Divine Judgment
If there is a Christian belief that has fallen on hard times in recent decades it is the doctrine of hell and the divine judgment. However, in spite of its unpopularity, it is an extremely common theme in the New Testament, especially on the lips of Jesus himself, and so cannot be ignored. There have been many people in the twentieth century, such as theologians Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance and author Madeleine L’Engle, who have been branded as “universalists” (that is, people who affirm that, ultimately, everyone will be saved and nobody will go to hell) but were not. The reason why they were so branded is because they held to a different understanding of what Christ has done and the nature of evil than the mainstream.
The reason why this is important for this discussion is because I find myself in profound agreement with some of their most important viewpoints, but I wish to make it clear that I do not affirm any form of universalism, with the possible exception of a “universalism of hope” where we hope that all will finally come to saving faith (however, this form of universalism is really not worthy of the name as it does not actually affirm basic universalist ideas).
The issue lies in the understanding of what has been accomplished in Christ. It has been argued throughout this work that the incarnation, that is, God becoming a human being in Jesus Christ, is intrinsically Salvific, that is, the entire life of Christ plays a role in our salvation. Views that emphasize the cross as the primary or exclusive locus of the atonement tend to think of salvation in purely external categories; that is, in terms of satisfaction. The common image is that of a debt that is owed to God. We have a debt, God pays it, and so we are reconciled. Another theme that is acknowledged is substitution, that is, though we deserve death because of our sins, Jesus is our substitute and takes our place on the cross, suffering the death that we deserve, liberating us from the sentence of death.
The only problem with this view is that it does not go far enough. It affirms that our sin deserves punishment that needs to be borne by God in our place, but it ignores the fact that every aspect of our lives, even at our most faithful, need to be substituted for by God. To say that Christ only substitutes for our death implies that the rest of our lives do not need to be substituted for, but this is clearly not the case, because we see that when the Holy Spirit moves in the lives of believers it does so by taking the things of Christ and making them ours, not least the prayer, worship, faith, and even repentance of Christ. There can be no real question as to whether or not every aspect of our lives needs to be taken and redeemed by Christ in such a way that Christ takes our place in it, because this is indeed what he has done. At whatever point we say that Jesus does not need to take our place, we claim that we do not need redemption at precisely that point. This way of understanding the atonement could be called “total substitution.”
It is here that the charge of “universalism” might be raised. If Jesus has taken our place, not only in death, but throughout his life, taking up and substituting for every part of our response to God in such a way that, in the end, we do not contribute anything at all to our salvation, does this not mean that, since God has done everything, we do not need to do anything and we can just sit back and be saved, regardless of what we do with the gospel? Indeed it does not, but this way of thinking reveals that our common way of thinking about this issue is not adequate to what is actually the case.
The classical ways of thinking about what roles humanity and God play in our salvation are Monergism and Synergism. Monergism affirms that it is indeed the case that salvation is one hundred percent divine act and is therefore zero percent human act, that is, God does everything and humanity does nothing. Synergism argues that God does something and humanity does something. This might mean the work is shared by God and humanity 50/50, or 75/25, or even, if we are trying to remember the priority of God in our salvation, 90/10 or even 99/1. Syngergists rightly point out that Monergists wrongfully cut human participation out of the picture. Monergists rightly point out that Synergists place too much emphasis on the ability of humanity to accomplish something acceptable by God and that, even if we are responsible for one percent of our salvation, we will still fail to do our part.
The problem with both of these views is that they approach the problem of salvation from a strictly logical way rather than an ontological way (that is, a way that is shaped by how things actually are). We take our cue from the person of Christ. Recall from chapter two that everything that Jesus did is simultaneously the act of God and the act of a concrete human being. The words that he spoke were both truly divine words and truly human words. The point is that, in Christ, one hundred percent divine agency and one hundred percent human agency are in no way contradictory, but function quite well together. In Christ, “all of grace” does not mean “nothing of humanity.” Instead, “all of grace” means “all of humanity.” This cannot be arrived at by logical processes, for logically, “all of grace” cannot mean anything but “nothing of humanity” (and, thus, Monergism). However, by considering, not what we think God does but what God has actually done, we see that our logical tools on their own are not adequate for understanding the work of God.
This has implications for our understanding of salvation because it is only as we are in Christ that we are saved and so we are saved, not just by a divine act, but by a truly human act, but by such a human act that is also a divine act. Further, the reality of Christ’s total substitution for our response does not allow us to remain passive. To remain passive would be to say that what Christ has done makes no difference. In light of what Jesus has done on our behalf and in our place, we come to understand that no response that we could come up with is sufficient to satisfy God, but only the response of Christ. This does not lead us to sit around, or worse, engage in a lifestyle of sin, but prompts us to renounce ourselves and our way of doing things, take up our cross, and follow Christ in every way.
The fact is that, in spite of the fact that our human response can have no real weight in the eyes of God, it is still necessary. This necessity is not to be understood in a synergistic sense, but rather in an ontological sense (that is, pertaining to things that are). For one who is in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, who has the things of Christ mediated to them so that Christ is living his life of obedience to the Father in and through them by the power of that same Spirit, to think that a person like this would not begin to participate in the work of God would be nonsensical. To be a person like this and not be fundamentally changed would be equivalent to saying that Christ is not Christ. To be grafted into Christ and remain unchanged is a contradiction in terms.
In spite of the fact that Christ has provided the perfect human response which implicates every single human being, regardless of whether they have come to faith, we know that there are indeed some who finally reject the act of love that God has shown them. There have been many people who have tried to explain this rejection in one way or another. For example, John Calvin argued along these lines. Why is it that some people go to heaven and some go to hell? Because some believe and some do not. Why do some believe and some do not? Because some are predestined to election and some are predestined to reprobation. Why is that? I do not know. Calvin was trying to provide answers where he perceived the Bible providing answers. However, careful study has increasingly shown that the mention of predestination in the New Testament is not referring to a rigid system of predestination like Calvin advocated.
It seems that, in light of the Biblical witness, the following argument would be more appropriate. Why do some people go to heaven and some to hell? Because some believe and some do not. Why do some believe and some do not? I do not know. The reason for this is because we human beings do not know why some believe and some do not. For those who believe, the decision for faith was the easiest, most natural thing in the world. When we encountered the love and truth of the living God, we were set free to respond in such a way that to refuse God’s grace would be the most irrational thing in the world. And yet, we know that some do indeed refuse it. Hell and condemnation are spoken of in the New Testament far too often to avoid the topic. So, if we grant that there is a hell, and that there are people who go to this hell as the result of divine judgment, we need to ask what hell is like, who goes there, and why.
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