Slightly off-tangent, maybe, but still on the subject of Hell, God's justice and whether He 'hates' people, but here are a couple of points/ arguments to consider:-
The whole theology of penal substitutionary atonement is based on God's apparent hatred of sinners and seems to boil down to: "man is sinful, he cannot please God, he deserves punishment for his sins, Jesus takes that punishment, so if we accept Him then we are forgiven". Well, I'm not going to say that's wrong, but I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Salvation is bigger than usually painted, and from a different angle might look very different from how it is usually portrayed.
Personally, I find that for me the above model asks as many questions as it answers. This is a model I find more helpful:
Christianity has always held, from the earliest days, that Jesus was both fully God and fully Human. He was not God prancing around in a man-suit pretending to be human, but rather He ate, drank, slept, cried, rejoiced, and so forth. Nor was He just an extra special man with a few magic tricks and a hotline to heaven, but He really was God with man. Now, this is something of a tension, even a paradox, especially when ideas such as omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience are considered primary attributes of God, as clearly Jesus was none of these - if He had been, He could hardly have been human. No, He was God who had taken on the limitations of being human. This is the essence of the InNcarnation - kenosis.
I believe that Jesus' very person embodies reconciliation of God with man, inasmuch as Jesus is both. However, in order to fully reconcile all that being human entails, this God-man needs to suffer, at least in part, all the evil things that happen to people. Injustice, innocent suffering, persecution, intolerance, and so on. Therefore, only by Jesus' death in the manner in which it occurred is the reconciliation between God and man fully made.
This incarnational theology carries on beyond the Resurrection and onto the Ascension. The Ascension receives precious little attention from many apologists, and I think that this is a great shame. Jesus’ ascension as still Man and God takes humanity permanently into God. We have a stake in God’s nature. The upshot of all this is that everything it means to be human is to be found within God, and everything it means to be God has been found within a Man. Thus is our reconciliation with God made possible. What this means can only be worked out by the individual’s own walk in faith.
Hell
Does Hell exist? Well, Jesus talks about it to a certain extent, so presumably it does. But what is it? Well, it it has often been seen as a place where the souls of the dead are tormented for all eternity. I have some problems with this model, on a number of levels.
1. If God is just, then He cannot punish finite sin with an infinite punishment.
I've heard some remarkably esoteric arguments against this point, but they still fail for me. Have a little look around you, and think of some people you know who make no profession of faith. Of course, you don't know exactly what their sins are, but you can probably imagine - they're likely pretty much like yours. Now, they are not perfect, of course not. Ask yourself whether they deserve to be tormented eternally. Not whether you want them to be, but whether the way they live their lives actually deserves that. Now ask whether God is less mercifully inclined than you.
2. If Jesus’ suffering is sufficient ‘punishment’, as it is in PSA models, for the sins of the world, how can eternal torment be the just punishment as well. Jesus’ suffering, terrible as it was, was finite.
Really, this is partially supportive of 1. above. If Jesus took the punishment that should be mine (although as above, this is not the model I'm particularly inclined towards), then that sin could alternatively be punished by me receiving the same penalty. Which was not infinite.
3. The images of Hell in the Bible are of destruction.
The Lake of Fire for example. Have you ever seen what happens when things are thrown into a pool of lava. They are utterly destroyed within seconds, and nothing remains of them. I don't think the model here is really of us being thrown into a pool of molten rock, but the important thing is the complete and utter destruction. And that's what Hell is about. Sin and evil are destructive. They will ultimately destroy us
4. The ‘lake of fire’ is called the Second Death. Death and consciousness are not generally considered compatible.
Just as in point 3. This reinforces that nothing survives the destruction that Hell represents - the final end to which evil takes us. Jesus tells us not to fear the destruction of the body, because in Him we can be raised from physical death, but rather to fear our utter physical and spiritual destruction.
Salvation only for Christians
This comes from an image of God as unable to let anyone into heaven unless they sign on the doctrinal dotted line. But it is not what the Bible says! Firstly, it is clear that God is looking for reasons to save, not to condemn, any given person:
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
How can it be otherwise, if God loves people? Jesus’ statement ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’ is often quoted in this regard. But we must look at this in the context of John’s gospel (where the saying occurs), which has, at its opening:
John 1:9
The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
Lights every man - Not just those who believe a particular set of propositions. But wherever folk are enlightened to what is right and good, it is this Light who enlightens them. And when they follow that enlightenment, they follow that Light.
John goes on to talk about salvation and judgement in these terms:
John 3:19-21
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of the light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.
Yes, access to God is through this Person, but we do not have to know His name. Jesus' claims of exclucivisity are correct; He and He alone is the reconciler between God and Man. But it is a far cry from that to saying that anyone who doesn't 'become a Christian' and sign on the correct dotted line is doomed to Hell. It is our attitude to the Light, to Grace and Truth, to Right and Wrong that matters. This is not salvation by works; it is not by doing the right things that God accepts us, but rather by our attitude - do we turn away from, or receive, the Light?
Any thoughts on this?
Yours in Christ
Matt
