Saving Hell From Oblivion (Part 1): Did A Good God Create Hell?
Hell is under attack, though not by the faithful church Christ promised in Matthew 16:18. Instead, the traditional idea of Hell as a place of torment reserved for the condemned has long fallen out of favor, particularly in American Christianity. There have arisen two approaches in this modern attack on Hell. The first approach (hereafter referred to as “Oblivionism”) is to minimize Hell by removing the active, penal nature of it. The Oblivionist imagines Hell as a land of separation from the presence of God and nothing else. For example, Joshua Butler says, “Hell is not a place God creates to torture sinners, but a power God excludes to protect the robust vitality of his kingdom. God’s purpose of containment, in radical contrast to the caricature, reveals a motive of mercy. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, God’s mercy is also seen in his treatment of the impenitent: he does not torture or kill them, but rather hands them over to their desire.” (Butler, The Skeletons in God’s Closet) The second approach, commonly known as “Annihilationism,” is to deny the existence of an eternal Hell altogether.
What is troubling about both of these positions is not their questioning of the nature of Hell, but the presuppositions which cause them to do so. Clark Pinnock, in defense of his position, states that “there is no orthodox dogma of the nature of hell per se; so we can relax and entertain possibilities.” (Pinnock, “The Nature of Hell”) This would be true if the debate revolved around the drapery of Hell. But, the primary reason for the rejection of the traditional view of Hell stems from an errant view of God’s goodness and is dangerous to the life and mission of the church. In this series, I’d like to explore a right view of God’s goodness and then extend that to a right understanding of the nature of Hell. In this post, I’ll try to define goodness in terms of how we understand it in modern Western culture. I also hope to define the Biblical definition of God’s goodness. Along the way, we will look at how these definitions impact our understanding of the nature of Hell.
God’s Goodness in the Twenty-First Century
It is a significant question of the modern era: “How can God be good and send someone to a place of unending torment?” This question has caused a revulsion against Christianity by the modern secular culture. The class of “New Atheists” believe they have found a chink in the armor of the Faith. Against these attacks, popular apologists have sought to soften the offense of Hell to lessen its philosophical drag on the Christian argument. Pinnock passed his judgment by saying, “Given the fact that the traditional view of the nature of hell involves the everlasting, conscious punishing of the impenitent in body and soul, it is hard to detect any kindness in it.” Butler agrees, saying that in the traditional view of Hell, “God looks like a sadistic monster, capable of a capricious cruelty.” But, the question does not hinge on a good God creating a bad place, but rather what is meant when the Bible says that God is good.
For the modern reader there is a tendency to read a Western version of the good into a question like this by thinking that goodness is an ideal, an outside form or force to which all strive, including God. The ancient Greeks understood goodness in this way. But, if God is to be judged by his ability to meet some other external standard of “the good,” then certainly Hell would be an abhorant act disqualifying him of all right to claim Himself to be good. However, it is quite the case that the Bible means something different when it speaks of the concept of goodness. It is typically best to understand the meaning of a word by the way it is used. In the Bible, one finds God revealing himself to be good and also passing judgment on things and deeds as good or evil. The Biblical witness to God’s goodness can best be seen in God’s goodness in His creative works and His saving works.
God’s Goodness in His Creative Works
The first use of the word “good” in Scripture is found in Genesis 1:4, where God declares his first creation to be good. This culminates in the creation of mankind, where God declares in verse 31 that his creation was “very good.” These declarations establish God to be the supreme judge of what is good. In declaring his creation to be good, he is not just creating life, but he is also creating a standard for what good is. Good is that object or being which displays the beauty, value, and purpose for which God made it.
But, if God has made all things good, what is to be made of his creative work in making “the deaf, the mute, the seeing or the blind” (Exodus 4:11)? What is to be done with the purpose of God in causing a man to be born blind (John 9:3)? What can be said for God’s actions in making some as vessels of mercy and others as vessels of wrath (Romans 9:20–23)? In all of these cases, God confesses to the very works of which the Oblivionist and Annihilationist would deny He is capable; namely, creating human suffering. Even in these cases, God is displaying his glory. So, God’s goodness in his creative works, whether in the creation of the world or in the creation of a man who is born blind, is so that the beauty of his glory might be manifest. This is the greatest good.
God’s Goodness in His Saving Works
God’s goodness is also found in His saving works. The story of the people of Israel in the Old Testament is a story of this work. טוֹב (ṭôḇ) is used to speak of God’s saving work to bring Israel into a good land (Exodus 3:8), in the promises that God has for Israel (Numbers 10:29), in his provision for them in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:16), in the commands that he had given them (Deut. 10:13), in his provision for them in the promised land (Deut. 28:12), and in God’s deliverance of his people from their enemies (1 Chronicles 16:34, Jeremiah 24:6).
The goodness of God in his saving work can also be found in the New Testament in many of the same categories as the Old Testament. God in Christ is shown to be good in his essence (Matt. 19:17, Mark 10:17, Luke 18:19), in the good gifts that he gives to those who are his (Matt. 7:11, James 1:17), in the good purpose he has for his elect (Rom. 8:28), and in the protection and provision he gives to his sheep (John 10:11).
But, the goodness of God in his saving work also includes some hard truths as well. The deliverance of Israel from the Egyptians included the death and destruction of the Egyptian people. The protection of Israel in the wilderness included the obliteration of their enemies. The inheritance of that “good land” to which they were led included the driving out of entire peoples. God’s goodness to his people required his severity to those who were not.
In a similar way, one of the pinnacles of the New Testament hope in the salvation that God has purposed for his people can be found in Romans 8:28. This passage holds great promise for those who are “the called,” but that promise is wrapped up in the fact that “God causes all things to work together for good.” The immediate context of this passage relates to the afflictions believers face. God causes afflictions as part of his goodness to us in our salvation.
God Gets To Say What Is Good
If God is good in his creative and saving works, and this goodness is understood to be that which shows forth his beauty and his excellency in those works, then Hell must be found to be good. If Hell is anything, it is a place. In Matt. 25, Jesus paints a stark contrast between the destinies of the blessed and the damned. In verse 41, as he pronounces judgment on the goats, he commands them to enter the eternal fire which was “prepared for the devil and his angels.” The Greek word ἑτοιμάζω (hetoimazō) is here used to say that this place has been “prepared” for those facing God’s wrath. The word is also used in verse 34 to speak of the kingdom that God has prepared for those who receive eternal reward. This same word is used in John 14:2–3, where Jesus encourages his disciples in telling them that he is going to prepare a place for them.
It is not just that God has made a place for the damned to reside but that he has also made the conditions of that place. The word ἑτοιμάζω deals with the contents of the place being prepared as well. It is used to speak of the preparation of the way for the kingdom, the Passover meal, and the places of honor next to Jesus in heaven. As a consequence, it can be said that God has prepared the conditions of Hell as a place of unending restlessness (as with the Rich Man in Luke 16:24, “I am in anguish in this flame”) and torment (as with Satan and the false prophet in Rev. 20:10, “tormented day and night forever and ever”).
If God is indeed God, then he gets to say what “good” is. In fact, it is not just that he defines the word as some standard, but that he is the standard by which the word is defined. Hell may offend our sensibilities. It may cause us to wince with fear and trembling. But, the God who made Hell declares his purposes to be good. We must take him at his word and trust him.
In the next post, we will dive further into this Biblical understanding of the goodness of God as we expand out into the effects that a wrong view of God’s goodness and the ultimate judgment of God in Hell can have on the church.
