resurrection.
I just read Carter's book on Race. Simply fabulous. I am struck by his appropriation of Maximus in talking about the necessity for us to hold creation and eschaton together. I think that is what you are getting at. He speaks of the hominization of God in Christ that makes possible the divinization of creation. Communicatio idiomatum means we are turned into the flesh of Christ, or, better, participate in the flesh of Christ so that we together are the body of Christ. And, of course, that is part of our being pulled into the destiny of Israel, to be the concrete meaning of gift that reveals the meaning of creature and reunites us with our Creator.
Saved? Hell? That language is not real helpful to me in inviting people to participate in this gift. Because I don't think it really is so much a matter of being saved from something as it is being drawn into something. It may be true that there are some who will persist in rejecting their true identity as children of God, and maybe Hell is a good name for that life. But the notion that God chooses to send someone to that life as part of God's justice is surely wrong. For ours is the God who has chosen always to be in relation with all of creation in spite of our rejection of that relationship that is our true identity. And, in love, God chooses that part of our relation is constituted by our own freedom, so that the freedom to love God is part of what it means to be human (to be human is to be finite and free). That means to me that God never ceases to be in relation to us, but that we can choose never to accept that blessing, and so of our own volition choose a life apart from God. But, I think, in that choice, both before and after death, God never ceases to summon us and never rejects us. So Hell, in my belief, has something to do with God allowing us to remain human and therefore free, but has nothing to do with the nature of God or God's justice. It has only to do with the tragedy of our rejection of the love of our Creator. Precisely because of God's rectifying grace, God's justice always consists of a Father reaching toward the prodigal son, welcoming us home. I have no idea what that says about the population of Hell or about the nature of different eternities.
Craig- You are much more thoughtful (and better read) than I could ever hope to be, but a part of what your comment hit a chord with me. When I heard Mr. Jeremiah "preaching" entirely on the topic of hell, I was left to wonder "why is this good news?" My biggest overall issue with his quote (other than the interesting logic that the King so graciously pointed out), was that he seems to appropriate God's "justice" to our version of "retribution" (as you aptly said Prof. Uffman). In doing that we avoid the diverse stories of examples of God's justice-- from revenge to mercy-- we lay them aside and claim that in all things "fairness" and by "fairness" we refer to our human systems of retribution. Jesus said, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.... But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:32-36)."
Thanks for your contributions dear friends! I miss all of you!
I don't think I'm quite ready to go to the Barthian level most on this thread seem to head towards. I'm not really that convinced by the low population of "hell" argument. I'm not then arguing for a high population of hell.
But if we asked what are we saved from, I'm going to give my Wesleyan answer: eternal life begins right now. We're saved from our sins right now. And we are being saved from them.
Craig, you've gotten on the Campbell bandwagon and I think we'll probably break down here (in large part due to my own unfamiliarity with Campbell and what you mean when you say "rectification"). And the problem is, from my Wesleyan eyes, that very few people are being saved right now.
So many people, including a lot who call themselves Christians, aren't living into that being saved. Greed and materialism and selfishness and comfort and safety are our gods. And if those are our gods right now, what makes us think that in eternity we're going to be any more satisfied with the one true God that calls forth from us and invites us into simplicity, self-sacrifice, discomfort, and risk?
As the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus says, if we've got Moses and the prophets now (not to mention Jesus and the Spirit), what makes us think that the supernatural "appearance" of God on the scene will convince us any more of the way of love? Won't we just run from it? And isn't that running from it "hell"?
Having said all that, I recognize in myself my own duplicity. I too am not yet being saved in several areas of my own life. But at least I want to be being saved (in my better moments).
Peace,
Tom
Tom,
I don't think you are carving out a real distinction here in the way you speak of "saved." I certainly (and others among us, I believe) agree that "salvation" means being liberated from the bondage of sin. But what is sin if not the rejection of the identity God has given us? I think that is precisely what Wesley believed, too, though he may have expressed it differently.
Again, your statement that many are not living into that identity (or, as you express the same idea, "aren't living into that being saved"), is in no way a distinction in our thinking. I am driven by the same observation and passion to do something about it, and I know Wilson is, too.
I don't concede one inch to you in terms of appreciating Wesley and striving to preserve the treasure he presents to the Church. Indeed, I am convinced that he is an especially important model for our time because our circumstance in the West (and in Anglicanism) has many parallels to 18th century England. And so I don't need to remind you that Wesley shared a similar belief, implicit and oddly expressed in his unique form of universalism, in theosis or the divinization of Creation. Like most Anglicans, he appropriated the patristic Fathers, and particularly the Eastern Fathers, and this idea of theosis is what animates his own insistence, pace the Calvinist Evangelicals in the CoE and the Dissenters, that salvation includes the journey of sanctification.
I think Barth and Wesley struggled to make a similar corrective to similar stimuli from the Reformed world. Wesley, in his early life denied that "infernal doctrine [of election]" in order to insist that salvation was the gift of God to all creation. In his later life, Wesley seemed to embrace the doctrine, albeit with reservation. Barth makes this explicit in his theology. What Barth successfully did, that Wesley failed to do, is to articulate well a doctrine of election that locates it properly in the way Irenaeus and Nyssa understood it - within the context of the story of Israel. Indeed, salvation makes no sense outside of that story. And Barth cautions that the story of that election of all humankind must always resound as the soaring melody of our song, with the story of the "rejected ones" but a bar or two in that song. That is, the good news of grace must always be the overwhelmingly dominant theme in our teaching or we distort the doctrine of election that is derived from Scripture.
A couple of points: (1) you can't dismiss my contribution simply by saying, "Oh, that's Campbell, Craig, and I think he's a nut!" Rectification is Hay's translation, too. And NT Wright's. Engage their exegesis. (2) If you are going to insist on using the language of "saved" that I believe is problematic in our time, then it is important that you connect this "saved" with the story of Israel: we are "saved" from our sin, but we are saved so that we are free to be who we are called to be, which is the people grafted into the destiny and vocation of Israel. Certainly that has implications for us individually in the sense of the capacity to receive the blessings that the Father intends for us, but it importantly makes a correction needed in our time that perhaps was not a great a theological problem in Wesley's time: it penetrates the private gnostic fortresses we've erected with girders of pragmatism and utilitarianism, and insists that this salvation from sin is towards the re-membering of Christ's body - towards a community of harmonious difference whose only boundaries are Christ.
I don't think you will suggest that Wesley said anything different in his time. But Wesley was able to presuppose communal integuments that you and I, as preachers, can no longer pre-suppose. [import the whole Hauerwas/Willimon "Resident Aliens" argument here]. And for that reason alone, I think simply mimicking Wesley's language in our time is insufficient and may well do harm due to its inability to penetrate the modern consciousness as well as it did in his time.
Yet there may well be a more important reason that relying on Wesleyan language about "saved" and "hell" in order to invite the World to participate in the kingdom may do harm, and I hope you will commit this point to prayer time reflection. I refer to J. Carter's theology of race. The bottom line, of which I am persuaded, is that somewhere along the line - whether it was Constantine or Kant or otherwise, I don't know - theology was co-opted and put into the service of the wider culture. That is, the self-understanding of the Church shifted (in ways that we can trace genealogically) so that our purpose was no longer inviting people into the vocation of Israel (which holds together creation and eschaton), but rather our purpose was to generate good model citizens according to the ideals of Western civilization. Carter's point is that the ideal was white, male, Prussian, and most importantly, non-Jew).
It matters little if we agree with Carter's isolation of the German influence here, because the real issue is that the gospel became a story of how we overcome the Jewishness in ourselves and in our midst that refuses to conform to that cultural ideal. The Jew always remained "other," refusing to conform. And so the gospel became a story about how we overcome "otherness" and so become transformed by the renewing of our minds into that cultural ideal (represented by a distorted image of Jesus).
So, what are we "saved" from? In that modern cooption of the gospel, the answer is that we are saved from the Hell of being like the "other." We are saved from being like the Jew. To be saved from hell is overcome the things that make ourselves "other."
And I submit, (following Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams) a great irony is that this same gospel animates the antipathy for the Muslims, so that the Western cooption of the gospel has turned anti-Semitism on its head, allowing its deployment against those whose hatred of the Jews matches that which Western civilization has demonstrated. The Muslims in Texas and Michigan are now the "other" in our midst, and, as "Christians," the co-opted gospel sanctions our hatred of them.
I worry that your language (which has historical purchase, I concede) underwrites this hatred. I think the language of "saved" and "hell" has become part of the ideology of the West by which the Church underwrites the elimination or suppression of difference from that Western ideal, or, at best, declares that difference to be irrelevant (i.e, following Cavanaugh, we are "merely different").
Love, however, is not the elimination of or minimization of difference, and it certainly does not aim at the homogenization of creation. Godly love embraces and participate concretely in difference, so that we see God's blessing in "other" and so that we are God's blessing to "other." So "saved" has something to do with the generation of harmonious difference (this is again, the teaching of Archbishop Rowan Williams).
And that is why I think it quite important that we modify our own manner of teaching our story to others so that we take great care to emphasize its connection to the destiny of Israel, to emphasize the summons for us to be Israel as part of God's plan, found in the story of the Jews and the Church, to reconcile all creation with its Creator. If we speak of "saved" and "hell" without being quite careful to connect it with this story, then we risk the possibility that our language funds (by being heard as) this neo-gnostic gospel about how we overcome being the "other." We must stress in our preaching the doctrine of Creation, understood Christologically, and show that "saved" has something to do with the identity of Creation with the Eschaton; we must stress that the Christian understanding of Creation is one in which there is one Creator and one interconnected creation, and not one creator presiding over many autonomous creations, so that "saved" is understood rightly as a movement towards our identity which is intrahuman (and not individual).
Again, I think Wesley "got" this and agreed with all of it, though he struggled to articulate it given the theological language of his time. We have a responsibility to do better in our time, given the tools we have been given.
Sorry for the sermon. But I think this issue is worth pressing, your grace.
Craig,
My first reaction to you comment is that for me to interact well with it (or even understand it) I will have to have read at least 10 books (maybe more) that I have not read. But that is only my first reaction. My second reaction is to let it sit for a while and come back and read it again tomorrow and then comment. So that's what I'm going to do.
Peace,
Tom
Somehow that last post got a little messed up. Here it is edited:
Dear Craig,
I think we can agree on three things:
1. Salvation needs to include being saved from our current sins or it could be said that it includes our actions right now,
2. Salvation shouldn't disregard Israel (though I am less certain of what that means and not as anti-supersessionist as Duke tends to be),
3. Salvation ought not to be salvation from the other and ought not to be salvation into being "good citizens" (though I don't know what J. Cam. means by that since I have read nothing of his and taken no classes of his).
As to potential points of disagreement:
1. I don't know what you mean by Wesley's universalism. If you mean universal atonement, then yes Wesley believed that salvation was available to all and not just a small elect. But if you mean that Wesley thought that all appropriated that salvation, then we definitely do not agree on what Wesley taught. Wesley was no universalist/pluralist. Though I do think he tended toward a kind of inclusivism (similar to what Clark Pinnock advocates).
2. Wesley does have a sermon on Hell. Its titled "On Hell." I just read it several weeks ago. Outler in the intro comments how conventional Wesley's views on hell were for his time. It is only one sermon out of 150 which might be a good ratio for our own preaching on the topic. Out of 3 years of preaching, maybe one sermon on hell would be helpful. It is also late-Wesley so there's no tricky skirting around whether Wesley changed his mind. The most chilling thing Wesley says in that sermon is that in hell there is no friendship. I think Lewis' conception of hell gets at that idea quite well.
So here's how it boils down for me with your discussion of how we present what salvation means: give me a sermon paragraph that would invite people (if that's what you would call it) into this "salvation" (or whatever you would call it). Here's mine from a recent "tent service" we had at our church. After having just explained how the Trinity is a community of love this is what I said (I actually don't preach from a mansuscript but this at least gets at the gist of it):
But remember, God does what God does, because God is who God is. And here’s the really exciting thing about all this, here’s where the view gets spectacular: The Spirit of God invites us into that friendship and community of love that the Father and Son share. We are invited to be friends with God! Friends with God! Friends because of what God has done through God’s son, Jesus. God did not desire to condemn the world through Jesus but to save the world! Friends because of what God is continuing to do through the Spirit’s work of continually inviting us into a community and friendship of love. Now that’s something to praise God for. Praise God for what God does. But also, Praise God for God!
So how was that? Good? Bad? Needs some work? Just some tweaking?
Peace,
Tom
I occasionally go through a spurt of reading one Wesley sermon each morning. I'm trying to get through all 150. I picked Wesley back up today for that purpose. I just began where I finished last time: Sermon 86 - A Call to Backsliders (1778). Here's the opening paragraph:
1. Presumption is one grand snare of the devil, in which many of the children of men are taken. They so presume upon the mercy of God as utterly to forget his justice. Although he has expressly declared, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord," yet they flatter themselves, that in the end God will be better than his word. They imagine they may live and die in their sins, and nevertheless "escape the damnation of hell."
I wasn't looking for a Wesley quote on hell but here it is. This is, again, the late Wesley. So there aren't necessarily the problems of whether he changed his mind over time. And to my experience of reading Wesley, its consistent with his tone and manner and thoughts elsewhere.
I found it particularly interesting because it goes back to Sarah's original question of putting mercy (or love)and justice together. I suppose I still see both as opposite sides of the same coin. And while I may not want to be lumped together with the Rev. Jeremiah, I suppose that puts me closer to his camp than others on this thread may feel comfortable being. Maybe he's a second or third cousin. But he's still part of my family (And I suppose that puts someone like Bishop Spong on the other side of the family as a second or third cousin the other way!). What a crazy family this Christian family is!
Tom,
Thanks for sharing this excerpt from JWesley's sermon.
I think that is really not too different than what others of us have said. Remember, that none of us have denied the reality of Hell. Some of us have simply said that we don't think God's justice as "sending people to Hell" as much as God allowing people to exercise their human freedom to choose to reject grace. And I have said that Hell is a good name for the life of those who reject the grace that summons them to union with God.
Your excerpt prompts me to offer my own critique of my language. I stand by it but I have to say it is insufficient and I need to work on it. My critique is that it does not explicitly account for what St. Thomas called "operating grace." That is, my statement seems to suggest that it is all in human hands - simply a matter of free will. So my language is defective in that sense, but I am not certain how to cure it right now as pithily as I would like. So I will leave that open.
Thanks for sharing also your sermon excerpt. The language of "friends" is very much in keeping with St. Thomas. If it were me, I would have taken care to connect it somehow (earlier) with our story of creation, so perhaps providing a glimpse of that friendship God intends in the primordial garden. It's very important that "overcoming the Fall" not be associated with "overcoming Jewishness."
In my preaching, I tend to speak always of our mission as the Church. So here's a brief excerpt from a sermon I recently preached on the parable of the hidden treasure. Like you, I don't speak from a manuscript, so this is recreated for our purposes. In my exegesis, I see this as a chiasm in which the treasure/pearl are wrapped within mustard seed/yeast and dragnet, all of which depict God's reign. In the sermon, I briefly explain that the form is like a literary sandwich, with the outer layers intensifying and clarifying the meat in the middle. So I quickly treat the outer layers and deal mostly with the buried treasure. But I interpret quickly the outer parables in the manner I have suggested to you regarding Israel and the Church. What I share below is part of that quick disposal of one of the outer parables. So this hermeneutic that reads creation, Israel, and eschaton Christologically drives my exegesis in a certain direction:
"If you have ever made your own sourdough starter like I did and seen how 2 cups of leaven quickly turn two gallons of flour and water into a frothy mixture that is filled with life and aromatic scents of the bread to come, this metaphor is easy to grasp. I was amazed to discover that from that one bit of sourdough leaven, I could give life to loaf after loaf, and even cause bread to rise centuries after I die.... The purpose of disciples is to be in our common life the leaven that gives life to the loaf. But of course that is nothing new: that was always the vocation of Israel. Perhaps this buried treasure has something to do with the vocation of Israel to be the light to all the nations...."
Here's a question that perplexes me. I don't ask it because I think I have a good answer or it helps my "case" (if I have a case).
If God does not send people to hell, did God harden Pharaoh's heart?
Craig, as I read back over my own sermon paragraph and yours reminds me of a conversation Marston and I had this summer, I see a deficiency in my own words. I did entirely jump over Israel. I didn't in that I included Jesus, and if asked, I would say Jesus was a Jew and part of Israel. But I made none of that explicit. I'd like to see some synthesis of your paragraph and mine. I'll keep it in mind for future sermons.
Tom, check your recordings of Ellen Davis' lecture on the topic of Pharaoh and the hardening of the heart. For me, it was one of her finest hours. If you recall, she quotes Dante, and exegetes that part of our story by explaining that (1)Pharaoh was the archetype of the man who "does not know God." And then she goes on to say almost the same thing I said above regarding Hell: that eventually we can get so distant from God that we are frozen in place, and incapable of knowing God. If you listen to that part of the lecture, you'll see she does not interpret it in the sense of God "did this" to Pharaoh (which raises questions of theodicy), but that God honored Pharaoh's free choice "not to know" God.
With regard to Jesus being "a part of Israel", I need to quibble a bit. I think it may be better in a theological sense to say, following Irenaeus, that the flesh of Jesus the Word is the recapitulation of Israel: "a 'concise word' which as an epitome or resume [of the Law] is clearer and more effective" {Carter}. Yes, Jesus was a Jew, but I think we must always speak of him as the One in whom the destiny of Israel is given; in Jesus, the many of Israel become one.
Can I just say that I find the term Barthian slightly offensive and would hope, Tom Arthur, that you could refrain from pulling something I write into that category. [mean glare]
Anyways, I kind of missed the boat on this discussion because I was sitting in a canoe most of last week, but a few quick points that may or may not be relevant.
The issue with a low population is that people shouldn't believe in a low population or a high population: there is no biblical quantitative figure with regards to hell. Sinners will go to heel. Fornicators, liars, et cetera. What my non-Barthian view thinks is that hell should not be something a person believes in but something a person hopes against and it is a hope that can only be found though Christ.
Also, Wesley's line about no friendship in hell is beautiful Thomistic in understanding charity as friendship, love as friendship: there is no love in hell.
Again, this was probably irrelevant, but it's a blog, that's the point.
Wilson,
Don't you know that there will only be 144,000 people in heaven? Given the population boom on the earth, that means a serious number of people in hell.
Peace,
Tom
P.S. I will refrain from referring to your thoughts as Barthian. [Friendly glare]
I was reading again Wesley's sermons and came to #91 - On Charity (http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/91/). Here I found this rather straight forward defense of a soteriological inclusivism. I thought it pertinent to our conversation:
3. But it may be asked, "If there be no true love of our neighbour, but that which springs from the love of God; and if the love of God flows from no other fountain than faith in the Son of God; does it not follow, that the whole heathen world is excluded from all possibility of salvation? Seeing they are cut off from faith; for faith cometh by hearing; and how shall they hear without a preacher?" I answer, St. Paul's words, spoken on another occasion, are applicable to this: "What the law speaketh, it speaketh to them that are under the law." Accordingly, that sentence, "He that believeth not shall be damned," is spoken of them to whom the Gospel is preached. Others it does not concern; and we are not required to determine any thing touching their final state. How it will please God, the Judge of all, to deal with them, we may leave to God himself. But this we know, that he is not the God of the Christians only, but the God of the Heathens also; that he is "rich in mercy to all that call upon him," according to the light they have; and that "in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him."
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