Marginal Christianity

                Talk about Hell is and has been a convoluted topic in the history of Christian thought. Though the view that Hell is a “place” where the unbelieving will spend eternity in conscious torment has been dominant for much of this time that time seems to have come to an end. In this post I want to consider (speculate) on a possible image for Hell that may address the issue of the ultimate fate of those who enact the “impossible possibility” (Barth) of resisting God’s love to the end. I’m not going to try to sort and categorize all the different views around this matter. Instead I want to explore an image that C. S. Lewis provides in his Narnia story The Last Battle (LB).           Now Lewis was a traditionalist in his view of Hell. He believed that if a human being did not do as God willed God would allow them to experience the result of their will...

Mon, 11/05/2015 - 15:45 Hell Like a lot of people who promote the doctrine of hell as a place of eternal suffering, J.D. Greear insists, in a recent post on the Gospel Coalition site , that he would happily erase the belief from Christian teaching if he could, but he can’t because it’s in the Bible, so we have to live with it. Moreover, in his view, we can’t fully understand God and his world unless we come to terms with the doctrine. To that end he sets out “seven truths” that he thinks should frame our discussion of the topic. The problem is that the fact of hell is merely taken for granted—we are asked to take C.S. Lewis’ word for it. You would have thought that a set of seven framing truths would have a demonstrable biblical or theological relationship to the doctrine that supposedly sits in the middle of them. But they don’t. They are arbitrary and incoherent; they don’t appear to frame anything in particular; and where scripture does come into the picture, it is spe...

Jun 10, 2014 @ 0:20 By Scot McKnight 10 Comments At the website, Rethinking Hell , you will discover a serious and nearly always very reasonable approach to the difficult and demanding topic of hell and how Christians are to understand the Bible and the history of interpretation. At the site there is this wonderful diagram of options: Notice the three variants in the Traditionalism corner: some see the wicked as being dehumanized, which approaches Conditionalism because it it is nearly destruction;  the reconciliationist view emphasizes the wicked continuing to choose hell; the separationists emphasize the total subjugation of the wicked. What is the evidence in the Bible or the argument that leads you to your view on these matters? The conditionalist contends that immortality is a gift from God, not a right or an ontological property of humans. Immortality is a gift granted only to those in Life himself, Christ ( 2 Tim 1:10 ). The collection of essays ...

          It’s surprising how often I see this come up around the blogosphere as a justification for the necessity and reality of hell.   So much is wrong with it that I hardly know where to begin.   But here are a few thoughts.          -the “point” of being a Christian is NOT avoiding hell. -the “point” of Christianity is being reclaimed and restored to right relation to God, each other and the world.   -the “point” of Christianity is to by faith in Jesus Christ reclaim our primal dignity as God’s royal representative in creation and protector and nurturer of creation to its full flourishing. -the “point” of Christianity is to begin to live here and now, even if in partial and fragmentary ways, the life “of the ages,” the eternal life we will fully live then and there. -the “point” of Christianity is more about who we are (God’s image-bears) and restoration to...