Within Reason - #33 Michael Jones - Does God Send People to Hell?

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Michael Jones is the founder and director of the Christian YouTube channel "Inspiring Philosophy". He has previously debated Alex twice. Inspiring Philosophy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g Inspiring Philosophy, "Does God Send People to Hell?": https://youtu.be/tiYf6ITgWbk Michael's debate with Alex on the problem of evil: https://www.youtube.com/live/hNF9bTESZwE?feature=share Michael's debate with Alex on the moral argument for God: https://youtu.be/9Ulnmb-4v2M Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Within Reason. My name is Alex O'Connor. And my guest today is Michael Jones. Michael Jones is the founder and host of the inspiring philosophy YouTube channel, which covers the history and philosophy of the Christian religion. Michael, thanks for being here. yeah thanks for having me we've locked horns before i think we've debated at least once maybe a couple more times twice i think probably most recently was the caption christianity debate where we talked about the problem of evil right yeah we were on his channel twice first over the moral argument and the problem of evil that's right so we've done what i think is probably the the biggest philosophical objection that people have to christianity but also theism in general which is the problem of evil, I would imagine. But I invited you on today to talk about what I think is, in many ways, the biggest moral

objection to Christianity. That is, people who are trying to make a critique, not of the truth of Christianity per se, but of its sort of moral quality will often point to a particular doctrine that throughout the history of Christianity has been used and abused by many to scare the daylight out of some of its adherence. Listeners will not be surprised to learn that I'm talking about the doctrine of hell, something that you've produced a couple of videos on and have talked about in the past. So I'm interested in learning what you think about hell, what you think the Bible says about hell, and whether you think that the doctrine of hell can be justified. So welcome to the show,

and perhaps I can begin by asking, against the, some would say caricatures, some would say sort of metaphorical imagery that we see in the history of the church. What do you think is an accurate depiction of what the Christian doctrine of hell is? Well, I think that's a pretty good question to start with. It's a, it's not something that I think is a simple answer. It's not like a jack chick track where you see this giant pit of fire and God is throwing people in and they're crying to get out. That is a bad caricature of what the Bible, how it represents hell. If I'm going to sum up what my view is, and people can always check out a video I did called Does God Send People to Hell? Building on the late Tim Keller who just passed away when I made

that video, hell is a freely chosen identity built on something else besides God going on forever. Hell is basically the consequence of our sin, not externally. It's not that God externally is tormenting people. Hell is the internal consequences of our sin. It's what results when we continue to sin, when we continue to live in our sin and continue to go on beyond this life. And it's just separation from God at that point. So that is generally what I argue hell is. Hell is not this fire pit people who are thrown into. It's probably metaphorical. Most theologians I read would say that because your physical body is gone at that point. You're only a soul spirit. So how would fire hurt you? It's metaphorical for the fire of sin, what brings about from our own works,

rejecting the grace of Christ, and that is hell. So that is generally what I argue, building on, again, like the late Tim Keller, C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, those kind of people. Now, I remember learning about, there's a philosopher called Kfanvig who tried to identify the four doctrines of the sort of classical depiction of hell that you'd find throughout the history of the Catholic Church, for example. And I think if I can remember these, the first is the inescapability thesis, that is once you're in hell, you can't get out. The second is anti-universalism, that is hell isn't empty. It's a place where people actually go. Third is that it's a real place. It's not some kind of metaphor.

And fourth is that everybody who's there deserves to be there. Of those four doctrines, which would you agree with and which would you say you have a quorum about? Well, I have a quorum about the idea you can't get out of hell. I'm not convinced of that at all. And I draw in places like 1st Peter 4, 6 where it talks about Christ preaching to the dead. I do not think that necessarily is the end-all, be-all. I think it's very, very hard to get out of hell. And let me explain why.

Because people think that, you know, when you just die, you go to heaven. It's like you go to a five-star resort in the sky. It's all funning games up to that. That's not really what the Bible says. Paul says in First Corinthians, we all, talking to Christians, have to stand before the judgment seat of God and give an account of everything we have done. Now, that's going to suck.

That is not going to be fun. That's going to be painful. People will use this type of argument. If a rapist confesses on his deathbed, he gets to go to heaven and he gets out of all the punishments he deserves. Not true. Not true at all. Because, again, he still needs to be sanctified. Going to heaven is continuing the journey to be more Christ-like, to become a better version of yourself that is like Christ.

And that requires shedding of the sin, sanctifying, and that is a hard process. We all know how hard it is, you and I both know, to say you've been wrong about something. That sucks. It really hurts. The hardest part I have experienced is getting to the point of saying, I messed up, I'm wrong. It feels like going through hell sometimes. But on the other side, it's very liberating. It feels freeing.

You feel like you've become a better version of yourself in a lot of ways. That basically is it. So the Orthodox Church of America has an article on their website where they talk about it. hell. And they say the same fire. They say that Hebrews 12 talks about God as a consuming fire. That fire for the saints is purging of the sins. It takes off our sins. And that's painful at times, but it's also liberating and freeing. But that same fire is the fire of hell is what they say. It's because those in hell who are holding on to their sins, their own pride and their self-worth. They have built their identity on their pride and their self-worth. And so as the fire tries to burn those

sins, it burns them away as well. Because it's that, they have made that their identity. So it's not this idea that when we go to heaven, it's all sunshine and rainbows. You could argue it will be, but we still need to be sanctified. And that process will be painful. So to bring this background on my main point, the reason why I don't think a lot of people leave hell is because they don't want to go through that process. CS Lewis talks about this in his book, The Great Divorce, about souls that are in the gray town, aka hell. And they get a free bus right up to heaven. Most of them go back, all but one, I believe, because they realize the process of shedding their identity, their sin, their self-worth, their pride would be extremely

painful. And they rejected, and they'd rather just stay in hell where they can be safe with their own comfort, with their own identity, even though that slowly destroys them. So that would be the one doctrine I would have issue with. Can you remind me of the other three? I know there was one, I agree with it. It is a real place, but what were the other two? Yeah, so we had that it's a real place. So you've just talked about the inescapability thesis. Secondly, that it's a real place. Thirdly, that there are people in it, that it's a real place that isn't empty. Because you might believe that there is a place called hell, but after Jesus is sacrificed, everybody goes to heaven or something like this. And finally, that everybody who's there deserves to be there. I think that that fourth

doctrine, that that fourth part is maybe the most controversial, that if there is a place called hell, even if it's not quite the fire and brimstone that we've been sold throughout a lot of European and Western history, that it still seems problematic to say that people deserve such a punishment on a few grounds. The first is that if this is an eternal punishment, if it can at least potentially go on forever, you have the problem of an infinite punishment for what can only ever be a finite crime. And I suppose, secondly, is the problem that I have with everything you've just said. And this idea that I think is quite indebted popularly to C.S. Lewis, that people who are in hell sort of choose to be there. The gates of hell are locked from the inside. It's a very beautiful, poetic way of

putting it. But of course, when faced with the truth of God's existence, when face to face with God, it would be very difficult for any rational person to deny him, to say that they don't believe that God exists, to say that they don't believe that God is of a particular nature. If they were sort of given the requisite evidence and experience to come to believe in him, I think it'd be very difficult for any rational person to not accept that. Maybe a few people may do so on kind of confused moral grounds. But even then, because you can say, well, some people still, when face with God's might are afraid of it or don't want it or reject it still. And I suppose the problem is that in order to do that, they must be missing something on your view. If it is the

case that God is love and God is truth and God is the ground of all being, then for somebody to reject him, they must be so confused. The only possible explanation for this is that there's been something missing from the information that they've been given. It hasn't been explained to them properly. They've misunderstood something through essentially no fault of their own. If that's the case, then sending them to hell as essentially a punishment for not believing the right thing or acting in the right way seems unfair, to say the least? Well, let's start with the first one, and then we can talk about the whole deserving issue, the infinite punishment for a finite crime. So I've described myself as eventual annihilationists,

and then I think hell is the process that annihilates souls. So I don't think it's necessarily eternal. But even like someone like Wayne Grudom, who describes himself as believing in eternal hell, says there is no place in the Bible where it says an infinite punishment deserves a finite crime. The wages of sin is death. And so what he says is that it's, and William Lane Craig says something similar, it's that the people in hell continue to sin, continue to reject God. And so they thus remain there. And it's just a vicious endless cycle that continues on. So even very like, very conservative reform scholars like Wayne Grudem would say that. Now, let's talk about the whole issue of the gates of hell locked from the inside.

C.S. Lewis also says something interesting in his paper, manner rabbit, where he says, honest rejection of Christ, however wrong shall be forgiven and healed. And so this very idea that truly, if there are people that just simply got the wrong information, and if God is truly infinitely just, infinitely loving, he knows what to do to make things right. He will set things right, as he says. Romans 513, for example, says sin is not counted where there is no law. And Jesus also says in John 941, John 1522, they said, if I had not come, they would not be guilty, but now that I have come, they have no excuse. So he's talking about the Pharisees there.

And let's talk about the story of the Pharisees. So they saw Jesus doing miracles. They saw him healing, raising the dead. They still desired to kill him. They accuse him of casting out with the power of Bielseabre. So when he's talking about them, he says, they have no excuse. They've been given ample evidence, and they still reject me. What about people that maybe did not get the proper information?

Well, Jesus's statements imply that if somebody just was given bad information, God can make that right quite easily. So honest rejection of Christ, whoever wrong shall be forgiven and healed, as he as Lewis said. And so then it just becomes a question of who is in hell. Well, the people that are hell are the people who said the same thing that Christopher Hitchin said before he died. I don't want to be in a celestial North Korea with the dear leaders singing his praises every day. Or who is the head of the freedom from religion? Dan Barker says, if Jesus is real and I met him, I would tell him to go to hell. It's this prideful mentality

that I know better than you. It's better for me to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Back to John Milton, talking about Satan. I know hell's going to suck. It's horrible, but I'd rather rain there than get on my knees to the creation. to Christ. And so it's that same kind of mentality. So yeah, I resonate with you when you say that if people have not been given the proper information, they should not deserve to be separated from God. But let's go back to people what like C.S. Lewis said or George McDonald, he said that everyone is either doing one thing. They're either moving closer to God or they're moving further away from God. And where they're moving is slowly in on themselves towards their own

self-worth, towards their own pride, towards their own idea that I am king, I am ruler, I will never bend. Everyone is doing that in some way, regardless of the information they have. And if truly if somebody, I would agree with George McDonald on this, is that truly if somebody has just not been given the right information, but they are trying to move in this direction of seeking knowledge, trying to find truth, trying to find what is good, trying to accept the fact that they are not the center of the universe, then God, who is infinitely just, will understand the information that God, and he will make sure they get the right information.

whether in this life or the next. And that's why I'm open to the idea of post-mortem salvation. But Michael, don't you think that that's what Christopher Hitchens was doing? I mean, Hitchens is probably the prime example of an anti-theist, right? Not somebody who just thinks that God doesn't exist, but one who's glad of it. And at some points implies and at some points explicitly states that even if faced with the creator would say, no, I don't want this. I don't want to, as you say, live in a celestial dictatorship.

But you said a moment ago that somebody who just has the wrong information, but is, you know, trying in their heart to move towards truth and move towards goodness. Is this not what Hitchens was doing? In his mind, he's seeking freedom. He's seeking liberty. He's seeking, you know, the abolition of tyranny and of, as he sees it, oppressive religious thought. Now, in your view, he'll be incorrect about this. It's not some celestial dictatorship, or if it is, it's not the kind of dictatorship.

characteristic of North Korea as Hitchens made it out to be. But this is a mistake. If Hitchens genuinely believed this and you think he's wrong, it just amounts to him being mistaken. He just has the wrong idea of what heaven and what God's presence is like. If he's mistaken about that, it can only be because the things that he's read, the people he's spoken to, the experiences that he's had has taught him that this is what heaven and God would be like. Now, it's not his fault that he's had those experiences. I mean, of course, he sort of chooses which books to read, but he doesn't choose which arguments compel him. He doesn't choose which books fall into his lap or which ones he happens across in a bookstore. And so if he reads a bunch of information, just like how, you know, I used

to agree with Christopher Hitchens on these points. I read, God is not great, and I listened to his speeches, and I thought, wow, there's a very compelling rhetorical case that, yes, heaven is like North Korea, and I don't want to be a part of it. And I believed that because I'd listened to Christopher Hitchens. it's not my fault that I heard his voice found it compelling and became convinced by those arguments. I just did. Now, if I were on my deathbed in those moments, if I'd have died, you know, how many five years ago it was. And I said, you know what? Yes, I agree with Christopher Hitchens. I don't want to be in the presence of God. It's the celestial North Korea. In my view, that's because I was mistaken about what the Christian doctrine of heaven is like and that that's not my fault. It's because I read somebody else who convinced me and I didn't choose that that was the case. For you to to say something like, well, look, Alex, you've made the decision that you want to be separated from God. And so now you don't get to enjoy the glories of eternal life, but rather you get separation from God, not quite eternally in your view, but for a very long time, presumably, in hell, it still seems like even in the case of someone like Christopher Hitchens, or indeed

my former self, this wouldn't be a fair treatment in response to the reasons why a person has ultimately come to reject Christianity. see. Yeah. So in the way you're setting it up, it just seems like it goes back to what I said. If Christopher Hitchens just got the wrong information, God knows what to do to make that right and will. I don't think that necessarily is the end necessarily of the conversation. But what I'm just sort of harking on is the mentality that he sort of presented, this idea that I don't, that it's better to rain in hell than serve in heaven. If Hitchens did get all the correct information and he still had that mentality, that is who hell is for.

So I would, let me just qualify something. I'm a legal universalist in that when John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world, Jesus came to take away the sin of the world. And all that are in hell are the people who are like Satan, who will prefer to reign in hell than serve in heaven. So I was just using Hitchens' quote as an example of what that mentality is like. Now, I agree with you.

If he didn't get the right information, then sure, he is not necessarily condemned. Now, you talked a little bit about this idea that, you know, like, we can't choose what arguments were convinced them. I want to push back on that a little bit. I'm not, I struggle with this because I want to think that way, but I butt up against science as well. So, like, studies like certainly, certainty is primarily determined by past performance during concept learning. Or another study, wishful thinking, belief, desire, and the motivated evaluation of scientific evidence. What a lot of these studies show us is that a lot of times, we don't realize we're doing this but subconsciously, we are picking the arguments that we like.

We are going, so there was a study done, and what they did is they gave parents both fake studies within the study. So parents that prefer daycare were compared with parents who preferred home care, and they both were given studies that showed the superiority of either daycare or home care. And of course, the parents that liked home care found ways to dismiss the daycare study, but then ways to support the home care study and vice versa. And what they were arguing is that a lot of times we as humans, we tell ourselves a story. I was convinced by this because of the data, but really a lot of it has to do with our own emotions.

And so I remind my audience and I remind myself, we have to fight against this every day. There is some aspect where we are still conscious agents involved in the decisions we're making and the beliefs we're picking and what is motivating us. And again, that's a daily struggle that I have to fight with even as a Christian. I recognize that I do want Christianity to be true. And I recognize there are parts of me that don't want Christianity to be true. But right now, I recognize that I have those motivations. And I think we all need to recognize that.

So there is some aspect that, sure, there are some times that there are beliefs we obtain that maybe we can't be convinced of otherwise, I guess we could say. And if that's the case, as C.S. Lewis says, honest rejection of Christ, however wrong should be forgiven and healed. But there is still some sense of this side that we are a lot of times choosing the identity we want. And with that identity, we'll come beliefs that we select to tell ourselves the story that we want to hear.

And so we as humans need to recognize we are a mix of logic and emotion. But crucially, you said that this happens subconsciously. You say, you know, we think that we're rational. We think that we look at the evidence and we are just sort of convinced by truth. But no, it's got so much to do with our previous biases, with our. sort of unconscious preference for certain kinds of data for our confirmation bias, but all of these things work below the surface of our conscious experience, right? And so even if it's the case that the reason I'm convinced of Christopher Hitchin's argument is because I have a bias against

Christianity, because I had a negative experience in the church or something, I still don't think I had any agency over that. I still think that although, of course, I'm not being sort of motivated by truth so much as emotion as you would characterize the situation, but still not something that I'm in control over. And so suppose I have a bad experience with the church and suppose that that convinces me that I want to go and read a bunch of atheist literature. And again, this just happens subconsciously. I just feel compelled to do so.

And it convinces me that God is this horrible, evil monster. You know, I read, God is not great. I read the God delusion. And I think to myself, no, I don't want any part of this. and really what I've been sold in your view is a meme is a is a falsity is not what God is really like now in a in a series of events that I see myself as having essentially no meaningful agency in in the morally relevant sense I'm now destined for hell this to me seems unfair now you said that Christopher Hitchens you know may or may not be going to hell we don't know because of course

you know if he really did have the the wrong information then then god knows best but you said but in a situation where somebody does have the right information and still you know rejects Christianity rejects god then they go to hell but my point is that isn't every situation one in which every situation in which someone rejects this must be because they have the wrong information because if they had the right information and if it convinced them as it convinced you and convince everybody else who's correct, as you see it on this issue, then they would be convinced. The only way that you can, if something is true, if it is true that God exists and that Christianity is the correct interpretation and that God is love, then the only way that you can think

any of those things are not true is if you have the wrong information or if you've heard a bad argument and become convinced by it. It seems to me that in any situation where somebody rejects this, if it is in fact true, it must be because they've somewhere been given the wrong information. that doesn't seem like good grounds upon which to condemn them to suffer in hell. So, yeah, I do agree it happens subconsciously going back to the whole decision-making aspects and beliefs we choose. But let's also recognize the fact that we are currently conscious about this activity that happens in our brain. How else would we be able to talk about it?

We can recognize that these processes go on subconsciously. So we recognize that we are conscious about this, and then therefore we can make adjustments. I think when we become conscious of our own subconscious processes that happen, we can then do something that other animals cannot, which is we can transcend them and try our best to overcome them. Now, again, let's also remember the fact that we ought to take all of Christianity for what it says. And Christianity does preach the doctrine of hell,

but it also preaches that God is a perfectly just being. So he will act perfectly just. And if there is this idea that somebody did not get the right information, that if they were just given the right information, they would reject hell, then he will set things right in his perfect justice. This is what is implied when Jesus talks in John 941 or 1522 about getting proper information.

So if everyone had the right information, would they be convinced? I'm not convinced of that necessarily. I think we like to think of ourselves as reason machines, this idea that if we are just given the right information, we will do the right thing. I think you and I can look at people like flat earthers and go, clearly they've been given the right information.

The earth is around. Who could deny this in the year 2023? But they exist. Why do they exist? Well, there's a great documentary on Netflix called Beyond the Curve. I've watched it like three times now. And it just goes in it. I've seen it, I think, a couple of times.

It's fascinating because it goes into the psychology of these flat earthers and the way they think and act. And truly, what do they want? They don't care about the shape of the Earth. They're part of the resistance. They're fighting the evil galactic empire in their minds. They're the only ones who know the truth. They're neo.

They're part of this cool story they now get to be that's part of the resistance. That is more important to them than what is actually true that the Earth is obviously around. And so a lot of times that's the way humans are. We sometimes, unfortunately, prefer the story, prefer the prideful aspect where we get to be the hero, where we get to be the king, and then we are going to set aside truth. And that's just the way human psychology often is. We need to recognize this is the way our subconscious is, and repent of it, just to use biblical language, and accept that we are not the center of the universe. It's not all about us. We're not going to be

the hero of this story. And at the end of the day, we need to accept that. That's very much in line with the Christian idea of surrendering one's pride and self-worth and accepting that you need to give that kind of stuff up. So I don't think this idea that if we just gave everyone the right information, they would all just sort of agree. And we can see this played out in examples in real life. But surely, once you inject a moral element, this analogy breaks down. If I decided to say that I thought flat earthers were misinformed or even to say that they were stupid, which, you know, I wouldn't want to do. But for the grace. of God, there go I. I mean, the very case that I'm trying to make is that were I in

their shoes with the information they had presented to them and the kind of upbringing and friendship groups that they were in, I'd probably believe the same thing, right? I think to myself, okay, fine, call them what you will, but if you want to say it's immoral, if you want to say they've done something wrong and they deserve punishment as a result of believing in the flat earth, I'd have a great qualm with this, in part because of the fact that I don't think that becoming convinced of a position, no matter how wacky you might see it,

is something that can really be subject to moral analysis. You don't just get to, you don't just get to decide what becomes convincing to you. Even if people are being motivated by the fact that they feel part of a community, they feel part of the resistance,

they think it's cool to imagine that governments are lying to us. I mean, there's something very attractive about a conspiratorial attitude. That's why conspiracy theories are so interesting, even to people who don't, believe in them. But if that compulsion within somebody's psychological constitution is compelling enough to pull them, as it were, over the edge and become a flat earther, I don't think that that

happens through any meaningful choice of their own. And if I started saying that I was going to morally punish people for believing in what is essentially just a list of propositions about the way that the world is, I think I'd be committing a grossly unethical crime against them, don't you think? Well, let's talk about this. There's a lot you said there. I want to kind of go through this. So is there a morality aspect of the flat earthers? In some sense, there kind of is, as I was trying to hint to before. It's this idea that they prefer to be the hero of the story over truth. It becomes a self-centered thing. Not all of them, and most of them, actually, from what I've seen are not brought up in this. I mean, there weren't going to flat earth was in the 90s when

I was being, when I was growing up. This was a new phenomenon that sort of just came out very recently to a large degree and it just sort of caught like wildfire. And a lot of these people getting sucked into it are getting sucked into this idea that I want to feel special. I want to feel like the hero. And that's what I'm going to do. Now, you talked about do they deserve punishment? Well, we needed to define what we mean by punishment. So I don't think hell is this idea of this external punishment, as I said earlier, this God is sort of torturing people. Hell is a freely chosen identity, built on something else besides going on forever. It's these people that reject God. They rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. And they go away in what destroys them. It's their

pride. It's their self-worth. As I talked about earlier, when you admit you're wrong on something, it is very liberating, but it's also you go through pain and suffering. That's sanctification. Now, what happens if you know you're wrong about something subconsciously? And you hold on to that for a thousand years, 10,000 years. You're not going to become a better version of yourself. You're going to become the worst version of yourself. You're going to slowly, that agony, that raids, that hatred of yourself is going to keep building up and building up until you become hell itself.

You become the demon that you were trying to avoid. And so this is very much what the idea of hell is in the Bible. Second Seth Thelonians 1-9 says they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. They're suffering punishment from their own sin away from God. God has just exiled them. The way God punishes in the Bible mostly is going to be exile or death, especially with people that are not actually in covenant with him.

So people that have rejected him. Exile or death. So God exiles people. That is hell. Hell is just simply exile. If you don't want to follow me, you can go out and do whatever you think. So C.S. Lewis, as you know, says when it comes to the doctrine of hell, itself a question for the skeptic, what are you asking God to do? To wipe out past sins and give them a fresh start? He did on Calvary. To forgive them, they don't want to be forgiven. To leave them alone, that's what hell is.

There are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God, thy will be done. And those to whom God says in the end, thy will be done. All that are in hell choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no hell. now it would be quite beautiful i think and in many ways it is as a as a as a as a literary piece but i'm imagining a situation in which you know i'm a i'm like a father of a child and this child doesn't doesn't doesn't know me i don't have sort of a way to contact them but i've got this wonderful inheritance for them you know i have a really large house with a nice swimming pool and central heating and it's it's going to be a great experience for this child but this child isn't sure that I exist and I've left them some sort of cryptic clues that I exist. I've sort of written a book maybe or I haven't written a book but I've maybe sort of appeared to some people who've written

some things down about me into a book that my child is one day going to uncover and if they find the time be able to read it probably not all of it probably not cover to cover but you know they dip in and out. And they hear the story about this, this father figure who has this great house that they want to, to give to them. But they've also heard that there's something about this father potentially making them sleep outside in the cold and the damp. And they meet a bunch of people and they read a bunch of books that say, you know that father, your father, he's actually just not a very nice person. And in fact, didn't you know that if, if you don't sort of do his will, he's going to make you sleep outside. He's going to, you know, make you sleep in the

rain. And maybe this is true in the sense that I'm a loving father who thinks, well, look, if my kid really doesn't want this inheritance, I'm not going to give it to them. Of course. I'm not going to force it upon them. But that gets translated because, again, I'm not, I'm not making myself known to this child. I'm doing it through this sort of bizarre channel of profits and books and people talking about me. And this child just hears these arguments and thinks, yeah, that is quite strange that, you know, if I don't do what he wants me to do, and of course, what I want my son to do is to accept the inheritance. And they say, well, but if, if I don't do what he wants me to do, he's going to make me sleep outside. That's horrible. This guy's a monster. I don't want to

live in a house with a person like that. Of course, that would be a mischaracterization of what's going on. But you can see why that's happened, because I want them to live in my house. And I say that if they don't do that, they can live outside if they want. That gets translated as, look, there's his house. But if you don't do what he wants, he's going to make you sleep outside. And then they say, would you want to live in a house of the monster like that? And my son goes, no, no, that's terrible. I'd rather on principle sleep outside. I wouldn't want to live with a man like that.

And so, you know, the son comes to me. And I say, do you want to come in? And he says, no, no, I don't want it. And I say, but son, I love you. I've got this gift for you. And he says, I don't want it. I think you're evil. Now that I see you, I want to distance myself from you.

And I say, okay, you know, then then go and sleep outside. And he's sort of sleeping outside in the rain. I don't know. I can understand why it might be the case that if my son really wants to sleep outside in the rain, I should allow him to do so. But I think it seems unfair to allow this kind of situation to obtain when it could have so easily been fixed, probably primarily by me giving him better information. Because the only reason, like I say, that he could think that I'm this evil father that's actually offering him this sort of poison chalice or this dictatorship in a house with the monster is because he's got the wrong information. from this book and from his friends. That's something I could easily fix, especially if I'm omnipotent.

This is something that God fails to do. It seems to me that a story like that, it's, of course, sort of a bit of an obscene parody of what's going on with God and his followers, but it doesn't seem too disanalogous to the situation that you're describing of somebody ostensibly saying, I don't want to enter into heaven, but that must be based on a confusion in your view of what heaven actually is like. So go back into your analogy. When the kid comes to you,

you're talking to him directly in the analogy, and you say, come into the house and he says, no, I don't want to. And you said you could remedy that with better information. Wouldn't that meeting be the situation to sort of give the better information at that point? I mean, it seems like in that analogy, you could do that is what you're saying. And he's still rejecting it, though. Perhaps, but then, I mean, do you imagine that this is something that all believe or non-believers are given the opportunity to do when they die.

I mean, if it were the case that, like with my father and my son, you know, I was able to sort of stand before God. And I have my objections. And I say, these are my problems with Christianity. I don't like this doctrine. I don't like this problem. And God has an opportunity to explain it to me, provide me with the information, provide me indeed with just the evidence of his existence,

such that even if I don't understand why he allowed certain evils to obtain, the fact that I know he exists and know that he's perfectly, just means that I can trust that there must be some reason even if I don't know what that is. And that would be sufficient for me to say, okay, actually, you know what, I was wrong and I want to enter into communion with you. And surely if God does exist and is eternally loving, then any such interaction would end in that way with somebody saying, okay, you know, fair enough. But it seems to me that that's not an opportunity that's granted to people when they die. It seems to me that once you die, that's essentially when you've made your, you've sort of cast your final ballot. The

idea is that all throughout your life, you have an opportunity to change your behaviors, to adapt your character, to become more godlike or less godlike. But once you die, for some reason, the game's up. Now you get put into a category. You're in heaven, you're in hell, and that's where you'll essentially, at least most likely, remain. It seems a little arbitrary. It seems a little unfair. And it seems like it can only be based upon something, which ultimately, the person who's being sent to heaven or hell had no control over. Indeed, much in the same way that the person who goes to heaven probably didn't get to really choose meaningfully to become convinced of God's existence and to be a member of the correct church on the basis of the literature that

they've read, the YouTube videos they've watched, the apologetics that they've listened to and become convinced by, you know, they don't deserve heaven any more or less than the people who rejects this deserve hell. I think it seems entirely contingent upon factors that are outside of my control, ultimately, whether I'm going to end up in heaven or hell? Well, to answer the question of what happens when we die, do we get that opportunity? The honest answer is, I don't know. No one knows. That's just the truth of it all. But again, if we're going to take Christianity in its full context and judge its worldview on its own merits, again, the Bible does preach hell, but it also preaches God is perfectly just. So as I said before,

if that is what someone needs and if they have been they have an honest rejection of Christ then God will grant that being perfectly just and perfectly loving he's not going to deny someone something like that if they get it and they he knows they will accept it we just simply do not know what happens on the other side at this point and so that needs to be taken into account so again if we're going to judge Christianity on what it's actually preaching. We have to take in the ontology of God in his mental, his mental faculties. He is perfectly just. He will give everyone what they need to make an honest decision, whether in this life or the next. And so I do not believe that it is necessarily, based on the scripture verses I said

earlier, the end of the road, if someone just goes to hell for the lack of information or bad information, that kind of thing. With the analogy you give of the kid who comes and he's before his father and he's still rejecting him, that's kind of getting at what I was pointing at. Here he gets to see his father and confront him, ask the questions he's supposed to ask, and he doesn't. He just rejects it. No, I'm going to go sleep outside. I don't want to hear what you have to say. I already heard from my friends, and I know that they're not going to lie to me.

That's the mentality that sends you to hell. That's the mentality that creates the punishment in hell, that creates the torment of hell. It's not this external torture. It's internal. It's what comes from our own sin, our own pride, our own self-worth. It's that rejection of that kind of. of thing. So again, I forget I was going to say. Go ahead. I was going to ask what you think the ontology of hell is like. I mean, presumably you don't think it's fire, brimstone. You've said

it's not sort of eternal conscious torment. But is there torment? Is there suffering? Is there sort of a gnashing of teeth? You know, is this kind of thing? Does it have have any truth to it in your view of what hell is like? Well, I think that's a good question. Let's talk about Cahena. So Jesus talks about hell, called it Gahna. And people say, well, that's a trash dump in ancient Jerusalem. Well, there's not really any evidence that it was a trash dump in ancient Jerusalem.

Jesus is basically getting his stuff from Isaiah and Jeremiah. Gehenna was a valley in ancient Jerusalem, where they were Jerusalem chapter 7 talks. they were sacrificing their sons and their daughters in fire, which I did not command them, nor did it ever come into mind, says God, in that verse. It's a place, Isaiah talks about it being a place of bodies, a place of just sadness and destruction. And this is what I think Jesus is hinting at hell is like, it's a place where you become the worst version of yourself.

You're so evil, you're so depraved, you're willing to sacrifice your own children in fire. and that's what I would say, I don't know what it looks like if what you're asking or what hell feels like, but I talk more about the psychology of hell. Hell is where you become the worst version of yourself to where you're willing to destroy the most loved and precious ones around you because you have not surrendered to yourself and slowly over time that sin continues to grow. It becomes a consuming fire within that slowly tortures the person internally and very well may cause pain to others outwardly. So maybe they're very hard just, hell is just filled with

souls of people that have been there for what could feel like thousands of years. And they've just become the worst versions of themselves. And they constantly are fighting, attacking one another. Of course, I'm speculating at this point. But based on what I think Jesus is hinting at with Gahena, I think that's what hell is like. And this is what we see in the parable of the rich man with Lazarus in Book of Luke. Commentators have noted for years, though rich man never asked to get out of hell. He just tries to get Lazarus in hell to serve him, bring him some water down there. He's not someone who is depicted as on fire, screaming, but having rational conversations with Abraham, and he's complaining, he's shifting blame. He's trying to get, again, Lazarus to

come down and still be his servant, not realizing where he is and where Lazarus is. So again, I think hell is where we become the worst versions of ourselves. Yeah, I mean, of course, it's going to be difficult to speculate on what hell is like because there doesn't seem to actually be that much information in the Bible about hell and it somewhat seems to evolve. If you don't think it evolves actually within the Bible, certainly people's understanding of what hell is seems to have historically evolved from the time of the books of the Old Testament to the New. I wonder where this view sort of comes from of hell as fiery torment with sort of Satan prodding you with a stick and, you know, forcing you to

undergo torments. Well, I can give you something. Where does this come from? Well, you're going to get it in places like the Apocalypse of Peter. I believe it's the second century work. I mean, there's early Christian writings. There's Jewish writings. There's Islamic writings that depicted this way.

And quite honestly, I think it comes out of a mentality of pain and suffering that a lot of people were going through. I mean, Christians that were being persecuted by the Romans wrote something like the Apocalypse of Peter because they saw their loved ones being tortured. And what did they want? Well, they wanted justice. There's a great book by Miroslav Volf, called Exclusion and Embrace. And it's a very interesting book because Volf was a Croatian. He saw the genocide and the suffering happening in the Balkans.

And he argues against what a lot of we in the West think that you need a. a just loving, you need a just God, a God that has the existence of hell for the God to be loving. And this is what he says. He says, my thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone. Among your listeners or people whose cities and villages have been first plundered and then burned and then leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped before you, whose fathers and brothers have had their throat slit. The topic of the

lecture, a Christian attitude towards violence, the thesis, we should not retaliate since God is perfect non-coercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes quite, that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of this thesis, that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge. And a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about the many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. Here's what he's saying, basically. If you've seen your homes pillaged, your women raped, your family slaughtered before you, what is going to stop you from picking up the sword and going out and doing exactly what happened to you? This idea of

constant vengeance. You did this to us? We're going to do it to you. You did this to us? We're going to do it to you. What Volf says, what stops him from that is believing that there is divine vengeance, that there is a perfectly just God. He will set everything right in the end. He is the one who will take vengeance, whether through the pain of sanctification or through exiling people away in hell. And so when you look at the early Christian writings, I think that's what they're going through. They've seen their homes destroyed, their lives destroyed, their women taken, their men probably killed, and they go, God needs to do something about this. And they're angry and they're suffering. And so their response is to say, God is going to get you for this. And

their imagination takes hold and they come up with all these ideas. So I think that's where that comes from. It comes from the mentality that we need to see justice done. And because I'm angry, I want to see it done in a brutal way as well. So that's where we're going to get this idea of this idea of imps and demons poking people in hell. And it's essentially a case of wishful thinking. It's people seeing gross immoralities and thinking, I want these people to suffer.

Yeah. But I think what Volv built gets on is what stops that cycle. What stops that cycle is believing there is a divine creator who is just and will set everything right. And that's what I think is a beautiful, one of the beautiful aspects of Christianity is that you have a God who comes and saves us from our sin and promises that he will set everything right. As Revelation says, he will wipe away every tear and he will make everything right in the end. Those that reject him, those that have caused pain and

suffering and are not willing to come and repent at the cross, repent before him, will be sent away and they will suffer what is due to them. So this goes back to the early point, do people in hell deserve it? And quite frankly, I think the answer is yes. And I think the answer is yes. And I think, think we in the liberal West have often forgotten our radical dark history of humans and how we truly are. We're very fortunate to be living in the culture that we are, and we don't get to experience the pains and the sufferings that brought about this vivid picture of suffering in hell to sort of cope with the pain they have gone through. So I know that you don't take the view that hell is necessarily eternal.

at least not for, for everybody. I don't know if you think that everybody is ultimately annihilated, but you will probably agree that this is a more popular view of what hell is, that hell is somewhere where you go forever and that once you're there, you can't escape. Even if this isn't your view, what do you think about the ethics of this? And do you think that Christians who believe this just have a sort of difference of opinion to you on what hell is like? Or do you think that they're believing in an incoherent doctrine based on the immorality of a term? punishment? I would say to me it's logically incoherent in the idea that if in hell souls are

constantly moving away from God and these are finite creatures, eventually their souls are going to disintegrate into nothing. I think that just would logically follow. The pushback from people like Clay Jones, for example, who wrote a book called Immortal, is that God creates life, he is life, he is never going to become something he's not in destroy life. So he's He's never going to destroy the souls in hell because life is ultimately still a good thing, even if that life chooses to cause pain and suffering to itself. So I'm trying to steal him in his position here. You could think of something like the way we sort of look at the rainforest.

As an analogy I brought up, there's a lot of torment in the rainforest among the animals there, yet we fight for its survival. We think it should go on despite that. The intrinsic goodness of the life and the rainforest far outweighs the intrinsic badness from the suffering. So from God's perspective, who is infinitely loving, who is life, he can also look that way with the souls in hell if it is immortal in this idea that the intrinsic goodness of life there is always going to outweigh the suffering. And so it could keep going on, despite the fact that they keep causing suffering to themselves. Now, my view is also the

idea that, again, if a soul in hell turns around and starts moving towards God, they will get out. But again, that requires suffering as well. But it's a more liberating. type of suffering. But it's the same, but the reason why souls don't, it's the same reason drug addicts don't want to get off the drug and go to rehab. Think of the, uh, the suffering that causes. On the other side, of course, it's great. It's wonderful to be clean and get off the drugs. But they know that it's just easier to stay constantly addicted to the drug, constantly high on the pleasure, and not have to get off of that type of thing. And that's the mentality of the soul in hell. It's that drug addict, drug addict mentality.

you're just staying, you're so addicted to you on priding yourself, or in the pleasure you get from that, that's what you cling to. But I think there are only really two circumstances in which a person who's addicted to drugs remains addicted. One is in which they do recognize that to not be addicted anymore would be better, but can't find the strength within them to give up the drugs. Now, for some people, it's not the case that they don't recognize that it would be better without them.

they just have grown such a dependency on these on these substances that they can't help but use them essentially in in this situation i imagine you look more forgivingly on the analogous case of somebody who thinks that yes actually i would rather not be in hell but for some reason is is so addicted to as you say their pride their sin that they just can't shake it off it seems then that you're not dealing with somebody who wants to be in hell. You're dealing with somebody who wants to be in heaven but can't make it. The only other real situation in which somebody remains in their drug addiction is if they don't think that it would be better to be off the drugs, that's also possible. Somebody could think, actually, no, I would prefer to just sort of

waste my life away with this induced experience because I think it would be more pleasurable. But in that circumstance, it can only be because they have a belief that the alternative life on offer to them is not one worth living. Maybe for the drug addict it's because their life is a misery. Maybe that they, you know, they, they experience a lot of suffering and desperation in their life and so they use drugs as a form of escapism. This is, this is possibly the case. So analogously, it would be a situation in which somebody, for whatever reason, doesn't think, despite being in hell, that heaven would be better. They think, no, I would prefer to be with my pride and with my sin. Now, in the case of the drug addict, you know, I think most people want to say that they'd be

they'd be wrong. No, it's much better to not be doing drugs. But I can conceive of situations where my life experience is so bad that I would actually rather just, you know, be stimulated into positive mental experiences until I'm essentially killed by it if my life was truly bad enough. But of course, this situation could never obtain with heaven and hell, right? It must be, in your view, the case that actually heaven is in fact better. Unlike with the drug addict, where they might be able to make a case that their life is so terrible that they prefer to be on the drugs. In the case of heaven and hell, you have to say, no, no, heaven is better. God is good, God is truth, sin is bad, it is better. So there are two options here. Either the person in

hell recognizes that it would be better not to be in hell, but for some reason doesn't have the strength or ability to give up their sin, or they don't recognize that heaven is better and that they'd rather not be in hell and is therefore mistaken. In the case in which they want to be in heaven, but don't have the strength, you can't say, well, the gates of hell are locked from the inside, people in hell want to be in hell, because this person doesn't want to be in hell. They just don't have the strength to overcome their sin. In the second case, where somebody just doesn't realize that it would be better not to be in hell, this is another case in which somebody is sort of grossly misinformed, and therefore only wants to be in hell, in so far as they have the

wrong view about what hell and heaven are. In both cases, I think there's a problem with keeping them confined there. Yeah, and that is the Christian doctrine. They're not going to be kept confined there. Christianity is a system of grace. It's not this idea that we need to work our way to get to God. It's this idea that Christ comes and carries us and pulls us along and sanctifies us through his fire, through the fire of burning off our sins.

So this idea that someone is in hell and they're like, I'm suffering and I wish I could get out of it. I mean, the answer is simply to just ask for grace and forgiveness. This is what we do here in this plane of existence. It's not this idea that we sort of have to work our way out with the example of the drug addict. People can't get off drugs most of the time. What do they have to do? They have to reach out to somebody for help. I know from working for people in my own past that I've seen them do this. They've reached out to their family and they said, you know what? I realize I messed up. I need help. Confine me. Get me in rehab. I can't do this alone kind of thing. And that's essentially what the Christian idea is, is that we reach out

to Christ who saves us, who carries us out of hell. It's a rope thrown down to hell. And it says, just grab it and I'll pull you up. If you hold it, it's going to hurt, sure, because that's sanctification, but that's what I'm going to pull you through. And so, yeah, I fully agree with you that if somebody is in hell and they just simply want to go to heaven, then yes, then that's the process of reaching out to Christ and calling for the grace and wanting to get out. And that's when Christ answers. He's answered to all of us. Again, it goes back to what C.S. Lewis said. When it comes a doctor in hell, what is the answer? Well, to forgive them? Well, if they want to be forgiven, then they are forgiven according to the story of the cross. If they want to be left alone,

they can be left alone there. That's what Christianity is about. It's not about a workspace salvation. It's about the grace of Christ. But wouldn't this be everybody in hell? If hell is separation from God, it's suffering, it's torment, and maybe it's not, you know, externally imposed torture, but it's, it's torment in the sense that it's not a nice experience. Surely everybody in that experience would be crying out to God to pull them back up again. I hope so, and I hope that is true, and then I hope universalism is true because that is true. I'm not going to say, no, no, no, no, I think it'd be better if they stay there. No, I, if every soul in hell was crying out to God for grace, why would he not got granted?

if he went to the cross, bore our sins and suffered through that to save us. And then he says, anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Paul says, I believe it's in Philippians, that every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess, in earth, above earth, and below earth. This idea that if anyone bows to Christ, above earth, below earth, on earth, then they shall be saved. Because anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So if there are souls in hell doing that,

and if Jesus is a God of love who went to the cross to take the torment for our sins and die for us, why would he not extend grace to them as well? Why would he not pull them out of there? This is what I believe 1st Peter 46 is talking about when it says even the gospel was preached to those that are dead. So philosophically here, you've, I mean, I would say that you've backed yourself into a form of universalism because you say, well, I hope that everybody would be crying out for God's forgiveness in hell. And if they do, then I think it's granted to them. And my point is to say that anybody in hell would be doing that. And the only situation in which they wouldn't be doing that as if they had the wrong information. And as you say, if they genuinely

have the wrong information, then, you know, mercy should be shown to them anyway. In which case, in either situation, I can't see a case in which a person would remain in hell. Well, as I said, I'm a legal universalist and I'm also a hopeful universalist. People have asked me, are you, will you do a debate with a universalist? And I said, I'm not debating universalism because I don't want to debate against it. I want it to be true, even though I'm not entirely convinced of it. And if your scenario was right, then yes, I would be a universalist. My pushback is, I just don't think that's how simple human psychology is. I think we're much more complex.

I think there's a lot of decision-making that we have from our pride, from our emotions that goes into the beliefs we choose. And unfortunately, many of us choose things that we prefer over this, as I was using the analogy earlier, of the Flat Earthers, prefer this story where we're the hero, or the king of the self-centered. And we're going to reject truth regardless of that because the story we prefer is much more. pleasurable, it seems to us at first, and then we cling to that constantly. But if you're right about human psychology, then yes, I would be a universalist because I have the same Christian convictions I presented. So I hope you're right. I'm just not convinced that's how human psychology necessarily works. So as I said, I'm definitely a legal universalist and I am a hopeful universalist, but I just don't know if humans are there. Do you think that Jesus went to hell?

That's, well, yeah, I think in First Peter four, six, this idea that he went to hell to preach to the dead to get some, I don't think he went to hell to say, because the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is not hell. So, you know, when he died on the cross, he said to the thief today, you'll be with me on paradise. So when he died, he went back to the father. And then I think the harrowings of hell happened after the resurrection. Ephesians talks about this, him bleeding captives and giving gifts. I think this is him, this is hinting to the harring of the hell and defeating the principalities of the rulers of the world, kind of thing, these spiritual forces. So I do think there is some sense of that, but it was like this harrowing of hell of it. I don't think he went there to suffer, as some might argue. I mean, it seems to me that if, I mean, I've always taken issue with Jesus' sacrifice in that, I mean, it's often caricatured as, oh, what, so he sort of dies on the cross and then three days later gets to go to heaven, like some sacrifice.

I think to myself, if it's sort of a serious version of this objection that can be made, if humans are so depraved that they deserve separation from God, they deserve death, ultimately maybe annihilation, but certainly separation from God in hell, then for Jesus to truly pay that price on our behalf, would he not have to be in hell? Would he not have to experience that separation from God? because otherwise he's not really paying the price that human beings are supposed to pay as a consequence of their sin. I mean, the sinner who doesn't repent goes to hell. The idea being that without Jesus, the punishment that you get is hell, or the natural consequence, if you like, is hell. So if Jesus is supposed to have paid the consequence of sin on our behalf, then surely this

means that Jesus has to end up in hell. Now, this isn't the Christian story. We don't think that Jesus isn't in hell if we're going to be Christians. I just said we don't think Jesus is in hell. Of course, I don't think Jesus is in hell. But I mean, Christians don't think that. But do you see what I'm saying, that it would make sense that he would be if he paid or if he was supposed to pay the consequence of sin?

Yeah, well, let's remember what the consequence of sin in the Bible, the wages of sin is death, and the way God punishes, often those who are out of covenant with him, is exile. So the way sin is essentially punished, it's death and exile. And there is this idea within the scriptures that God is sort of exiling Jesus from his presence. The Father turns us back on the presence of Jesus, and Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This idea that he had experienced separation from God, this eternal separation from the Father. This is what Tim Keller talks about in his sermon on hell is that when Jesus was on the cross, he took that eternal separation of God. he experienced it fully. Now, that doesn't mean he has to go literally to the place that souls go to

when they are exiled after death that we call hell. He can experience separation from God on the cross, which is what he cries out. So there is this idea that he does take on death and he does take on the separation of God there on the cross. Experiences the agony, the suffering of our sin, the mental anguish of that separation from God. And so it's right there on the cross. It's not this idea that hell is the wages of sin the death is the wages of sin and so but i mean we're not talking about what what kind of death are we talking about when we say that the wages of sin are death we surely don't just mean sort of the physical death that everybody experiences but something like you know uh spiritual annihilation or something like this uh well that's that's a that's an

interesting question i'm not really sure that's the case i mean the uh the penalty for the first sin is basically physical death in the garden. So if you read Genesis 2, scholars like Robert Alter and John Alton will tell you that when God says, when you eat of this tree, you shall surely die. The actual Hebrew construct should better be translated as, well, if you eat at this tree, you shall be doomed to die. Then in Genesis 3, the serpent comes and asks, did God say that you will die? And Eve uses a different construct. She uses more like an imminent death. And then the serpent, who Satan replies and says, you will not die, this kind of thing. He sort of is playing on her misunderstanding that she made.

God then punishes them by exiling them away from the tree of life. They're doomed to just physically die. This is the wages of sin is to be cut off from life, from eternal life. And that's what Jesus restores for us by taking on the penalty of sin, death, and granting us access to the Father and then again eternal life and the resurrection to come. So I'm not really sure it's necessarily the society that we have to spiritually die. Some annihilationists will make that point, but I don't think that is necessarily the wages of sin. I think it is, the scripture center around this idea that we have been physically cut off from God,

and we deserve physical death for our sins, and that's what Christ restores with us. This is why the resurrection is so important. Yeah, I guess I'm trying to get to the question of whether Jesus actually pays the price that we would expect him to pay in order to essentially absolve us of our sins. what do you make of this objection that people have that what Jesus did of course crucifixion is a is a pretty shall we say uncomfortable experience but compared to the sins of the world it's maybe not actually that high of a price to pay now sometimes people talk about Jesus sort of experiencing the moral weight of all of the sin as well I'm not quite sure what that would mean psychologically speaking

but there's this objection that look as bad as crucifixion is the the situation that humans are supposed to be in in the christian story without jesus of depravity and desperation deserving of separation from god and as you say uh death the idea that a man can be crucified and then a few days later rise again be pretty much fine go and be seated at the right hand of the father and sort of enjoy eternal life it doesn't seem like that high of a price has actually been paid. Well, I mean, we have to think about what's actually happening here. You talk about being compared to the sins of the world.

So what God is experiencing this is within his triune nature, actual separation among his perfect unity between the father and the son here. This is going to be beyond torment because this is happening for an infinite being, not just finite beings. He's experiencing something beyond which we could comprehend. And so to look at people like N.T. Wright, for example, who talks about this,

this is God literally taking on the sin of the world beyond what we could even comprehend because Jesus is intrinsically entirely God according to Christian doctrine. So the Father is experiencing this eternal separation because of our sin within the triune nature And so in some sense, the mental anguish for that could very well just be beyond the sin of the world within its finite experience if this is happening for an infinite God in that anguish they're sort of going through. So I'm not really sure that really is a good objection because, again, we've got to take in all of the aspects of God's ontology and what is sort of going on between Jesus and the Father, seeing the eternal son taking on suffering upon a cross.

for the father would be beyond anguish, beyond what we could experience, because, again, the doctrine within Christianity is within the triune nature. There's this perfect love relationship going on, and that has now been severed. It is, it could, it very well for God could be beyond something that we could ever fully comprehend. Yeah. So it does seem like the, the standards are different, but then perhaps you're saying that the standards are different, and that's why Jesus sort of has to be God in the Christian picture, because if it were just a mere human being who were crucified and then sort of rose again and ascended into heaven, it really wouldn't be that much of a punishment for the sins of the world.

Well, I think you just made a great argument for the Trinity, so yeah. Well, maybe that's something that we can delve into another time. That's perhaps a little bit more complicated, shall we say, than the doctrine of hell. Yeah, it's something I want to, when I get my doctorate, I want to write my dissertation on that, because I want to try to solve the logical problem of the Trinity using philosophy of mind because I don't think a lot of theologians and philosophers of mind have really talked like they're always in their own little fields. But I think when I was studying and getting my master's in philosophy, I had a class

basically on agency. And the way the language you see philosophers using of agency and different aspects of Frankfurt cases, for example, it really made me think this might be a good way to start using this type of language to explain the agency of good. God, because God is an agent as well. Why aren't we talking about him using the language of philosophy of mind? So that's something I hope to eventually write my dissertation on. How do you mean? What kind of philosophy of mind areas or language or words do people use in that field that you think are applicable to the Trinity? Well, there's a whole big debate around how to even define an agent.

When we talk about agent, there's different definitions of what we mean by an agent and how we act as agents. So people tend to define an agent as like the conscious will that sort of act. You decide between different desires in your head. But we also have to recognize that those desires are still part of you in some sense. So Daniel Dennett says, you know, in some sense, we create like another version of ourselves. It's like, you know, more broader. It's the language I would use. So like, you know, when you're driving a car, I don't know if you drive in Britain, we do it all the here.

We do it all the time here in the States. But I don't consciously have to tell myself to push the pedal, consciously have to turn the wheel. I don't have to consciously tell myself I have to walk. I just do it instinctively. So in some sense, there's this broad sense of agency that we sort of have, this sort of like that encompasses all of our desires, our dispositions, our dreams, our goals, our hopes. And then there's that little man in the machine in terms of agency where we sort of decide between different desires, different dreams we have.

So we can sort of talk about our agency in two different ways, this broad sense and then this narrow sense. So my argument will be with the comes to the Trinity, that God is just three narrow senses of agency within a broad sense. Now, you see yourself as one agent, not as two, a broad and a narrow sense, but you can talk about your agency in two different ways. Likewise, God, who is Father, Spirit, and Son can each be their own narrow senses of consciousness, but broadly be fully God, and then they all share in the same broad sense of agency, the full divine nature. And so then you get around this idea that how is the Trinity divine if it's not a forced person? Well, if we start using the language of philosophy of mind, this idea about parts and different

aspects, it sort of becomes a little bit more muddy because there is this sense of our own agency having a broad and a narrow sense, but where's the line between it? There is no line between it. And so this is what I want to try to get into and try to sort of explain using the language of agency and philosophy of mind to sort of talk about the way we should understand God. Well, perhaps when you do, that will be a good motivation for. another conversation. I can't say I'm compelled by the thumbnail sketch that you've just given, but I suppose no one should be expected to be. Yeah, it's been fascinating. I'd be interested

to see what people think, given that we've talked a bit about some of the sort of traditional conceptions of hell, but you seem to have a slightly different and quite unique view of what hell is like. So I'm interested to hear what people have to say about the doctrine of hell generally, but also your particular views on the matter. Well, I will say, I don't think. I don't think. mine is really unique i mean a lot of what i'm getting here i'm getting from theologians like tim keller dallas willard even even very conservative ones like clay jones for example n t right these kinds of guys as well i think when i've studied the doctrine of hell if you read i mean i've read catholic theologians orthodox protestant they all seem are pushing this sort of direction

this idea that hell is about more about the mental anguish the eternal separation of god the idea that C.S. Lewis talked about the doors are locked from the inside. So I don't know if this is necessarily, I would say that maybe this view is not very popular among the laymen, but when you start getting into the deep, rich theological literature, you're going to find it more common. Interesting. And people can find your views in more detail on your YouTube channel, which of course I will link down in the description. Yeah, I did a video called Does God Send People to Hell where I go into detail on this. Yeah, people can find that by a simple YouTube channel. YouTube search, but I'll also make sure that it's linked down below for anybody who's interested. Michael Jones, I really appreciate your time today. It's been a fun conversation.

Yeah, anytime.