Hiddeness of God, Universalism, and Hell
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 12:50 am
I was recently reading the complaint of a former evangelical who had become an atheist. He was a scientist and complained that there is no proof of God, no where near enough evidence. In fact, if there is a God he has deliberately hidden Himself. He quoted the saying "the invisible and non-existent look very much alike". He went on to charge the Christian God with being not just unfair but immoral. How could a good God punish people for not believing in Him when He could easily show Himself and remove all doubt? We have no proof of the existence of God.
It seems to me there is ample evidence, as Paul wrote in Romans, of a creator. It is all around us and to me it is implausible to believe life, in all its complexity, is just some happy accident, and the lives of all men are purposeless. Recently I was watching Peter Hitchens, Christopher's brother, a Christian and author of "The Rage Against God", who was being interviewed on "Socrates in the City". When asked why he was a Christian he replied that he chose to be and questioned why anyone would want to choose unbelief. His answer resonated with me as I have long believed people generally believe what the want to believe. They are not overwhelmed by facts.
About this time I was watching the Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace present his view regarding the hiddenness of God. Wallace made four main arguments; I will provide a brief summary of each. First, God wants our love of Him to be genuine, and he maintains that love requires a certain amount of freedom to be genuine. Real love is not forced. A genuine expression of our love for God is to do what is right when God is not obvious.
Wallace used an illustration of the beautiful young woman who marries a wealthy and powerful elderly man. If she did not know of his wealth and power would she even have given him a second glance? But she does know and he can never know if she truly loves him. But she is overwhelmed by what he is.
Wallace's second point was that if God was not hidden our freedom to have faith in Him would be destroyed. Faith trusts in the object of faith even when the one believed in is absent. Hiddenness requires trust, just as we trust our spouse even though we are not with them.
His third point is that there must be a certain amount of evidence, enough to have faith if you want to believe but not so much that a person is overwhelmed resulting in forced love/faith.
And his forth point was that we have the freedom to love genuinely, to love in trust and faith and to believe without overwhelming proof. We can choose to believe God responds to our prayers for healing, for example, even though we can not be certain the healing was not due to modern medicine. And we can refuse to believe God healed us. But we have enough evidence to believe God and His promises if we choose to do so.
While listening to Wallace I noticed that his arguments were all falsified by Evangelical Universalism as I understand it. At Judgement the Lord will be revealed in all His Glory. There will be no room for doubt, all will be overwhelmed. All will be confess Jesus as Lord, though for many the confession will be forced. How can there be a real love and faith? And the time spent in Hell does not answer the complaint of unfairness, just removes some of the force of the argument.
The argument of Wallace is not falsified for the various views of hell espoused by evangelicals such as eternal punishment, whether in hell or outer darkness, or the annihilationist. As Paul wrote we are without excuse for unbelief. Among all views of the fate of the lost only the view of the "no hellers" would seem to require no response to the charge of unfairness.
It seems to me there is ample evidence, as Paul wrote in Romans, of a creator. It is all around us and to me it is implausible to believe life, in all its complexity, is just some happy accident, and the lives of all men are purposeless. Recently I was watching Peter Hitchens, Christopher's brother, a Christian and author of "The Rage Against God", who was being interviewed on "Socrates in the City". When asked why he was a Christian he replied that he chose to be and questioned why anyone would want to choose unbelief. His answer resonated with me as I have long believed people generally believe what the want to believe. They are not overwhelmed by facts.
About this time I was watching the Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace present his view regarding the hiddenness of God. Wallace made four main arguments; I will provide a brief summary of each. First, God wants our love of Him to be genuine, and he maintains that love requires a certain amount of freedom to be genuine. Real love is not forced. A genuine expression of our love for God is to do what is right when God is not obvious.
Wallace used an illustration of the beautiful young woman who marries a wealthy and powerful elderly man. If she did not know of his wealth and power would she even have given him a second glance? But she does know and he can never know if she truly loves him. But she is overwhelmed by what he is.
Wallace's second point was that if God was not hidden our freedom to have faith in Him would be destroyed. Faith trusts in the object of faith even when the one believed in is absent. Hiddenness requires trust, just as we trust our spouse even though we are not with them.
His third point is that there must be a certain amount of evidence, enough to have faith if you want to believe but not so much that a person is overwhelmed resulting in forced love/faith.
And his forth point was that we have the freedom to love genuinely, to love in trust and faith and to believe without overwhelming proof. We can choose to believe God responds to our prayers for healing, for example, even though we can not be certain the healing was not due to modern medicine. And we can refuse to believe God healed us. But we have enough evidence to believe God and His promises if we choose to do so.
While listening to Wallace I noticed that his arguments were all falsified by Evangelical Universalism as I understand it. At Judgement the Lord will be revealed in all His Glory. There will be no room for doubt, all will be overwhelmed. All will be confess Jesus as Lord, though for many the confession will be forced. How can there be a real love and faith? And the time spent in Hell does not answer the complaint of unfairness, just removes some of the force of the argument.
The argument of Wallace is not falsified for the various views of hell espoused by evangelicals such as eternal punishment, whether in hell or outer darkness, or the annihilationist. As Paul wrote we are without excuse for unbelief. Among all views of the fate of the lost only the view of the "no hellers" would seem to require no response to the charge of unfairness.