I first became aware of William Lane Craig about 15 years or so ago, wen he debated an Atheist at Willow Creek Church, in Illinois. Since he is a brilliant Christian philosopher, he easily demolished the poorly-matched atheist who took him on. I came to be an admirer of Craig, after watching that debate. However, Craig is, of course, not a Bible expert, but a philosopher—and he argues like one.
Though the argument of the article is intended to affirm that a loving God can indeed send people to a hell of eternal torment, Craig follows the policy of almost every defender of the doctrine, by stating his own distaste for it:
This seems to be saying, even though I am telling you that this doctrine is consistent with our God being a God of love, I can not bring myself to like it. This means either that I am lacking in the very love that God exhibits in frying the lost eternally, or else "love" does not mean the same thing when we are talking about God's love as when we are talking about a Christian's love. Since the Christian's love is supposed to be the same as God's, this is a disturbing admission to hear from every advocate of this bizarre doctrine."No Christian likes the doctrine of hell. I truly wish with all my heart that universal salvation were true."
The article is comprised of 28 paragraphs. The first 14 are devoted to presenting an evangelistic message, and the last 14 present his philosophical case for eternal torment. Of course, he presented many scriptures in the first 14 paragraphs, which did not deal with hell, but with points related to the gospel. When he turned to his discussion of hell, no further scriptures were presented. There was a quote from Sartre (who was a fanatical atheist) to support the notion that "the door to hell is locked on the inside." Why he chose to quote an atheist on this point, when he could have as easily quoted the Christian philosopher, C.S. Lewis, saying exactly the same thing, is a curiosity—unless, perhaps, he was writing to persuade non-Christians, rather than Christians. In any case, I find it ironic that Homer would object to TK's quoting John Stuart Mill, and would then commend an article that defends a point by quoting the Marxist, Jean-Paul Sartre.
I also find it curious that Homer would like such an article, which defended the traditional view without appeal to one scripture, but only philosophical arguments, after so often charging universalists (who have scores of scriptures as the basis for their belief) with leaning on philosophical arguments, rather than scripture.
Because this link was posted as an exceptionally good defense of traditionalism, and because it was by William Lane Craig, whom I consider to be very smart, I was expecting much more from the article than what was delivered. He did not make one point anywhere in the article that I did not regularly make in defending hell when I was in my teens and twenties. It was elementary stuff. When I started teaching my "Foundations" series for YWAM, in 1982, my notes included every one of Craig's arguments for eternal torment (in my lecture on "eternal judgment").
In those days, I was making the same mistakes that Craig makes in his article: 1) assuming, without adequate attention to exegesis, that the traditional view of hell is scriptural; and 2) presenting a false dichotomy—namely, that God must either damn sinners to eternal torment, or else deprive them of free choice. Of course, the excluded middle here is the third option, namely, that God might continue to give sinners the same option of free choice after death, as well as before. It would at least be an option, if God wished to be generous!
Those who most strongly defend the reality of human free will, generally, do not seem to consider that such free will is an innately human trait. They think it belongs to people temporarily (only during this life). They do not believe that humans still possess this trait, as part of the very definition of their being human, after death.
Of course, if their argument was that there is no free will after death because death brings annihilation, then this inconsistency would not arise. However, traditionalists believe that humans live forever after death, but apparently not as humans (what specie, then?). They believe that, during life, free will is so defining of personhood that it alone determines whatever consequences one deserves to receive for eternity. However, when sinners have died, they apparently no longer have this central human characteristic. They can no longer choose God or repent. Where theologians get this idea, or why they think we should believe them when they teach it, baffles me, since nothing in scripture can be said to support it.
Having left us with this false dichotomy, Craig writes:
What is left-out as an option (one that God would certainly have thought of, rather than foolishly painting Himself into a corner) is that God might punish sinners with perfectly just judgment, and afterward show mercy to any who at any time may become penitent. That would be a win-win for God and for the sinners He loves and desires to save. Nothing is compromised. God does what He must do, and gets what He wants, as well.Thus God finds himself in a kind of dilemma. On the one hand are His justice and holiness, which demand punishment for sin, rightly deserved. On the other hand are God's love and mercy, which demand reconciliation and forgiveness. Both are essential to His nature; neither can be compromised. What is God to do in this dilemma?
To insist that God must punish people eternally is to imply one of three things: 1) either God is not as smart as we are, and could not figure out this solution, or 2) He could have adopted this solution, but did not do so because He really would be happier to torture people forever, or 3) even though God requires us to forgive all of our enemies, He has not the option open to Him of acting the way He commands us to behave—and cannot forgive His enemies. Since we were His enemies, and He forgave us, this seems to eliminate this third option. Which of the remaining two alternatives does the traditionalist prefer to live with?
I would prefer to live with the scriptures—something Craig does not do in his article. None of his arguments defending eternal torment can be found stated or implied in any passage of the Bible. Let me list his arguments. I will leave it to Homer and others to attach the scriptures upon which they think these points can be said to be supported.
Craig begins his consideration with the following analysis:
Of course, neither of these assumptions need to exist in calling into question the doctrine of eternal torment (which Craig equates with the doctrine of "hell"). The only assumptions that the detractor needs to make are that the scriptures do not teach any such doctrine, and that such a doctrine contradicts the things that the scriptures really do teach.It seems to me that the detractor of hell is making two crucial assumptions. First of all, he assumes that if God is all powerful, then God can create a world in which everyone freely chooses to give his life to God and is saved. And second, he assumes that if God is all loving, then God prefers a world in which everyone freely chooses to give his life to God and be saved. Since God is thus both willing and able to create a world in which everyone is freely saved, it follows that no one goes to hell.
Craig makes the obligatory disclaimer:
Yet this ignores the fact that, while God may not make the decision who will or will not ultimately go to hell, it is God alone who has determined what hell is, and what will happen to people who find themselves there. Thus, the experience of hell must reflect exactly what God intended for a man to experience, if he is guilty of spending his momentary earthly sojourn in ignorance of or rebellion against God.God doesn't send anybody to hell. His desire is that everyone be saved, and He pleads with people to come to Him. But if we reject Christ's sacrifice for our sin, then God has no choice but to give us what we deserve. God will not send us to hell--but we will send ourselves. Our eternal destiny thus lies in our own hands. It is a matter of our free choice where we shall spend eternity.
Craig argues:
But it is not logically impossible for God to give fools endless opportunities to freely do the right thing. If God is the impatient sort, He might prefer to cut off opportunities before He is forced to do so, but there is nothing logically requiring Him to place an arbitrary limit at death.The only obstacle to universal salvation is therefore human free will. It's logically impossible to make someone freely do something.
In arguing that a loving God would not necessarily be expected to prefer a world in which all people would be saved, Craig writes:
The merits of this statement may be debated on logical grounds, but what cannot be done is provide any scripture in its support.It seems to me that God's being all-loving would at the very most require Him to create a world having an optimal balance between saved and lost, a world where as many as possible freely accept salvation and as few as possible freely reject it.
The article winds down with three arguments (all philosophical, none scriptural) why eternal torment for temporal sins is not necessarily a violation of justice. The first of these goes like this:
This makes sense, philosophically. but scripturally, where do we find that "the inhabitants of hell continue to hate God and reject Him" or that "they continue to sin and so accrue to themselves more guilt and more punishment." It is not a foregone conclusion that men in hell would never change their minds. Logic and experience provide no indication that this can be predicted. Nor does the scripture provide any support at all for the notion. So why should anyone believe it to be true?1) The objection equivocates between every sin which we commit and all the sins which we commit. We can agree that every individual sin which a person commits deserves only a finite punishment. But it doesn't follow from this that all of a person's sins taken together as a whole deserve only a finite punishment. If a person commits an infinite number of sins, then the sum total of all such sins deserves infinite punishment. Now, of course, nobody commits an infinite number of sins in the earthly life. But what about in the afterlife? Insofar as the inhabitants of hell continue to hate God and reject Him, they continue to sin and so accrue to themselves more guilt and more punishment. In a real sense, then, hell is self-perpetuating. In such a case, every sin has a finite punishment, but because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment.
Craig's second argument for the justice of eternal torment is as follows:
It is very common for defenders of tradition to argue: "a sin of infinite gravity and proportion...deserves infinite punishment." People who otherwise are desperately looking for ways to justify such disproportionate punishment (as would be condemned in God's perfectly-just law) may be inclined to turn off their reasoning long enough to give this concept a pass. However, not only does the scripture nowhere approve this strange ethic, but the Bible flatly disallows it.2) Why think that every sin does have only a finite punishment? We could agree that sins like theft, lying, adultery, and so forth, are only of finite consequence and so only deserve a finite punishment. But, in a sense, these sins are not what serves to separate someone from God. For Christ has died for those sins. The penalty for those sins has been paid. One has only to accept Christ as Savior to be completely free and clean of those sins. But the refusal to accept Christ and his sacrifice seems to be a sin of a different order altogether. For this sin decisively separates one from God and His salvation. To reject Christ is to reject God Himself. And this is a sin of infinite gravity and proportion and therefore deserves infinite punishment. We ought not, therefore, to think of hell primarily as punishment for the array of sins of finite consequence which we have committed, but as the just due for a sin of infinite consequence, namely the rejection of God Himself.
If sinning against God is an offense deserving infinite punishment, then every sin deserves infinite punishment—since every sin is against the same God. Yet the Bible clearly indicates that justice requires different penalties for different sins—e.g., steal a lamb, repay four lambs; steal an ox, repay five oxen; steal a wife, get stoned to death! Furthermore, Jesus plainly teaches that, even in the judgment, penalties of the lost will not all be equal (Matt.11:22, 24/Luke 12:47-48). This means that, even though all sins are against the infinite God, not all deserve the same punishment. This conclusively disproves the old canard that the magnitude of the sin is determined by the magnitude of the one sinned against. The penalty for murder, in the law, was the same whether the victim was a pauper or a king.
Craig's final argument for the justness of eternal torment is similar to his first:
This is little more than a restatement of the first argument in the series. The idea in both is, since the lost in hell continue to sin forever, their punishment properly must last forever. However, this is begging the question of whether sinners will in fact remain unrepentant in hell. Why would anyone assume this to be the case? The above paragraph depends on premises that are twice introduced with "it is possible..." I actually don't know that it is possible for a sinner to resist God's inducements forever. Again, the apparent assumption is that, after death, humans are no longer humans. There is no scripture that has ever come to my attention that affirms such a counterintuitive idea.3) Finally, it's possible that God would permit the damned to leave hell and go to heaven but that they freely refuse to do so. It is possible that persons in hell grow only more implacable in their hatred of God as time goes on. Rather than repent and ask God for forgiveness, they continue to curse Him and reject Him. God thus has no choice but to leave them where they are. In such a case, the door to hell is locked, as John Paul Sartre said, from the inside. The damned thus choose eternal separation from God. So, again, so as long as any of these scenarios is even possible, it invalidates the objection that God's perfect justice is incompatible with everlasting separation from God.
William Lane Craig's article was advertised by psimmond (above) as being "the best article I've read defending the traditional view." I think this may be true. I have read multiple book-length defenses of the traditional view, and they do not have much better arguments than Craig's article has, though they spend more time discussing actual texts of scripture than Craig did. Since this is so, I hope the reader can see why it is that I have been forced by biblical research to abandon the traditional view as a thing impossible of scriptural support and unworthy of the God who manifested Himself in Jesus Christ.
