Theology in the Raw - 830: 3 Christian Views of Hell: Part 1

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Most people assume that “hell” means “eternal conscious torment forever and ever.” But the doctrine of hell has actually been widely disputed throughout church history. There are actually three quite different understandings of hell that have been believed and taught in the historic, orthodox Christian church: eternal conscious torment, annihilation, and ultimate reconciliation.  In this first (of two) videos on hell, I lay out these three different understandings of hell. I try to do so in an unbiased way so that you can wrestle with each view without letting my rhetoric get in the way. In the next video, I’ll show why I believe in the view of hell that I do. Watch this episode of the podcast on YouTube Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. For today and next week, I'm going to be doing a two-part series on the doctrine of hell. In this podcast, I'm going to be talking about three Christian views of hell. That's right, folks. There are three views of hell that have existed in historic Orthodox Christianity. I'm going to talk about what those three are in this episode. In next week's episode, I'm going to talk about which view of hell, which most of you already know which one it is, which view of hell that I have come to embrace and why. It's important to know that these podcasts were originally video-based sermons that I preached at Valley Christian Church in Dublin, California.

So they are designed primarily for video. And I have uploaded those videos on my YouTube channel. You can go to Press and Sprinkle and see the YouTube version of this. And that's important because I actually have created some pretty in-depth, detailed, kind of pretty PowerPoint or keynote slides to go along with it. Now, that's important because I do a lot of interaction with the text in these two episodes. And so if you actually want to see how I interact with the text, if you want to read the various passages that we're working through and even see kind of an outline, a working outline, you know, of what I'm talking about, then it might be helpful to go to my YouTube channel and actually watch this episode and also the next episode next week.

If you'd like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw support show for as little as five bucks a month. If the work I'm doing here has been encouraging, helpful, or even challenging, then please consider supporting the show. Also, as you may have heard, I do have a book coming out on February 1st. It's titled Embodied Transgender Identities at the Church and What the Bible Has to Say. It's a thorough analysis of both the relational and also the theological, scientific, philosophical aspects of the broader transgender conversation. aspects of the broader transgender conversation. And if you're interested at all in getting a Christian perspective on how to engage and understand the transgender conversation, and most of all, how to love trans people, if you yourself are not trans, then would encourage

you to check out that book. Again, it's titled Embodied. You can pre-order it now. All right, let's jump into three Christian views of hell. Hello, Valley Christian Church. It's good to be back with you for this really interesting series on the topic of hell. And just to tell you a little bit about myself and my journey in this conversation, I have wrestled with this topic for a long time. I became a Christian 25 years ago at the age of 19, and the topic of hell has always frightened me. In fact, in some ways, I would say,

probably like some of you, the threat of hell was part of the reason why I kind of confessed Jesus and became a Christian. I just, I didn't want to die and go to hell. Like I had this great fear of hell. And even after I became a Christian, the fear of going to hell for something bad that I did sort of surrounded my Christianity. And I began to realize that that's not really a healthy posture to have. I do think that it is healthy to have a fear of God, a reverence for God, and even to understand that God is a God of love and also a God of judgment. I think that is a holistic and healthy view of the character of God. But to kind of walk around thinking every little thing you do is going to send you to hell. Or even as a motivation of becoming a Christian, I think we should be compelled, as Paul says,

by the love of God and not by some fear of going to hell. And yet the Bible does talk about hell. And it is a topic that has troubled many Christians. It has also kept some aspiring Christians or non-Christians or seekers to maybe rethink whether they even want to follow this Jesus person. So I want to dig into this topic, and it's not an easy topic to talk about. I don't like to talk about it in the abstract as some just theoretical doctrine, just looking at words on a page or various verses that argue for one position against the other. Like, I really want us to make sure we understand that we are talking about something that is very real and is very serious. And I'll talk about my own journey in the next message and how I have journeyed through this conversation about how what I want to do in this conversation, this talk.

I wish it was more of a conversation where we could sit in a room and go back and forth. needs that environment. But until we can create that kind of environment, I want to share with you some of my own thoughts and have you wrestle with what I have to say on your own with the Bible open and in hand. What I want to do in this talk is I want to talk about three Christian views of hell. Okay, I'm going to pull up my slide here. I want to talk about three Christian views of hell. Okay, I'm going to pull up my slide here. I want to talk about three Christian views of hell. Now, that might seem like a weird phrase because some people would say, well, isn't there only one Christian view of hell? There's one correct view of hell, and that's the Christian view. It's what the Bible teaches. And while at the end of the day, I do think that there is one correct view of hell. The fact is Christians throughout the centuries, like genuine Christians,

Christ followers, people who have even been martyred for their faith in the last 2000 years, have held to different views of hell and have had biblical reasons for holding to their different views of hell. What I want to do in this talk is I want to explain these three Christian views of hell. I want to discuss some of the primary biblical arguments that people give for each respective position. And for this talk, I do not want to tell you which one I agree with. I'm going to work really hard not to bias this talk. I want to try to treat each view as fairly and honestly as I possibly can. Because here's what I think often happens in this conversation, in the conversation

about hell, is that we come at it with a lot of presuppositions of what we've always believed, and then we kind of assume the worst about the other views that somebody else might propose. But I really think that Christians need to come back and go back to the text of Scripture and take an honest look at what does the Bible actually say about the topic of hell. And we can't really do that until we give a, until we, until we fairly and accurately understand what other Christian leaders and theologians and pastors have said about hell throughout the centuries. Okay. So I want to talk about three Christian views of hell. Let me give you just some thoughts up front as we evaluate, as we analyze, as we understand

these three different views. I don't think that we should simply look at this question from a traditional standpoint. Like this is what we've always believed. It's what my church has always believed. It's what my church has always believed. It's what my denomination has always believed. Like, I don't, I think those are important things to consider. But I don't think we should simply or only say, this is what the tradition says. Therefore, that's what I believe. Because we are Bible believing Christians. We need to always submit tradition to Scripture

and to see if Scripture agrees with our tradition. I also don't think it's healthy to just come at this topic emotionally. I don't think we should begin by saying, I could never serve a God who would fill in the blank. never serve a God who would fill in the blank. That statement, I don't think is a really good starting place to do any kind of theological or biblical thinking, because that assumes that we know better than God and we will only worship a God who matches up to our beliefs.

How we think justice should be dished out. I don't think that's a good way to do theology. I don't want to discount emotions. I don't think that's a good way to do theology. I don't want to discount emotions. I don't think emotions are always bad, but to front load our emotions and only believe things that are emotionally satisfying, I don't think that's a healthy way to build a theology, especially a theology around something as sensitive as the topic of hell. And so I do think that we should come at this question from a biblical and theological standpoint. Now, what I mean by biblical and theological, I think we should come

at it looking at what the text of the Bible actually says. That's what I mean by biblical. Like I want to look at the actual text of scripture. I want to look at the words, the meaning of words, and look at those in light of other texts that may agree with this text or may present a different point of view from whatever text we're looking at. So a biblical standpoint, I want to know what does the Bible say? And theological, I want to know, does this view of hell resonate with the character of God that we know from the Bible as a whole? So we need to approach this question from a biblical and theological standpoint. Another thing to note up front is within the realm of Orthodox, let's just say genuine historic Christianity, the existence of hell is not disputed.

Now, when I say the existence of hell is not disputed, I'm not saying that some people who say they're Christians do not dispute whether or not hell exists. Some people will say that. Some people who say they're Christians dispute whether Jesus even exists. I mean, we live in a strange day today where anything can be disputed by some people, even some who say that they have a faith commitment. But within the history of Christianity, the existence of hell has always been part of an Orthodox theology, a historic Christian theology. In fact, I mean, if you believe in the Bible, you kind of have to believe that hell exists because in at least 12 passages in the New Testament, the word hell or the Greek word Gehenna, from which we get the English translation hell, it's just there in the text.

I mean, just to give you one example, Jesus says it's better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire or the Gehenna of fire. In fact, the word Gehenna, it comes from the Hinnom Valley, the reference to the Hinnom Valley, which was a valley outside to the west side of Jerusalem. And you have a text, I'm not going to look at it, but a text in Jeremiah chapter 7, where God uses the Hinnom Valley as kind of like a metaphor, a symbol of God punishing the wicked Israelites sometime in the future. Okay, so the Hinnom Valley kind of took on this idea of the place of punishment for those who are turning to back on God, disobeying God. Now, I don't think we should think of hell in terms of the literal Hinnom Valley. Again, that was the original kind of metaphor, the place that this idea was drawn from. But that's the association with the word Gehenna, which simply means Hinnom Valley or son of Hinnom,

means Hinnom Valley or son of Hinnom, son of the Valley of Hinnom. And it comes from Jeremiah 7. So the existence of hell is not disputed. Oh yeah. Another thing I want to say is that my talks on this topic, I am going to go, I'm going to go pretty, I'm going to go pretty deep in the text. I'm going to go as deep as I can in the short time we have together. So we're going to look at a lot of texts, a lot of ideas, a lot of verses, because I think this is such an important topic to wrestle with. So if some of you are wanting a nice and easy three-point sermon that has lots of just stories and illustrations, there's a place for that, absolutely. But we're going to roll up our sleeves and we're going to dig deep, deep into some really sometimes complicated, but really important concepts, especially as it pertains to the

text of scripture. Okay, so we have the word Gehenna, translated hell, occurs at least 12 times in the New Testament. We also have other images like eternal fire, the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, or outer darkness, the lake of fire, and other images that also talk about what's going to happen to those who, when they face God's judgment in the end, this is what's going to happen to those people if they receive a negative verdict, if they are not on the right side of God's judgment. So it's not just the word hell that occurs throughout the New

Testament. We also have many other images that talk about some sort of punishment on the other side of judgment day. Okay. So what, if the existence of hell isn't disputed, what is disputed? Well, two things. Number one, the duration is disputed. What I mean by duration is how long will people be in hell if they go to hell? The duration is disputed. Some say it's forever. It's never ending. Some say it's, you know, once you go to hell, you're sort of annihilated or you're destroyed, you're killed once you go into the fires, and that's it. Other people say, no, you might go to hell for a period of time, but then you can be rescued out of hell. And I'll explain those three positions in a second. And that what I just said there at the end has to do with our second aspect of hell that is disputed is not whether it exists or not, but can somebody be saved from hell? Almost every strand of theological tradition within mainstream Christianity says, no, there

is a hell. Some people will go there, but some people dispute whether or not your existence in hell can be reversed through, you know, whether it's your own repentance or God, you know, reaching in and rescuing you out of hell. So the three Christian views of hell, and again, when I say three Christian views of hell, I mean simply three views of hell that have been held within Orthodox Christianity for the last 2,000 years globally speaking. The three different views of hell are eternal conscious torment. And I'm just going to say this is the so-called traditional view of hell are eternal conscious torment. And I'm just going to say this is the

so-called traditional view of hell. This is the view of hell that has been believed by most Christians, at least in Western Christianity. Probably all of us listening to this, well, most of you listening to this probably exist on some level in Western Christianity, of you listening to this probably exist on some level in Western Christianity, but we have a whole Eastern tradition of Christianity that has its own kind of understandings of hell, but at least in the West, eternal conscious torment or ECT. This has been the dominant view, at least for the last 1500 years. And this view just simply says that when people go to hell, they will live forever and ever and ever in never ending ongoing conscious torment in hell. Another view that has been held by Christians, this would be a minority view, but has been held

by many Christians throughout the ages, is the so-called annihilation view, or the term that so-called annihilationists typically prefer is conditional immortality. That immortality living forever is conditioned upon faith in Jesus. So if you don't have faith in Jesus, then you don't have immortality. You don't have a living foreverness. So when you go to hell, you don't live forever. You are destroyed, killed, you die, you end up being, yes, annihilated. And then the third view is universalism or the term that people who hold to this view, the term that they prefer is either

universal salvation or ultimate reconciliation. That might be the most preferred term? I'll just circle that there. Ultimate reconciliation that God will ultimately reconcile all things, indeed, all people to himself. Let's dive in. And I want to explain each of these three positions and maybe give a few pieces of evidence for each view. And again, I'm going to work hard not to bias the discussion. My goal for this talk is that you won't even know which one I hold to because I want to so fairly represent each view in the short time that we have so that you won't even know where I am at unless you maybe Google my name or something. Please don't do that.

Let's wait until the next talk so that talk to unpack which view I would hold to. So eternal conscious torment, it is the traditional view. It is what most Christians, at least in the West, have believed. It is based on three main passages. These aren't only three passages that have been used to support eternal conscious torment, but it is kind of what people call the big three. used to support eternal conscious torment, but it is kind of what people call the big three. Matthew 25, 46, Revelation 14, 9 to 11, and then Revelation 20, verses 10 to 15. So Matthew 25,

46 says, and this is clearly speaking about an end time judgment scene. If you look at the context of Matthew 25, there's no dispute about that. And the passage says that they, no dispute about that. And the passage says that they, and this is Jesus speaking, they, unbelievers, will go away into eternal punishment and the righteous will go away into eternal life. And so what people will point out, especially those that hold to this view, is that you have a contrast between eternal punishment and eternal life. And since we know that eternal life goes on forever, okay, it's eternal, it's forever. So therefore the punishment is also eternal. I mean, there's no way around this parallel statement. If you believe in eternal life, then you must also believe in eternal punishment. Revelation 14, this is a little longer of a passage.

This one talking about some kind of judgment. Okay, now the book of Revelation is disputed on so many levels. So there's going to be disputes about maybe the context, the meaning of this passage. But here in the context of judgment, the author says that the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night, for they have worshiped the beast and his statue and have accepted the mark of his name. So here, it doesn't just say eternal punishment. It actually goes into more detail about, you know, the smoke of their torment rising forever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night. Revelation 20, first of all, verse 10 talks about the devil, the beast and the false prophet being thrown into the burning

lake of fire. Okay. The lake of fire. And there they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. And then a few verses. Okay. So this is talking about, you know, the devil, the beast and the false prophet. What about,

what about the rest of humanity? Okay. Cause it could be theoretically possible that these three entities or persons could be tormented forever and ever. Maybe they get ECT. But then a few verses later, it says that anyone whose name was not found written since the location is the same, that the punishment is also the same, even though it doesn't explicitly say that these people will be punished forever and ever, day and night. They go to the same place, so it's got to be the same kind of punishment. We also have other images that are used to support eternal conscious torment, like being cast into the eternal fire or everlasting fire.

Mark 9 says that hell is a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, which supporters of this view would say highlights the eternality, the never endingness of the punishment in hell. Sounds good, right? I mean, why are we even having this discussion? If you're a Bible-believing Christian, it seems like it hell. Sounds good, right? I mean, why are we even having this discussion? If you're a Bible believing Christian, it seems like it's a slam dunk. Okay. It's a little more complicated than that. We do have to give the other views a fair shake if we're truly going to understand both these other positions and how Bible believing Christians could hold to these other positions

and also to understand the historic position itself. and also to understand the historic position itself. Okay, so the second view I want to look at is often called annihilation or conditional immortality. And the first thing annihilationists point out is that tradition is not unanimous. You've got really some towering Christian figures like Irenaeus, Ignatius, Athanasius, Arnobius, and an early Christian work called the Epistle of Barnabas. All of these advocate for what we would call an annihilation view of hell, that when people face judgment, if they receive a negative verdict, if they're not on the side of eternal life, they will be cast into hell where they will die. They will not live forever and ever in constant state of torment. And again, I mean, these, I mean, these are, if you don't know church history, it's fine. This isn't a church history class, but there's no dispute.

I mean, Irenaeus is a, is a towering figure. One of the main kind of formulators of this whole idea that we serve a triune God. Athanasius was one of the most staunch, zealous defenders of the deity of Christ. Ignatius is famous for his path to martyrdom, where he was marched across the Mediterranean world on his way to Rome and wrote a bunch of encouraging letters to the church. I mean, these are fathers of the faith. These are not just some fringe people that didn't have significance,

and they're certainly not heretics to the Christian faith. Annihilationists also point out, and this is probably one of the main arguments for annihilation, is that the most dominant language of hell is language of death and destruction. Think about this. John 3, 16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whosoever believes in him, I'm butchering this verse, whoever believes in him shall not,

what, be tormented, but shall have everlasting life? No, it says shall not perish. Perish, but have everlasting life. Have you ever noticed that? I mean, we all know John 3.16. And yet, have you ever reflected on this idea that the opposite of eternal life is perishing? Now, the whole idea of perishing doesn't sound like never-ending torment. It sounds like perish, like you're not going to exist anymore. You have other passages like 2 Peter 2.6, which, You have other passages like 2 Peter 2.6, which, you know, this is kind of mid-thought here in Peter's letter. By turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction. We all know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Absolutely annihilated those cities, right? says that this incident of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah was making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has become a picture of the nature of hell. Since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was just that, destruction, not torment. God's not still tormenting the Sodomites and Gomorrahites. I mean, I've literally been to Sodom and Gomorrah, and there's nothing there. It's just deserted wasteland because God annihilated it. So wait a minute. If that's a picture of what's going to happen to the ungodly, then we should say, in as much as we take Peter at his word here, that the future of the ungodly will be like Sodom

and Gomorrah, will be annihilation, not torment. Matthew 10, 28, do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy. And there's a clear parallel here between the word destroy and the idea of killing, ending the life of. God, fear him because he can end the life of destroy both body and soul in hell. So here, this is, doesn't say, you know, he will, he fear God because he will torment your soul and body in hell. Rather it says he will destroy and, um, annihilate, uh, body and soul and hell. And then just, I mean, I'm not going to look at, you don't need to look up all these verses. You can hit pause if you want to.

Well, I guess you can't hit pause. Well, maybe you can hit pause, but you can look up these on your own if this is of interest to you. You have the language of death and destruction. And I've even included the Greek words here. These are the Greek words translated, you know, death, or apoleia is translated destruction or perish in some context.

You even have a word, phthora, that has to do with something like disintegration or just kind of corroding out of existence. And so this is just a sampling of uh the many passages that when the bible talks about the end state of those who reject god it is one of death and destruction not one of ongoing torment you have other images that seem to reinforce this idea burned up the wicked will be like burned up chaff weeds branches tossed in a fire, a destroyed house, a chopped down tree. The day of judgment is compared again to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or of the flood, which again, people may have been tormented while they were drowning in the flood. But at the end of the day, they drowned.

They died. Their life was no more. So these images become part of the conceptual world of how we're supposed to understand the ultimate end time judgment of those who reject God. Number four, this is another reason annihilationists give is that immortality or living forever is a gift given to those in Christ, not something inherent to humankind. those in Christ, not something inherent to humankind. And this is not that disputed among, especially biblical scholars. Although I think among non-specialists, I think some people do assume that like the human soul is intrinsically immortal. There were some early Christian theologians that used to say that, but that really, we've, we now know that that comes more from Plato, uh, Platonic thinking than the Bible. The Bible, I would say, clearly

teaches, I mean, you can look up these verses on your own, that immortality, living foreverness is contingent upon, conditioned upon believing in Jesus. In Genesis 2 and 3, I mean, this is a fascinating passage where at the end of Genesis 3, it says, the Lord God says, since man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat and live forever. Therefore, they kick him out of the garden. That's a fascinating statement. He needs to be kicked out of the garden because if Adam and Eve stay in the garden,

then they'll eat from the tree of life and then they will live forever. The clear implication is that if we separate him from the tree of life, he will not live forever. This just shows that living forever is not intrinsic to humanity. It was actually contingent upon, in this case, the tree of life. And this might be why we have images of the tree of life reappearing at the end of the book of Revelation. If you look at Revelation 22, we see the tree of life kind of there in the New Jerusalem and giving a picture of kind of how God is enabling humans to live forever. Um, and sometimes some annihilationists will point this out that the Greek language of eternality, uh, Ionios doesn't always convey, uh, never ending time. You know, we have references, especially in the old Testament to eternal mountains that

aren't going to live forever and ever. Um, the eternal dwelling place talking about Solomon's temple, which was destroyed in 586 BC, the eternal priesthood of Aaron, the eternal gates and so on. So, and this is, I'll just jump in unbiased, I'll jump in like the real me jumping in and say that this argument is true in the sense that the word, the Greek and Hebrew words often translated eternal or everlasting, they don't always mean never ending time. This is again, not really disputed. It is just simply an observation of the meaning of Greek and Hebrew words. Now this doesn't solve the debate because the question is, okay, in the context when it's used in judgment,

does it there mean never ending time? So commercial break over, I'll go back and keep defending this position from an unbiased perspective. Even if it does mean never ending time, and this is, you got to put, this is, this is, it might be kind of hard to wrap your mind around, but the whole idea of eternal punishment, remember Matthew 25, 46 that we read earlier, is eternal punishment referring to the never-ending act of punishing? Like the punishment is ongoing? Or is it talking about the never-ending results of the punishment? Or is it talking about the never-ending results of the punishment? For instance, just because it says eternal punishment doesn't mean the act of punishing is never-ending.

It could mean that the results are irreversible. If death is the punishment for sin, and we talk about some kind of eternal death, that could mean, based on just the flexibility of the Greek language, that death will never be reversed. It is eternal. It is everlasting. Doesn't mean you keep existing in a never-ending state of dying, but are never really quite dead. It just means that, could mean, that you die and that state of death is never reversed. Okay, so that's the annihilation position.

Let's talk about ultimate reconciliation. And some might be surprised that I'm even considering this under the large umbrella of a Christian option, because some would say this is heresy. This is, you know, all roads lead to heaven. How could you say that Jesus is irrelevant is, you know, all roads lead to heaven. How could you say that Jesus is irrelevant for, you know, living forever? So I want to make a distinction between pluralism, which does say all roads lead to God. Like, yo, you believe in Jesus? Oh, that's great. You know, I follow, I follow Muhammad or I follow, I don't really follow Buddha. I follow the Hindu gods and

those roads will lead to the same. It all kind of leads to the same place. There's no particular significance of Jesus. He's just one of many different ways. Okay, that's pluralistic universalism. That is not what I'm considering to be a Christian option. I want to, the universalism I'm discussing as a Christian option, in the sense that it has been held by Christians throughout centuries, is what I call Christocentric universalism,

which says Jesus's blood purchases everyone and ultimately has the power to overcome unbelief. It still centers redemption and eternal life on the power of Jesus. It just says that it's so powerful that the blood of Jesus can even overcome unbelief, that it will overpower humanity's rejection of God. So that even if you go to hell and you're weeping and gnashing your teeth and you're resisting God,

you will be given endless time to come back to God through repentance, through God's salvific work. And ultimately, there will be ultimate reconciliation. All things will be reconciled back to God in the end because of, not in spite of, the finished work of Jesus Christ. Okay, so how does this view argue? Well, first of all, it does kind of what the Annihilation view does as well and points out that tradition also is mixed here.

Several towering figures in early church history held to this view. Origen, you know, he gets kind of a bad rap if you know anything about Origen. you know, some people criticize him for his method of interpreting the Bible. Other people, you know, pick on him for, um, castrating himself. You know, he read Matthew 19, which says people make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God. And apparently he allegedly went out and castrated himself, which is interesting. He actually took the Bible literal in that instance of all passages that take literally that might not have been the smartest one, but people pick on Origen for various reasons, but I'll say, look, Origen,

whatever you think of Origen, he was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, one of the most brilliant Christians ever to walk the face of the planet. And having read a bit of Origen's works, it's not the wacky stuff that some people think it is. I mean, I do think he's a significant Christian figure, even if we don't line up on origin on several areas.

Gregory of Nyssa was one of the main architects of the Nicene Creed. I mean, this guy, the Nicene Creed is like the most fundamental creed in historic Orthodox Christianity. It's where we get the deity of Christ from. It's where we work out the Trinity. I mean, this is the foundation of the historic Christian faith. I mean, the Bible's the foundation,

but the Nicene Creed is one of the most fundamental historic statements about the Bible and what it says about God and the world. Gregory was one of the main persons behind that statement. Nobody questions the orthodoxy, the genuineness of Gregory's faith. Eusebius was one of the first early Christian church historians. Basil of Caesarea

was a significant figure. Some people say, yeah, but wasn't universalism condemned at the council in A.D. 553. And that's actually not true. And I'm not going to get into the details. There was a specific strand of origins beliefs that were condemned at that council. But it wasn't just condemning universalism out or ultimate reconciliation, Christ centered ultimate reconciliation. It wasn't categorically, uh, ruling all that out. And there's lots of disputes about this council and how legitimate it was anyway.

So we can't, we can't say that ultimate reconciliation was deemed a heresy by the early church and therefore shouldn't be considered as a possible option. So how does universalism or ultimate reconciliation, how does it get its view from? Because a lot of Christians are like, that's not in the Bible. The Bible talks about judgment. How can you not see this? Yes, it's true. But if you look at the pattern of how it talks about judgment, you will see in passages like Lamentations 31 that there is restoration on the other side of judgment.

So this is Lamentations is Jeremiah writing as he's watching Jerusalem being burned down, which was God's judgment on Israel. He brought the Babylonians in. They burned down the city of Jerusalem, burned down the temple, and they exiled the Jews over and, you know, exiled them to the land of Babylon. And that was divine punishment for their sins. But what we see throughout the Old Testament is that there is restoration on the other side of judgment. that there is restoration on the other side of judgment. Okay.

You following me here? And then this, again, let me step outside of my unbiased position here. This is, let me just say objectively, this is true in the old Testament, in the old Testament, we do see God punishing Israel,

judging Israel, but then also promising hope on the other side of judgment. Okay. Okay. Entering back into this view. The Lord will not cast off forever, but though he has caused grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. So the pattern we see in scripture, at least in the Old Testament,

and this view would argue for the New Testament as well, is that yes, there's judgment. Obviously there's judgment. The Bible talks about judgment all over the place, but if you look at the biblical pattern, there's always restoration on the other side of judgment. You have exile, punishment, which is followed by restoration. Christian universalism also looks at various specific texts, not just larger themes, but individual passages of scripture. One of the more interesting ones, and yeah, a little complex to kind of look at something that

doesn't leap off the pages, but is an interesting argument is that throughout the book of Revelation, you see a reference to the nations. And if you look at all these passages where the book of Revelation discusses the nations, the nations are always like bad people, people opposing God, people rejecting God, people on the wrong side of Christianity. Okay. And that's not, again, you can look at these passages and see for yourself. What's interesting is that you have a couple other passages in Revelation that talk about the redemption of the nations. All nations will come and worship before you. And if this phrase means anything like it does in these passages, then these people who will come worship

God were rejecting God. And yet at some point they will be redeemed. In fact, in the end, in Revelation 21, it talks about the nations walking by its light. The kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. And no day will its gates, sorry, this is being cut off here. No day will its gates ever be shut for there will be no night there.

In other words, the gates of the city, the new Jerusalem, which is a symbol of kind of like the everlasting existence of the people of God, the gates will never be shut. Well, in the afterlife, in the new heavens and new earth, why do the gates need to be open? And this argument would say that so that those who are sort of repenting and saying, all right, I've had enough. I'm going to come back to God. They can come back to God. And if they're never shut, there will always be open opportunity to come back to God. Romans 5, 18 says, therefore, as one trespass. And if you remember this context of Romans 5, it's talking about the sin of Adam. talking about the sin of Adam. Okay. The one trespass, this is the sin of Adam in Genesis chapter three. Okay. Just as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to the justification in life for all men.

Okay, so follow this logic here. Who are all men? Or you can keep it gender neutral. You can say all people. Is this everybody? Is everybody under condemnation because of the sin of Adam? Most people would say yes. That's exactly what Paul's saying, that the sin of Adam affected all humanity. People would say, yes, that's exactly what Paul's saying, that the sin of Adam affected all humanity.

Well, if all means all here, then does all mean all here? That the one act of righteousness, namely the death and resurrection of Jesus, leads to life for all men? Does all men mean all men there? All people, all humanity? Same thing in Romans 11, 32. God has consigned all to disobedience. Does all mean all? Most people would say, yes, all humanity. Same thing in Romans 11, 32, God has consigned all to disobedience. Does all mean all? Most people would say, yes, all means all, all humanity. Well, then what does this mean? That he might have mercy on all. Will he have mercy on all if he consigned all to disobedience? And this is where we get the whole idea of ultimate reconciliation. It comes from Colossians 1, that through Jesus, God will reconcile all things to himself.

Does all mean all? If all means all, then that means all humanity, men, women, and children. So in summary, the ultimate reconciliation view says that unbelievers will be resurrected, will be judged, and will be cast into hell. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make as they say, if you believe in universalism, you don't believe in hell. And then you go to the Bible and just look up many passages that talk about hell, and you could wrongly make the conclusion that people who hold to this view simply don't believe the Bible. Now, that might be true of some people. I'm not going

to defend every person who holds to this view, but to go down that logical route, I think is actually unfair to this view. They don't deny hell. They just say that when people are cast into hell, they will be punished. They believe in divine punishment, but the gate to the city, the entrance to eternal life will never be shut. Okay. In the end, God will reconcile all things, including all people to himself. So the ultimate question is not which view have you traditionally held to, not which view do you think is correct? The ultimate question, and this is, sorry, this is falling out of my screen here. The ultimate question is which view is biblical? Is it eternal conscious torment?

Yes, that's what the majority of the Western churches believe, but is it biblical? Does it have more biblical evidence than the other two views? Conditional immortality or annihilation. Some people would say this isn't even a Christian option. Some people would say, well, I've never heard that. It's not in our doctrinal statement. I knew a person who denied Jesus and he also believed in this view. Whatever. There's all kinds of reasons to say this is a terrible view. The question is, is it biblical? There's all kinds of reasons to say this is a terrible view. The question is, is it biblical?

Ultimate reconciliation. Oh, you just believe in that because of your emotions. You can't stomach God's judgment. You don't really have the fear of God in your heart. And those may be valid things to wrestle with. But the question is, is it biblical? We've given biblical arguments for each view. That doesn't mean just because you give a biblical argument that that view has the most overarching persuasive biblical evidence. It

just means that there are verses some people have used to support each view. So which one is more biblical? In the next talk, I will share with you which one I think is more biblical, not so that you must believe what I believe, but so that you too can wrestle with this really important conversation. All right, we'll see you next time. Thank you.