Isn't the Idea of Hell Just Plain Mean? "Discussion Panel" Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 11/22/2009

all right so we're going to dive uh right into our first question and if we can get that up there you and i assume they mean uh you tim made hell sound just like a metaphor not a reality so is hell real and is there a judgment what about the lake of fire and revelation or the book of life metaphor or reality so a big piece of your message today was talking about a lot of the descriptions of hell in the bible being metaphorically and this this uh question is kind of getting the heart of well is hell a metaphor in and of itself or is there a hell so do you want to lead off tim since it's yeah i'm glad to start i think maybe just uh i'll take the last three words there metaphor or reality and i would just say yes i think it's a false dichotomy to to talk about either and a lot of this maybe this has to do with my own back my own background as a student of hebrew literature so i've just been studying literature for like the past six years here and reading in terms of poetry and metaphor and learning about how poetry works and so on but the reason i think that the economy exists is because the idea if there's figures of speech that's the misunderstanding of the use of the word literal correct that's that's correct when people say do you take the bible literally then they think then there's no metaphors or that's that's kind of uh what happens with this correct yeah so to to under to interpret a meta if jesus intends to use a metaphor to interpret it literally is actually to misunderstand it's not to just it's not as if somehow these are two ways of thinking about reality or something but metaphor is a way of talking about reality and uh the biblical author actually some most of our language is infused couch couch is a metaphor and sometimes you do a better job speaking about reality using metaphors that's right for example today you could have read in the paper that the white house said such and such about the health care initiative really we all understand what that means right the white house said because the white house is a metaphor for the administration but we don't stop and think about it you can communicate it very clearly by saying the white house said oh if you take that literally you mean that there is a house and it actually speaks see so when somebody says oh well no no that's a metaphor oh then that's not literally true no it is literally true that the white house said something but metaphor can help you get to reality very quickly so just because you use metaphor doesn't mean you don't take things literally it's a misunderstanding of the word literal do you understand what i'm saying there's metaphor all over the body bible and sometimes it's the best way to communicate and we do it all the time one of the things that we had a conversation with the car on the way home we do this every sunday after uh church i have a 12 year old in the back who's he's a male and he's very literal about how we use language my wife studies literature she's using uh literary terms all the time so in the conversation the way home when uh there was some concern about whether or not tim was taking the sting out of the whole idea of hell by talking about it as metaphor my 12 year old in the back seat very helpfully reminded us too that our language about heaven is also metaphorical those are all board pictures so let's just let's play some of that yeah so pearly gates pearly gates or a golden cube yes a golden cube city streets of gold so oh you don't believe the streets are actually being made of gold you know i'll think well now what does that what would that actually mean that means the things that we would put our feet on and we would walk on is gold so gold will be as common there as dirt that's kind of what that metaphor is about but it's a place that's beyond our ability to comprehend how magnificent it is but that doesn't mean it's not really a magnificent place and that's the problem with metaphor for this subject is that people are concerned that you're taking the hell out of hell that's the issue yeah so i so i tried to be clear that i think the biblical author is trying to point us to a reality it's the reality of human destiny somehow apart from god and the biblical authors use their whole literary toolbox to try and paint different aspects of what that is like fire darkness jesus uses other metaphors he quotes from poems in the isaiah in the book of isaiah about a worm that never dies so we have this idea of a corpse rotting right eternal disintegration uh i think you did a good job in your message pointing out like how can you have literal fire and literal darkness at the same time so that would get to correct a rub with that idea of little but i think the use of the metaphors what tim's trying to communicate i think and you speak for yourself but it's it's we should not take any um it shouldn't relax us or anything it's it's horrible actually these are great metaphors fire is horrible no one enjoys i mean light a match and hold your hand that's horrible darkness utter darkness is horrible so actually the use of those metaphors by the lord in the bible they're excellent metaphors for something that we don't want any part of and that's what's going on all right let's move on so kind of in answer this question metaphor reality um it's not either or i hear you're saying but both and the the metaphors are a way of talking about reality and and describing that reality and is chris just reiterated and you said all day today uh it may not be fire but the fire suggests it's very very serious the ramifications and it's a real place judgment will be real heaven like you see heaven where's heaven oh up there well see what we're doing right now well like where that kind of thing so it's difficult to communicate in this kind of language and about these subjects without using metaphor probably impossible actually all right let's change gears a little bit go to question two under the assumption that god was and is all-knowing and all-powerful and just from beginning to end why would god create a world knowing full well that some people would not choose him and would end up in hell so i guess you know this question is kind of getting the heart of the matter what was that that was exciting somebody whistled um so i think this question's getting the heart of the matter is it worth it you know kind of kind of that point knowing full well that people end up there was was the creation uh even worth it some of the same questions that get at the root of the evil suffering dilemma so who wants to take a stab at this they pay you the most chris why don't you give it a shot that's nice well this is about um the question really is about the idea of i don't know how to get to this simply um why would an all-powerful all-knowing just god create a world knowing full well that the idea of love and the idea that of freedom that's the kind of the it's this is the this is the uh kind of direction that theologians go behind the question of why is people suffer why is there evil and things like this so this has to do with god creating a world and how could this best be the best possible world if people are actually going to end up in separation from god because god created a world because he is a loving god god created one of the worlds that god could create would have been a world where there are creatures who are free and if the creatures if creatures are free then they can freely choose to move away from him and disagree with him and disobey and he created that world because he's a loving god and because he's a loving god he cannot force people against their freedom because that would be an unloving thing uh forced love is not it's not a good thing for you know god's not a divine rapist he doesn't force people to do what they do not want to do and this is all set up because he's a loving god so the question is really is there such a thing as genuine freedom so if you have freedom why do you have freedom because god is a loving god and he creates this situation where people can either turn toward him or turn against him if they turn against him it is against his nature to force them back because he's a loving god does that make sense i'm not probably approaching it as well as i could but it's all about freedom the fact that we have a loving god means that there's consequences to that because then free creatures will choose to do whatever they want to do they suffer the consequences of that so this it's an ancient way of approaching the subject it goes back to augusta and many other people does that make yeah you had to add to that yeah i think that's a good answer i mean the answer is love right and i was i read in a book one time god kind of had four choices to create a new world to create an amoral world where there's no good or no bad uh it's kind of boring to create a robotic world or to create the world that we have here and that's kind of the risk of love and um you know i think the heart of the question is your dialogue with people about this is okay i get the risk love i get the way of a world and which true love exists and true freedom exists but is it worth the evil and suffering is it worth people in hell that's the heart question and i think tim wanted that a little bit the end of his message saying well there's some mystery here that we don't it's not over yet we don't know everything and i don't think that's a cop-out i think that's a that's a good answer do you want to say anything about that you getting where i'm going with that tim yeah yeah totally yeah i think there is i i think this is one of the more profound thing that a christian worldview brings to the table is that love somehow love is that this is like sounding like a beatles song love is at like the center of the universe or something like this but there is something so inherently good about the giving of oneself for the well-being of another that there's something so beautiful and inherently morally good about that that the possibility of that is worth the risk of love being missed or rejected in some way i guess that's how i kind of process it yes in terms of that and there's the idea of his honoring us he honors us by letting us be free and make decisions which are against his he doesn't force us he honors our freedom what seems to lie behind that question in part is to ask how much freedom would you be willing to concede in order to have a universe without risk and in order to have a universe without risk it would mean essentially denying our humanity because at bottom it's the capacity for freedom to freely choose and to freely reject that makes us ultimately what we are as humans and i think for uh for the lord in order to have the university really wanted it had to be created with these kinds of conditions it's really difficult and there's another aspect of this too if if i reflecting on it that a world with evil can be morally superior to world without evil because it's only against the backdrop of evil that good is good see the the diamond looks brighter when it's against a darker backdrop so someone who is um so uh bravery is only you only you only it's only a virtue if there's real fear behind it so you're overcoming something so a world that's filled with evil and you don't choose that but you choose the better is actually a morally superior world than if there was no evil at all because you're actually overcoming something and most of us know that's virtuous yeah we've uh we've hit a lot of c.s lewis today but he has a great quote and he said what's uh what's more beautiful a rock or runaway horse i kind of think that's that's profound that's some kind of what we're getting at poetically uh the the choice to choose and to fall in love is also the choice to go the other way and to reject but in that it's beautiful it's much more beautiful into something that has no choice one other before you move on john one other thing that ought to be said too is that the glory of the gospel the good news is presupposes that there is bad news there is no one without the other all right great moving along uh question three if you believe that the people who choose hell and separation from god exist eternally and their condition worsens as time goes on are they burned up do they reach a point where they no longer exist and this question is kind of using some of the imagery you use today tim and it's going towards a classic position that many christ followers hold biblically that that yeah there will be people that go to hell but eventually or maybe right away when they're judged they'll be annihilated because that's the most merciful position so we're kind of going with this questions to the to the eternality of hell and who wants to tackle that let me do that first since i've dodged it so far let me just say this is sort of tim and chris will get into this a bit i'm sure of it but that is that the biblical witness isn't uniform on this it doesn't speak with one voice and so you will find passages that seem to lean into one direction and you'll find other passages that seem to go in another and so then we're left uh trying to make a best judgment as we can in terms of publicly what kind of a position do we teach what what is our our theology of mission and evangelism predicated upon yeah and these are the kind of passages that kind of get in your crawl a little bit because i think all of us would like to uh i mean maybe i don't speak for you guys but i would much rather have some kind of a thing of oh yeah just zip out of existence to me that's that's uh i i feel better about that but there are verses in the bible that just go up that's hard my my biblical exegesis won't allow that they they butt up against my desire for zipping out of existence because you have these phrases that seem to imply that there is no rest day and night forever and ever and those kind of things so that's the i don't know if we can pop some of those verses up one of them is in revelation 14 11. um there's another verse in revelation uh 20 and 19 and 20. there's a comparison there's they're talking about the the final destiny it's all metaphor but there seems to be that these they're these they're still there so 1411 talks about there is no rest day and night forever and ever for these people who are who are suffering and then you see that is that up there right there yeah so that that lens so that's the idea of there's no rest they don't just zip out of existence and then in revelation 19 now this gets into the apocalypse and so it's kind of difficult which is fodder for this argument because it's all difficult in the apocalypse but in 1921 um there's these uh there's these two characters there's three there's a kind of an unholy trinity in the apocalypse there is a someone who is called the beast out of the sea and there's a beast out of the earth there's a false prophet quote like the antichrist there's two and then there's satan so they make this unholy trinity kind of a thing so two of the unholy trinity are thrown into the lake of fire in revelation 19 20 and 21 the two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur so again this is trying to describe the in prophetic literature the final destiny of all things because in chapter 20 you see that hades is emptied into this kind of lake of fire so that you get these two unholy people and they're thrown alive into the lake of fire and then in revelation 20 verse 10 then the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown they that is the three of them will be tormented day and night forever and ever so you have these two who are thrown in and then there's this issue about these thousand years and then a thousand years later if that's literal then you have satan thrown in and they are still there so they're existing so again it lends support to the idea that there's no rest it goes on forever and ever and ever which is a horrible thought i mean obviously i would rather it just zip out of existence but there's difficult passages like this which don't tend to go that direction one one question that rise of stream when chris was telling us that and it's all there just as he said it is that when you read apocalyptic literature like revelation 20 um it's you know it starts with then i saw an angel yeah it's in the it comes in the form of a vision a dream there's a vision how literal is that vision what what should we take away from that and obviously it's a it's an awful picture but in terms of the details of the picture how much of this is a literal description of the way things are actually going to go down and it's not it's it's a it's a genre issue how do you read this kind of literature and that's where i think tim might be actually more helpful in terms of replying to that specific passage but there are other places too where jesus uses that sort of thing and he's not speaking a metaphor for instance in matthew 25 when he gives us that picture of the sheep and the goats if you remember in terms of the picture of judgment again it's a picture but he says at the end of that in verse 46 um in 45 he will he will answer to those on one side truly i say to you to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these you did not do it to me he's talking about feeding the the hungry giving water to the thirsty visiting the those in prison and so on but he says in 46 these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life eternal punishment is mirrored by the opposite reality of eternal life he's not speaking metaphorically there it doesn't seem like and that's that for some people just to lock down what else what else is there to talk about actually if you go up to 41 the whole passage is a fantastic passage we should preach that passage in 2541 if you go there so he's now saying to people who are going to end up there on the left depart from me you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels for i was hungry you gave me nothing to eat i was thirsty he gave me nothing to drink i was a stranger and he did not invite me and and so on and then then that is the eternal punishment it is that eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels so it seems like again it goes on forever and ever which is horrible let me uh let me jump in here for a second uh one quick announcement um that i forgot to make we're going to do it like we did it last week and we want you guys texting right now we want to honor the fact that you're live here um and if you can kind of text in response to what these guys have said so far we're going to try to take the last 10 15 minutes to deal with your text so we can kind of have an engaging conversation so sorry that i forgot to say that but um we need you to text and uh they'll get them up here to me so back to the question um just if i can direct you guys to just that last question do they reach a point where they no longer exist and just be real simple for our audience here based on your biblical understandings would you all three of you say no or would one of you say i don't know i mean what would your answer to that question be based on your understanding of scripture yes i think they exist forever okay john you concur i love being smoked out like that um publicly i wouldn't if i'm in a teaching position i would say yes they exist forever that we are eternal beings we're resurrected and we go to our judgment privately i hope for something different but saying it privately in a group of 200 people is not terribly private um so we we would want the latter i would want the latter yes i would privately i hope for it but i don't but the biblical material seems to suggest otherwise and that's what i would teach so tim you've been conspicuously silent here do you want to mix it up a little bit and throw it through an alternative view out there um yeah i'll put some at least some other pieces of this discussion on the table um so there really there's two there's two issues one is we have biblical passages uh and you have the ones that we just looked at that use this word eternal you also have passages that use various images related to destruction so paul the apostle particularly uses words connected to images of destruction and so this this has led some theologians to this position that what's eternal in the passages we just looked at is the consequences but in terms of the the existence of someone who's chosen a destiny apart from god that it's actually destruction i like to cease to exist at some point and there's also a theological or philosophical reason behind this i think be interesting to put on the table uh it's a position called conditional immortality and the basic idea is that the vision of humanity given in the stories in in early genesis and in the garden or is that it's not that humans are immortal in and of themselves this is how the position goes um humans are not immortal in and of themselves it's actually god giving us life that enables anyone to live forever and so when someone is withdrawn from god's presence or a part uh in uh that ability to immortal don't no longer exists and so these individuals will cease to exist and so that's there's kind of two usually people who who hold that position have this view of conditional immortality based also connected with interpretation of certain biblical passages so kind of personally where i'm at i think is some something similar uh i obviously the destruction passages are they are in the text but there are these handful of very clear passages that uh seem to speak of some kind of ongoing existence that doesn't that doesn't cease and so you know it's one of those things where when you know you have uh it's not like all the biblical authors sat down and said let's all agree about every point of our theology and you know not always their purpose sometimes i think what makes it more difficult is so many of these are in revelation that's correct and that makes it even more difficult because the nature of that literature so it's difficult there's another verse in revelation 22 14 and 15 that seems to go kind of a contrast blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the right to the tree of life they go to the gates of the city outside are the dogs those who practice magic arts sexually immoral murderers adulterers everyone who loves and practices falsehood it seems like again there's like these two existences and they kind of coexist at the same time and again there's this all this problem with the kind of literature and what's actually taking place so that's why i think you have some of the theologians that hold to annihilationism they are evangelical solid great john stott is one of them i put his book up last week on on homosexuality so he would be probably one of the most famous on this whole idea of annihilationism yeah that is not a great name for a theological position so annihilation annihilationism so uh i hear all three of you kind of saying the same thing to the best of your knowledge the weight of scripture seems to suggest that uh separation from god uh is eternal but we hope not that's kind of what i'm what i'm hearing let's uh let's move on to a new subject and uh and uh get that question up there once someone chooses hell can they ever choose to leave what about purgatory what's blackhawk's position on purgatory so we know many people come to blackhawk that have come from traditions that teach purgatory we want to be super respectful of those i think a lot of times evangelicals who have grown up with no teaching on purgatory just think it's some kind of far-fetched ridiculous thing and i think if you study history you'll see that's not quite the case um that these positions uh are somewhat well thought out and came from history and and from um study of scripture um so kind of one of you can speak and give blackhawks position on on purgatory um but i think that the more broader question is what do you think about purgatory or the idea of uh kind of once we die physically here on earth that it may not be over as far as our decision-making process regarding who god is and what he's done for us i think that's the heart of the question this gets into a lot of difficult things in theology it gets into the canon of scripture what is the bible and what is not the bible because purgatory doesn't occur in the bibles that you have right there in your seats but people in the roman catholic tradition have a little thicker bible than we have so it gets into that issue also gets into the issue of atoning for sin because i think um this is the uh the reformation uh kind of comes down to this idea of what is justification by faith can people who are die can they do something to atone for their sin or you can you pray for someone who's actually not so gets into that and then it gets into the idea of where are they is there a place so theologically a lot of things kind of come to uh ahead here in the issue of purgatory so i just set it up you guys can answer it yeah yeah well i i think the in terms of just thinking about where we've been as a series the issue of the atonement is it's a pretty it's a good place pretty essentially the idea of purgatory is uh that hell or or whatever that separation from god is is the refining purgative type of experience and so what's bad or evil or or whatever does not want to be with god in you is is left behind or using the fire imagery of burned away as it were making you fit for presence with god and so there's just a lot of pieces of that that just don't jar uh with even just the basis of the gospel that we were kind of uh portraying that it's it's on the not on the basis of anything going on inside of us that we are fit to be in the presence of god it's only because of what christ accomplished for us and so to insinuate that we can somehow work off some of the bad stuff to finally be in god's presence and my mind kind of undermines the very basis of the story of the gospel as we were we were trying to i think that's probably the best thing for as a christ follower i would want to just stay forget anything about what of a passage in the apocrypha says or something like that just stay with atonement the issue is can we do anything to atone for our own sins and i think the bible would say no we cannot it only christ can do that so and his work is fully satisfying to god there's nothing that we can do that oh i'm trusting in what christ has done on the cross that's not enough i also must do some things while that is a serious that's serious right there that the work of christ on the cross was not sufficient to satisfy the father that's a big deal right there i would say the bible does not teach that the bible teaches it was completely enough completely satisfactory and we can rest in his work so would you guys go the same route a little bit of a follow-up in in praying for people that have died would your question kind of be the same it's a little bit of a offshoot but i think it's tied to the same thing uh someone that we love is passed on and we're not sure and uh man we want hope right i mean that's kind of that's that that's what we want and uh what would you say about uh kind of quickly about praying for people that that have that have died i'm talking too much that's my name well um uh in my own case um i my first wife died uh in 2003. so pretty regularly i asked god to communicate to her i don't know how the metaphysic of this works but i just say lord please tell her that we're doing well tell her that her son is doing great you know that kind of thing so i there's a way in which i am asking him to communicate for her since i don't have access to her but i'm also you know have prayed for her and i've also prayed for lots of my family members who died and i had no idea where they well i actually had some idea where they were with christ and uh so to this day i continue to pray for them god please do by them exactly the right thing which i know you will do and it's really more of me trying to come to grips with they may be subject to judgment and i really don't know but i do pray for them and if god does not subject the time in the way that we are subject to time it doesn't seem to me that it really matters all that much whether it's before the fact during the fact or after the fact in terms of when those prayers are offered and in his economy and in his view of time it may not matter i don't know but for me personally that is something i do uh not because i anticipate changing god's mind about my grandpa who i love dearly but who rejected him i'm not trying to change god's mind but rather you know please god do by him exactly the right thing right there what you're trying to do then is just um you are you're you're grieving the loss of dad your wife and your your first wife and uh so you're just going through grief of what's happening but there's no change of state for someone who's died once you've died you're your state is set that's a there's a verse hebrews 9 27 would be a good verse to pop up that's kind of the teaching of the bible so that is it's set but that doesn't mean we can't pray for and thank god for people who've died and obviously i think what you just shared about dev i would probably do the same thing you know hope hopefully you know because again it's a veil we have no idea we're talking about things that are beyond our ability to comprehend and what's them what's going on in deb's world right now and that kind of thing yeah sorry cool thanks john for sharing that um so kind of back to purgatory i think i heard from all of you guys as purgatory comes up maybe you come from a tradition that you believe that or kind of been puzzled by it or maybe you've come from the other side where you've always thought it was kind of an odd belief system but i think these guys all went to to not the canon necessarily but to the atonement the the idea of purgatory uh suggests perhaps that christ's atonement wasn't enough or that we have something to do with our salvation and so you get into a prickly situation there theologically so good answers uh let's let's kind of oh you want to just one and this is actually a question to tim and to chris and that is when you get to first corinthians 3 there seems to be a judgment involved there that isn't the the final judgment the matthew 25 sheep and goats thing but rather a judgment with respect to the kind of life we've lived and in terms of what is it that gets burned away and that's the purgative thing that tim was talking about that fire not only destroys it also purifies and so in first corinthians 3 we do have a picture that paul uses to talk about what's going to happen with us in terms of the things that we have done for or you know the kingdom of god along the way so i was wondering if you guys could speak to that in terms of there does seem to be a refining fire judgment in terms of our life sure chris has been speaking way too much tim yes why don't you uh step up you haven't spoken at all today you should start thinking um yeah so if if there is one passage in in scripture that's sometimes used as sort of like a starting point for a view of purgatory this is this is that passage um though i don't think that it's actually teaching that so paul is is talking about how he founded the corinthian church and uh it's and he's um he's talking about the the worthwhile effort of his work there and he talks about according to the grace of god like a master builder i laid a foundation using metaphor building metaphor to talk about how he planted the church there and his work and someone else is now building on it there are other people now who go and are leading the church there each builder each leader in the church must choose with care about how to build the mission of a community no one can lay a foundation other than that has been laid the foundation is jesus christ and then these are the kind of the key verses here in 12 and following if anyone builds on the foundation with gold silver precious stones wood hair straw the work of each builder will become visible for the day we'll disclose it because it will be revealed with fire and fire will test what the each what sort of work each one has done if what has been built on the foundation survives the builder will receive reward if what is work is burned up the builder will suffer loss the builder will be saved only as through fire so but it's important to recognize what is being tested by fire is not like the person what is being tested is the worthwhile effort of someone's work so basically what this comes down to at least in my institution is that uh with our lives we're making we're doing something we're building things and the worth in terms of meaning purpose whether we're doing it for god out of love and passion for god these kinds of things this would be like an analogy that you know the day of justice will weigh according to what we've done what is actually what's been done from right heart and right motivation and for god yeah and what has not and that's exactly it so it's not it's not a person being evaluated it's talking about uh someone's life accomplishments scan down to four four and 4 4 my conscience is clear but that does not make me innocent it is the lord who judges me therefore judge nothing before the appointed time wait till the lord comes he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts at that time each will receive his praise from god that's what the passage is about so there's actually something sometimes it does come up though that the fact that we are were accepted by god because of christ's death and through grace doesn't mean that our lives will are not going to be evaluated exactly that we're responsible as christ followers for the decisions that we make and whatever form that will take there will be an evaluation example of our lives and that's not a contradiction of grace and that is a major theme in the bible about judging according to works which again our salvation is not based on works but what happens rewards how we please him those are all based on works and things like major theme in the bible okay let's uh let's move on to a new topic this one will take us a while probably to tackle uh tim said jesus died on the cross for our sins and experienced hell for us if hell is separation from god and jesus is god was jesus separated from himself um it's a nice little cute word play there but i think the heart of it is uh kind of what happened to jesus you know as he descended you know that kind of whole deal so jump on in boys uh so a very first response uh there's a major major problem in just the statement there in terms of orthodox christian belief and it's uh this sentence right here i'll use capital letters how about that at least according to traditional orthodox christianity this is this is this radical heresy jesus where's the heresy yeah this is a seminary prophecy the heresy is in the period jesus is not god jesus is god and human and and so uh the trinity figures into this conception here is that we have father and son and spirit and what does jesus say on the cross he quotes psalm 22 verse 1 my god my god why have you forsaken me this is somehow the father and the son being separated yeah okay now who's going to come up here and like really explain the trinity for us all you know so this is a in my mind this is at the heart of the mystery of god's threeness and oneness and that jesus as the son is is separated from the father from the community of the trinity in this kind of moment and no biblical author explores this theme the only hint we get of it is in the the crucifixion narratives themselves of what jesus is experiencing no other biblical author delves into what happened um but it's it's that the trinity that's at the heart of of this vision of of god suffering for us but one of the persons of the trinity suffering for us so that's kind of a short answer we can explore it more if you like well if we explore the trinity we'll be here all night right i don't think we have time for that one clarifying thing tim uh you're not saying jesus isn't fully god with that statement that's correct what i'm saying is when you write when we we use this sentence a lot especially in evangelical traditions because we want to emphasize this point but uh the the the what's incorrect about this is ending the statement before we add and human the father is god jesus is god and human and that's just orthodox christianity that's part of the so it's absolutely unique i sometimes say uh braun from uh a former professor of mine he's one who with two what's he has a human nature and a divine nature but he's one who everyone you've ever run into is one who with one what you know i who am i i'm chris and i'm what i'm a human being jesus was different from all of us he had two natures so it makes him completely unique so it's very mysterious what is happening on the cross what is really taking place that's really really hard we uh we all sit around for fun at seminary and talk about these things we're kind of dorks great questions but i mean this is this is a this is really a core element of our confession i mean it's what makes the christian god unique really over against other claims is that god is three three and one and one of the things that tim said is that it's part of our confession and one of the things if you grew up in a liturgical church you do confess you know jesus on the third day you know well you know he descended into hell on the third day he rose again from the dead so i i'm wondering if if the question uh doesn't get at that reality what happened there the apostles yeah that's what i was going to say we were having the wrong conversation no no i think i think you guys got to the heart of the question but i was going to follow it up with that probably more interesting question um and if you want the cool theological term of this i think it's referred to as the hypostatic oh yeah that's a good isn't it yeah yeah i post that another dorky uh but anyway yeah let's get to i think what would a lot of people ask and and may not be all that important but uh is really interesting when jesus died on the cross what's so funny there you go sorry yes wow has that worked for you actually no okay anyway sorry so that's good did he descend into hell yeah yeah so so when jesus passes across like where did he go what what happened to him uh physically spiritually that kind of deal and again we we're running a little short on time i don't want to spend the rest of the night on this but just kind of a succinct answer what do you guys think i mean there's a lot of differences of opinion among scholars on this where do you guys land on this question well i think the work was finished on the cross so when he said it is finished father now uh he he he says to his father uh uh what does it i commend my spirit to you that the work is over so the darkness starts happening at about noon and it goes till 3 pm and it is during that darkness that he is paying for the sins of all mankind he he cries out one of his last crisis why have you forsaken so he's experiencing at that moment separation from god whatever that means but then it's over and at that point he does not descend into hell or anything like that even though the apostles creed says that but there's kind of a long history about that so that's my view about what's taking place on the cross it's over the work is complete on the cross what's the biblical evidence christopher it says that jesus ministered to those first peter yeah yeah thank you so much yeah well i want to be sensitive to the time issue yeah touch on that because i think that verse comes up a lot when people they don't know what to do with that yeah got it yeah wow that's a hard passage um three first three and four yeah yeah 319 around there first yeah um yeah yeah yeah one of the one of the best uh commentaries i've ever read on this section said this is bar none one of the most difficult passages in scripture to understand so whenever you hear that you know it's always good to hold lightly what what's going on here but there's this idea of christ suffered for sins once for all the righteous for the unrighteous in order to bring you to god he was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit in which he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison and it goes on to talk about the people in the times of noah and so the question is what is this talking about and if you read the passage in context it just doesn't help at all uh it just doesn't help at all and so this is the only biblical passage where the the the tradition of jesus is descending into health for some reason that uh is built off of but it's uh but it's important enough that the early church included it as part of their foundational confession so it's it's a one reference but in terms of um for whatever reasons that we're not going to get into tonight it's it's critical i think uh i don't know a lot about the apostles creed but it did evolve over time it was two or three hundred years in the making so it wasn't like the nicene creator that calcidonian creed that just came as a result of the council so and that's where really this phrase comes from that is a difficult passage and i don't know if it merits more attention or not but it's hard all right uh let's uh let's go to i think one final question here and then we'll we'll take some uh from the crowd that have been coming in uh tonight uh can we go to the one before that i think we skipped over one no no we haven't skipped one i don't think i have a number six and i think that's a more interesting question so i'm going to ask that if oh yeah yeah right if hell separation from god is the end result of a life's worth of choices how do death bed conversions fit into this i'm so sorry we must not have that typed up there but i think that's interesting question because that was something you're moving towards today tim as far as helping the culmination of a life lived apart from god and we all hear these stories and and they're uh oh thank you we all hear these stories and they're awesome stories you know we tell them right and we rally around them you know somebody that's just you know i always hear the story about jeffrey dahmer that's one you hear all the time and and i don't know how factual it is james dobson was involved somehow but i don't know but the the story goes that in jail before he was he was murdered in jail uh that he converted to christ and he became a christian and that's something we always use it as christians as a story of grace and awesome but i think this person's kind of throwing it up there today it kind of where you were going tim was like what's up with that you know um the trajectory changed there right at the end the biblical examples of thief on the cross yeah right so go with that a little bit i think people are kind of going at the at the fairness of it a little bit um yeah i'll maybe i'll address that and then i know i i uh i think one or either the two of you have actually been at someone's deathbed conversion so you probably have something more important to say um but maybe just to clarify what i was not trying to say and i hope i didn't come across as saying this as god honoring this lifetime trajectory of choices means that there's something inevitable or impossible about making a different kind of choice you know i mean i i don't think it was impossible for the wealthy man when he was alive to have made a different kind of choice i mean that's the point of the gospel is that we can actually respond and make a different kind of choice in a response to god's grace and so what um what i'm really working at with this end trajectory of life choices what i'm trying to make clear there is that hell is not uh at least in the parable as jesus developed it it's not some surprise like oh this is you know the man's going down kicking and screaming into his face no it's it's a natural consequence of his life trajectory but it doesn't mean that that was impossible can i just intercept because this is one of the questions that came alive from tonight and it goes right with what you're talking about i don't want to ruin your chain of thought but um i think this will be helpful for you to address this if hell is a culmination of a lifetime of bad choices then logically heaven is a culmination of a lifetime of good choices so what if you're somewhere in the middle as most people probably are how does god's judgment apply to them yeah well i would say the logic you could say logically those are two parallels but i mean the whole point is that the only thing that gets us on the right track is not something that we have done and that's to me that's the point of the gospel is that my life choices will inevitably take me down a certain path apart from god's grace there's an overestimation of the human in that question that uh goodness underestimation of sin that's what's going on there they the the comprehension of what it really means that we are sinful how dark our sin is that's what's going on there so you don't under the questioner is the issue is no we are if sin was blue we would be blue all over so that is what separates us from god and even if someone is making good choices all the time they still have sinned that's the issue i think behind that yeah and so maybe this issue of somewhere in the middle uh what about people who don't seem or i don't feel like i'm choosing hell and on this trajectory and that's i mean i think that's probably where most human beings lie most human beings are not as horrible as we could be some are but not most of us aren't and so this is where at the end i just said i'm not a pastor i'm just tim i'm not god and god knows our hearts and he will do what's right and what's fair what i'm trying to work out is theologically explaining that hell in this parable is not some surprise twist at the end of his life it really was theologically the the end result of his life his life choices it wasn't like god pulled a bait and switch or something something like that but in turn when he gets to the details of like our lives that's where i personally i'm i just step back and say i'm not the judge of people's hearts god god will judge us fairly and justly according to where where we're at so i appreciate the question i know this is a this is a question that comes up when this uh this view if if you're interested the pieces of the puzzle i was putting together today c.s lewis uh in the great divorce that i put up there uh explores this i this basically i think it's almost the parable of luke 16 turned into a novel is what he's exploring um if you're interested in a little more theological exploration of what i was putting forward today michael murray in the reason for the hope yeah reasons for the hope of that uh here we go reason for the hope within um this is just a great great book for i think for any christ follower it's tackling some of the most practical tough it's basically a whole book on rotten tomatoes but it's it's really a pretty meaty treatment a lot of these questions and michael murray the editor has a whole chapter on heaven and hell in there the explorers really well the the i the ideas that i was kind of putting out i think another good suggestion for books having a good theology a good text on theology in your home would be an a great addition to your home library also so uh once again wayne grudem he has several theologies there's one of the ones real thin and then a little thicker and then real thick so one of grudem's theologies might be good miller erickson's theology anything like that a one volume theology they will deal with these kind of questions that are thrown out so it's a good addition to uh your library all right uh let's move on real quick we only got a couple more minutes here and uh this question is kind of a maybe a pop culture question whenever you see in movies or or novels whatever as hell is depicted this is probably one of the things that it includes but it also has some has some biblical background to it where do you guys see demons fitting into the discussion of uh hell demons real quick demons in two minutes in two minutes well my quick answer would be just in terms of biblical passages again the only uh biblical passages that involve other spiritual forces that work in depictions of this final destiny apart from god are in the book of revelation where you have forces of evil pitted against forces of good and god's people and so on i guess i can't off the hand off to top my hand i can't think of any biblical passage where you actually have something like the sistine chapel an image of demons tormenting humans or oh that they would be actively involved into hell there's not that's just not at all in the bible no they are also uh destroyed and at matthew 25 passage we put up into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels or something like that out of uh just to be fair to dante one of the things i was wondering about during tim's sermon was like well actually those those images are there but they're just they become too vivid and um concrete and canonical for us in terms of and then the images just sort of derail our biblical readings but to be fair to dante those things are in there well yeah i mean but i would even say just the image of fire and darkness is very different than drawing uh a human with half of their bones being vaporized off as they descend into a pit you know what i'm saying i mean so in my mind that just really is a misuse of the bible yes that's that's dangerous he was a poet poet he was a poet i don't know i just i don't know so i just have an aversion towards artist you know artistic license i think that's what sounds good all right uh so uh here's a question that i don't think somebody up there but but i i hear this a lot in in ministry and just wanted to get your quick take and then we'll kind of close here um so tim you've said this a lot i think all you concur kind of a good basic definition of hell is is separation from god um by kind of our own our own uh choice um but if if people are separated from god isn't god also omnipresent and uh how does god's presence interact in the eternal sense with with hell wherever that might be i've heard that question a lot through the years and just interested if you guys had a take on that yeah let me uh derail the questions momentarily and give tim and chris a chance to reply to that but um my son was asking me about that today in the car uh is that an is that it seems like a bloodless sort of uh picture of hell it's a separation well it doesn't sound too bad until we start thinking about one of the worst things you can do to a human being in prison is put them in solitary you put them in solitary you deny them access to blue skies sunshine trees all they have is all they have access to is themself there they are separated away from the rest of human contact they have the means of life only and so much is that they have access to food and that's it that is one of the worst things that you can put a person through and so in talking about just a separation from god is that really a punishment yeah that would be awful it would be completely offered to be separated from everything else that makes us uniquely human what what an awful existence probably separation from the aspects of his presence again it's really difficult issue it's a god everything exists god cannot be uh god since he is present everywhere it's very difficult because it gets into the idea of our understanding of space and time and then we launch that onto a god like his the way he relates to space and time is the same as ours so it just really gets into this whole thing of you know he's here and not someplace else so it's really an aspect of his presence as he's obviously these aspects of his goodness and wonder and grace that people experiencing separation from him would not be able to experience i don't know beauty or the the whole idea that we can enjoy that kind of thing there's no enjoyment apart from him and somehow this is going to be an in eternally unenjoyable kind of a thing he's the one that brings joy and they'll be apart from him but when you get into spatial things that's when you get into difficulty okay so uh we're kind of drawing new clothes here and this is kind of the as we've done each week this is the uh rubber meets the road portion of our form and uh just kind of speaking to the heart and i'm asking you guys to kind of speak succinctly i mean most of our conversations happen in like two minutes or less in passing right and so uh you know in case people got lost here tonight and weren't following all the time i just kind of want to bring it home with two kind of questions and i'll ask one get your responses and then end with the second one the first one is in relation to christ flowers many people here tonight are christ followers and all of us are tripped up and dread this subject when it comes up uh hell oh no i just don't even want to talk about that how do i get out of this conversation um that's why we picked it kind of duh right it's a rotten tomato um just as succinctly as you can say kind of from your pastors hearts and you're giving these people who are kind of out there in the world a lot of times we we aren't as much and they're having these conversations over coffee or with their relatives at thanksgiving and oh you know and it comes up what would your advice be to them dodge it stay away from it because again it's going to be a quick conversation right it's not going to be a three-hour conversation it'll be a quick conversation what would your advice be to christ followers and how they approach this subject with people who are not christ followers well i mean i think tim did a good job today because i think the uh the the they'll be ridiculed isn't that ridiculous that kind of thing so i think if you can have a conversation that helps people think about the fact that it is it is a reality but those could be metaphors for something that's really horrible and the idea of what does it mean to be human and some of those and that's not a short conversation over thanksgiving meal but that's kind of thing you might want to go in that direction i think that can actually help they'll pr they probably have not heard that kind of representation of hell before this will sound a little uh um unrealistic but i've actually been able to do this more than once and that is if the person is really sincere in their questions i would start where tim did and say that the the mental images that we have are way too colored either by you know dantes uh the first and second third fourth circles of hell that kind of thing would you like to get into scripture i'll bring along a bible to work and would you like to look at those passages and if they're really serious about it i've had people bite on that and say yeah it would actually i really would like to look at those and so this has happened in a work situation he used to work for the usda and so uh scott and i did that and he loved it he also really wanted to know uh the pictures of heaven those also our pictures can we look at those and yeah let's do so depending on the seriousness of the question uh somebody might actually take you up on it i uh i would take a bit of a different tackle i'll just bring a different angle on this and this is actually how i began the message or kind of the first my first thought was this issue of justice and i find this to be very very helpful i think particularly i'm not sure if this is generational or something but maybe just because of globalization and and our ability to find out about so much of the injustice going on in our world through through modern media but most people you start talking about a longing for justice a longing for [Music] for us to be held for somebody to be held accountable for everything that's gone wrong with the world i personally find that to be a really fruitful entry into conversations about final justice and human destiny and at the end of the day most of us really do want people to be held accountable for the moral decisions that we make and that's why i made that little joke that is as long as it involves other people getting justice you know because that's where the rub comes for us but i've personally i've found that you can build common ground with people that we're our moral decisions matter and we need to take that seriously evil really does exist and any view that in my mind doesn't address the problem of evil and bringing justice to evil uh in my mind is a deficient worldview it ignores the gravity of evil and injustice in our world and in my mind that's just an open door to start talking about things about the gospel but move towards this issue of justice and that we really do long for justice all right uh last question again and i think is we've all been there at least i think i know we have and many in the audience um and kind of switching rules we're saying but you're there you've got a friend let's propose this a good friend of yours you've known them for a long time they know where you stand and they're not a christ follower and but they're a really good person probably a way better person than you are and uh they come up and uh maybe they have tears in their eyes and and it's you're one-on-one with them and they look you in the eye and they say uh john chris tim you know you really believe i'm going to hell really and i think at that moment at least when i've been in those those first couple words and where we go with that is super important uh where would you guys go with that because you probably have a couple sentences uh just a minute or two to kind of start out on the right foot with that person where would you guys take that as that's happened to you in the past and where would you advise us to go i have had that question put to me and sometimes there people who do have tears in their eyes sometimes tears of frustration and sometimes tears of anger and i tell them i don't know i don't know that's only god can tell you that one of the things i have done and it's been helpful to create some spaces taken to matthew 25 that passage about the sheep and the goats and i tell them that one of the things that we can have a great deal of confidence in is on on that day of judgment that will be surprises there will be people who were sure that they were a goat who end up being counted as a sheep and there'll be some people who are sure absolutely positively i am a sheep who will turn out to be a goat and so in creating some space for that person i'd say where do you think you fall into this and why and so again getting it out of the out of the the picture of hell and judgment getting to the place of what kind of life are you living and where where is your life going and that's where i began i stole my thunder i was i was really just going to say the exact same thing and that's why i really highlighted at the end that it's not our prerogative to make declarations about about where people are are going in my mind it's much more fruitful to just like talk about our lives you know and talk about life together with people and so uh i in in the past and think about conversations i just try and move towards where just where where are you at right now i mean sometimes it's someone who just doesn't believe in god period at which case let's not be talking about heaven and hell like let's talk about the point of issue about the existence of god that's really where the fruitful conversation so i guess i just i move away and want to help someone maybe meet a christian who's not making just offhand declarations about whether going to hell or not and just engage in relationship and and talking about life together yeah because i think the person is sincere about the fact that somehow you're doubting their goodness that's where that's really going most likely that you're not honoring them in your religious uh in your religious tradition you don't recognize that i'm a good person and so you want to get away from that pretty quickly and say you know you're great it has nothing to do with that so then it moves towards maybe a serious conversation about compelling quote i think i always say this just a few compelling questions does god exist has he revealed himself is this the revelation of himself and so somehow that would move into that but if somebody has a tear in their eye about this issue or they feel like it might you better have a tear in your eye too because if like we don't know what we're talking about here none of the three of us we don't know what we're talking about here this is a very weighty issue and if we don't have concern and compassion for so however that conversation turns that person should not walk away with this idea that uh that you as a christ follower think you're better than them or something that's really what's going on in that person's mind and they they can't walk away from that conversation thinking that you think you're better than them or you don't care for them because somehow you've got to turn the conversation to a fact that we're all in the same playing field and i love you you're probably a much better person than i am so get away from the idea that we don't think they're a good person and move towards other issues i know that might not be helpful but no that's great stuff uh john we just want to thank you for for being here and i know you're out there you've had so many of these conversations got tons of wisdom and uh we're just grateful for you being here and tim a special thanks to i thought you did a fabulous job with a tough subject today and i know it's a long day and so can we just give it up for our panel

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

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Length: 66min 27sec (3987 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020