Who goes to hell?
Predestination,
Universalism & Free Will
A question
that rises in all religions is who’s in and who’s out. If the religion has a
heaven and hell, this question often boils down to who gets to go to heaven and
who winds up in hell. The Christian religion has answered that variously
through history and it is recently being asked again, brought to the forefront
by Rob Bell’s new
book. A good conversation about hell might be the result, though it might
become a name-calling wresting match too. So, who is in and who is out and is
there a hell to shun?
I. The Catholic answer
was—“those not in the Catholic Church go to hell.”
This position
has been eroding since they have softened up on Protestantism recently, but the
classic Catholic answer was that everyone who was not a baptized Catholic was
doomed to hell. The graphic portrayal of hell as a place of eternal torment was
raised to the level of an art from (literally!) in the middle ages and much of
the torment-motif we still have of hell comes from this Western Catholic middle
ages view.
II. The Calvinist answer was
“God picks the elect and everyone else goes to hell.”
This idea
dominated protestant thinking, especially in New England, so that it is
sometimes considered “orthodoxy” and every other position is considered wrong.
This answer argues that all men and women deserve to go to hell—even the
slightest sin of a young child is enough to condemn that child to an eternity
of hell. But, by grace, before the foundation of the world, God has chosen some
to be saved—the “select-elect.” God did not choose based on any good of the
person, or even because He knew they would someday choose Him—He did it out of
sheer mercy and grace. Those who are
not elect are condemned to an eternity in hell.
The Calvinist answer to the hell question is—everyone who was not
selected to escape goes to hell.
III. The Arminian answer was:
“God sends nobody to hell—people choose themselves to go to hell.”
Like
Calvinists, Arminians accepted the idea of hell but rejected the notion that
God consigns people there. They considered the Calvinist God capricious and
proposed that people themselves decide to go to hell by refusing and rejecting
God. Some Arminians considered it easy to reject God and others thought it took
a continual and repeated rejection before a person chose to spend eternity
separated from the people of God—but God’s grace didn’t give up easy on anyone.
Arminians tended to believe that all children automatically went to heaven
based on God’s grace, a kind of “juvenile universalism.” Calvinists considered
Arminians liberals at best and unorthodox at worst. Many consider C. S. Lewis
representing this position best.
IV. The Universalist answer was
“A God’s love triumphs in the end and all will be saved…nobody goes to hell.”
Not long
after the Revolutionary War a new answer emerged in America, though some early
church fathers may have proposed this answer during the first centuries. To
these “universalists” God’s love was central. They considered a god who would
pick and choose people to be saved and consign everyone else to hell was not a
god at all but a devil. If God was loving and sovereign they believed God’s
love would triumph in the end. No human rejection or resistance was strong
enough to veto the power of God’s love. They believed all humans are the
children of God. Some of these cooperate with God now and join the mission, but
others delay. Bu those who delay—or even reject God—will eventually fall under the accepting love of
God, even if that occurs after death. The Universalist answer to the hell
question is—Love wins in the end and nobody goes to hell.
So, who goes to hell?
Perhaps Rob
Bell is only verbalizing a position most evangelicals already have taken. While
evangelicals insist on having “hell on the books” and will fight furiously
against anyone who says nobody is going to hell, functionally most evangelicals are universalists. Several years ago
I asked my students fresh out of high school two questions: 1) Is there a real
hell where people go and are punished? And 2) name three people you believe are
going to hell unless they repent. Virtually every student agreed with the first
question—there is definitely a hell. But less than 10% could name three living
people who they thought might actually go to hell. They listed a few dead people, like Adolph
Hitler, who would go to hell, but most of them thought all their relatives and
virtually every student on this campus would not go to hell. In the discussion
follow-up I asked how many had heard a sermon developing the idea of hell and
exactly two of them had ever heard
preaching on hell.
So I think
Rob Bell and others have done a favor to the Christian community by proposing
the old Universalist answer to the hell question again. Christians need a
discussion on hell again—what is it, where is it, what happens there and who
goes to hell and why? Virtually all of
us have “hell on the books” in our denomination’s doctrinal positions. But what
is our functionally position? We to have a talk about hell.
So, what do you think?
The discussion of this column is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=161502633
Keith Drury March 8, 2011
www.TuesdayColumn.com