Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Seth
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Can I Say This at Church podcast?Thought today that we would finish or continue the conversation about hell. It is, not to put it lightly important. It is an essential part of our church of our beliefs of us.
Today, I got to interview someone that can speak with some authority from a different viewpoint than our last guest. We're joined today by Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr..
A little bit about him. He was born in Canada, raised in southwestern England, and in Northern Ontario. He was educated in history and religious studies at Mount Carmel Baptist School in Alberta, Queens University in Ontario. Wheaton College Graduate School in Illinois is where he got his masters with highest honors and he also has studied at the University of Chicago, where he got his PhD. He's formerly a professor of European history at Northwest College in Iowa. He's also been a professor of religion at the University of Manitoba, and the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College. He now currently serves at Crandall University in Monckton, New Brunswick as the Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies and Dean of Faculty Development at Crandall University. John has written 10 books, he's edited and authored over 700 articles, books, chapters, reviews, and the list just goes on and on. He's spoken throughout North America, in the UK, in China, India, Korea, Australia. His commentary on religion and culture has been featured by many major broadcast networks such as the New York Times The Atlantic, ABC News, It was a privilege to talk to Dr. Stackhouse and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So why am I still talking? Let's just dive right in.
Seth
My guest today is Dr. John Stackhouse. Dr. Stackhouse, thank you so much for joining us. Would you prefer Dr. Stackhouse? John? Sir, how would you what would be better to address you with?
John
Well, I've always preferred Your Majesty, but I don't get that as often as I'd like. So any of those I’m comfortable with.
Seth
Thank you, we can do that if you want. Um, so I'm certain that some of our listeners are either unfamiliar with you or unfamiliar with the topic that we're going to discuss today. So I'd like to start with just a little bit in brief of your story, kind of how you came to the faith and how you became where you are now at the university that you work at?
John
Well, I was born and raised mostly in Ontario, Canada, with some time in my childhood in Britain, where I started school. So This is about my fourth accent. Now. I've also lived and worked in Texas, and in Iowa, Illinois, in parts of western Canada. But I studied in both Canada and the United States history and theology philosophy, and taught in the US and a couple of private colleges, Wheaton College at Northwestern College. And then taught in Canada, both at a large public University, University of Manitoba, and a Christian graduate school called Region College in Vancouver. And the last few years, I've been working out here on Canada's east coast in a small Christian University, where I am a professor of religious studies, but also have a kind of player/coach role.
I'm also Dean of Faculty Development, which gives me the opportunity to help my colleagues push ahead and both their research and their teaching. So that keeps me busy and happy out here.
Seth
So where here in Texas, that's actually my stomping grounds. Where were you at in I guess my home state?
John
In 1978, my parents made the extraordinary decision to leave a lakefront home in Northern Ontario, for a home in Abilene, Texas. And that’s “real Texas”
Seth
I'm actually from a few hours west of Abilene, where my grandfather affectionately says, with the right set of spectacles, I'll watch your dog run away for a few weeks.
John
Yeah! No kidding.
Seth
There is just nothing there.
John
So, a few hours West Abilene? You must be in the Permian area?
Seth
Midland Odessa, went to high school in Greenwood and can't stand Midland Lee or Odessa or any of those schools. But that's football and that would be an entirely different, I could talk about football all day. Do you prefer the bigger school or the smaller school that you're at now? Knowing that each one employs you, but you know, just as far as the student basis and, and size and human ratios and whatnot?
John
Well happily for me, I've enjoyed every place I've taught, and every place I've taught has also deeply frustrated me. And I think that's probably what it's like to live in the in the real world, good things and bad things mixed up together.
Seth
The overarching theme of this podcast is to ask questions that you either don't want to ask or you're comfortable asking in a quote unquote, church setting and in my opinion, Hell is an essential conversation that at least in my upbringing, I feel was a bit glossed over and it was presented as a “here's the one option you have and learn how to get right with it”. And so I always believed in what I've come to call his eternal conscious torment, or what other people call the traditional view that I can't hold. And so my question is, Is there ever a time that that you also were like that, where you've either taught it or you've been forced to teach it, or you were raised that way and somehow changed?
JohN
I certainly was raised that way. I was raised by parents who were both strong believers, I was raised in a Protestant tradition known as the Christian Brethren, or the Plymouth Brethren. And so that tradition gave us a dispensation of theology. And so these, these are people who were very committed to the Scriptures, and understanding the scriptures as well as they could particularly interested in end times prophecy. And so the doctrine of hell was bound up with all of those things that have taken American Christian popular culture by storm from raptures and being left behind and all the rest of it.
So my very early teaching was that hell is dark, and painful, and awful, and hopeless, and everlasting. And I can remember as a child, actually, one night, as I’d gone to bed, said my prayers, trying to imagine what it would be like. Leaving aside the excruciating pain of hell, just to be in a dark place by myself, like I was in my bedroom, forever, knowing I would never get out. And I remember, I must have been only six or seven at the time having a very keen sense of how awful that was. And it left a very strong mark, that stayed with me when I was into my theology work decades later.
8:38
Seth
Yeah, You know, I can echo that. And I know, as my children, my oldest is eight, and he's beginning to question things. And every once a while, he'll say something and like, I don't know, I don't know how to answer that, and be truthful, and also not scare him to death. Not that our church teaches that, but just, I mean, it is what it is. It's, it's an honest question. So. So what then made you move from the views that you held to what you now espouse? What I believe someone call it conditional view of hell, and and in a chapter of a book, you gave it a different term? And all we'll talk about that in a minute. But but what moved you or how did that evolve?
John
I was a convinced believer, all of my growing up years, and in high school tangled with a thoughtful, ex-Christian English teacher, who seemed to me to have left his Roman Catholic Christian faith behind and was determined to help other people leave their Christian faith behind as well. And so that pushed me into thinking about apologetics and how to defend my faith, even as a pretty young person up just 12 or 13. And I saw this, though, as not just combat, because I really liked this English teacher. But as serious as searching conversation, I'll always be grateful to him that the conversation was always respectful and even affectionate. And I'm on good terms with him to this day, he's read several of my books. And in retirement, we've had a couple of good talks on the phone.
So I was open to rethinking anything that I had been taught if it were wrong, but I was also pretty inclined to defend it unless I really couldn’t. And It wasn't until I taken to your Bible school and then was at a secular University for my first degree, where I read a book by a British Bible scholar, John Wenham, that was published by the University Press, and I was an intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Chapter leader at that point, and selling IVP books. So here's this individually, evangelicalism Christian publisher, publishing this book by a fine Bible scholar, and in this book called The Goodness of God; he for the first time, in my experience, raised the idea that hell was terrible, and was something that one did not escape, but wasn't something that one had to endure infinitely. His idea was that a finite being can only pile up so much debt, so to speak, can only sin so much. And then in hell, we pay for our sins because we didn't get Jesus to do it. And then once your sins are paid, you're done. And it made so much sense to me, luminous sense to me, that I kept an eye out then for scriptural study Over the next number of years to make sure that what he was saying, wasn't just appealing, but was actually biblical.
Seth
Yeah, Yeah. And I've gone through that as well. I am similar, but I've been…I've read many books recently, especially after starting this and realizing I quickly got in over my theological pay grade.
I went to Liberty, but I did not get a theological besides that base level that a school make you do. So I'm finding that as well to be true. So shat are…or I guess, what were the biggest reasons that you could no longer hold the traditional view of hell?
John
Well, the first and most obvious reason has to do with the title of that book that I first read The Goodness of God, it always seemed to me to be very difficult to hold together, the God not only of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to hold of you have a loving God, with the idea that God could somehow be joyful, forever while many of his own creatures that the Bible tells me he loves are roasting away with no hope of reprieve.
This is a problem and actually ends up showing up in the tradition. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, who taught eternal torment tries pretty desperately to somehow get across the idea that the joy of God and the blessed are somehow enhanced by knowing that the evil are getting theirs and hell. And I thought, this Thomas guy seems to be some empathy problems here. It seems to me to be pretty awful.
So I was already, I think, theologically inclined to doubt that this made sense. There's some kind of real contradiction there. And yet, I wanted to be faithful to what the Bible said. And if it really said that I had to believe in eternal torment, then I, I can be pretty stubborn, I was gonna I was going to stick to it. And so Wenham being a biblical scholar himself, open d the door for me, and then when I encountered the painstaking work of Edward Fudge, your fellow Texan. Where he laboriously goes through every passage that you can find that pertains to this, as well as some writings in the early fathers; to me that really sealed the deal. And what I've done, I think, if anything, Seth, is perhaps to bring some theological sophistication to the early work that John Wenham did the biblical work that Fudge has done.
Seth 14:09
Yeah, I've tried to read some of Fudge, and I haven't gotten to it. It's on the it's on the shelf, to my right. I did watch that, I think it's a documentary, which, who knows how closely that follows things. But it was interesting to watch.
So, I've had many private conversations, some with pastors, some with friends are in ministry, and others that have become disenfranchised and weren't able to start their church after Liberty. And It seems to me that, that many people entertain these thoughts. Yet, they're all cautious because they don't want to be implied that they're going down some slippery slope or that their faith is in question. So I'm just curious, why do you think people are just either I don't know what the word is…are they? Are they so ingrained that they can't look past their bias? Or are they fearful of what would happen if they espouse to a different view?
John
I think people who come from the background you suggested, and certainly the people who come from my background as well, are properly worried that they are giving in to what they see to be the tidal flow of our culture. The general direction of the title flow of our culture, and it's been this way, for a couple of hundred years, at least, has been to soften the hard things of Christianity, to erode the distinctive teachings of the faith, to domesticate the scandal of the cross; the particularity of Jesus, and any other doctrine, that seems difficult for a kind of mildly liberal outlook to swallow. So this sounds like it's a move in the same direction. And if we've been paying attention, we're worried about anything that looks like a move to the left, most of us aren't actually worried about making a mistake to our right. But I would say that having understood why people are worried about a move that they perceive to be to the left as a historian, where I seen Christian movements, and go both ways, or each way, I would say, don't worry too much about whether your move is to the left or to the right, try to make a move toward the truth. And The truth is not always to the right, and the solution to a culture that is driving into the “left ditch” is not to yank the steering wheel as hard as you can to the right and drive into the right one. That's the error of fundamentalism, and the error of dogmatism. Instead, let's go deeper, rather than left to right, let's go deeper into the Scripture and see if we can find out what the Bible says in a fresh and convincing way.
Seth
When you say left or right, I assume you're inferring the quote unquote, Western Christianity version of, I guess, government or church the way that things are, as the status quo, at least currently, or do you imply something else?
John
No, thank you for asking. No, I was trading on what I think is probably a common vocabulary for you and me and your listeners in terms of what we take, broadly speaking to be liberal, and liberal as it moved to the to the left as opposed to conservative to the move to the right. I think as Christians, we need to realize that those words are not biblical words, those are just more or less useful words to describe moves one way or another. But they're not from the Bible. And our concern needs to be of course, not to be liberal or conservative, but just be faithful and figure out what the Bible saying.
Seth
Was there ever a time I guess before say, I don't know, I've been as I've been researching and seemed like there was this gentleman named Darby that came in and installed what we still happen upon today. So was there ever a time that the view that you hold was more prevalent or more predominant?
John
I don't think so. Actually, Seth, I think it's always been a minority view in the history of the church. I think that what's interesting, though, is that the two most prominent views in the history of Christianity are either the traditional view of eternal torment, or universalism. That hell is at worst kind of purgatory for everybody. And that the worst people, at least everybody's not going straight to heaven. And so everybody does their time there gets gets right with God. And then eventually, the back door opens, and you get to go be with God, that's shown up in the history of the church as well.
This view that I'm defending, is a view that only shows up from time to time. And particularly in the more modern period, where we realized that it's really just a kind of modification of the traditional view. I think that the reason I prefer it is nbecause I think the Bible's teaches it; and secondly, because I think everything that we need to retain in the traditional view is retained.
The only thing we're giving up actually, is this horrific idea that God is okay with people suffering infinitely. And that we're supposed to somehow go to the world to come and enjoy the New Jerusalem, being okay with the idea that people we know, are going to be suffering, not just their just desserts, which I think we just have to be reconciled to. That's what happens when you don't take Jesus as your Savior. You don't get saved. But that they somehow are kept in perpetual agony. I think we're well rid of that. And frankly, why not get rid of that if you possibly can, since it's such a frightening and the idea?
Seth
I agree. It is. It's an awful idea.
20:41
I realized just a second ago, as we were speaking that I think I skipped chapter one primarily because I've already done a little bit of pre homework. So your view specifically is quote, unquote, the conditional view of hell. And I know in your chapter on in the four books on hell, you give it a different terminology, you call it terminal punishment.
And So I was hoping maybe you could espouse just quickly what terminal punishment means, as opposed to conditionalism. And then just in a succinct nutshell, The primary difference, and you've already alluded to it between it in the traditional version.
John
Sure. The view that I'm representing is normally known by one of two words, the most common word is annihilationism. The idea that once you have been resurrected to judgment, as we see in Revelation 20. Everybody's resurrected, and those whose names are not written in the Book of Life are cast into the lake of fire, where they are annihilated.
I don't think it's a really helpful view, because annihilation is a process that somehow God has to visit upon the damned. And God doesn't have to do that, God doesn't have to crush some kind of immortal soul. Because we don't have a immortal souls. We are simply creatures that are sustained moment by moment by the energy of God. And so the idea of annihilation that God has to make me die isn't quite right.
I choose to flee from the face of the only source of life in the universe. I am a sinner who has refused to accept a relationship with God, and therefore I wink out of existence, when God refuses to keep me alive any longer, so that God doesn't do anything to me, I deserve what I get. And that's what I get.
Conditional immortality is the technical term, not just conditionalism, but conditional immortality. And that's an unhappy term as well, because while it's not incorrect, it does get across the idea that we are not possessors of immortal souls, but we are simply creatures who are given if we are saved, immortality by God. And that is true that's a biblical teaching, that the focus is on the saved. And our whole conversation right now is on the lost. So I don't think it's such a great term.
So I cast about for a better term, Seth. And it seems to me that terminal punishment that gets across two things, to take it backwards,
Everybody will atone for their sins. If they do not have Jesus atone for their sins, atonement has to be made, and Jesus makes it for us. And if we will receive it by faith, then it will be credited to us. And if not, then we have to pay it ourselves. But just as Jesus was able to say, on the cross, It is finished, I have in fact paid this. So it's, it's a certain finite amount of suffering that is undertaken. And if I don't let Jesus do it for me, I have to do it myself. So I then suffer the punishment that is due me. And then I'm terminated, because I have cut myself off from the only source of life in the cosmos. Once I'm done, my suffering, my debts paid, and I disappear.
So it's awful, and the consequences are eternal. I'm not coming back from that. There's no backdoor. But on the other hand, I don't have to suffer infinitely for a finite lifetimes lifetime's worth of sin.
Seth 24:10
Yeah, to put it into a political term for today, that is an extremely long mandatory minimum, for whatever the sin is. You said something a minute ago, which is different than I normally hear.
So you said that, as as human beings, our souls are not immortal, I guess by default. So can you explain that a bit? Because I know I've been raised to believe that everybody is given an immortal soul. And it's got to go one of two places. So is that not scriptural? Or is that…
John
No it really isn’t. It's Greek thought creeping into Christian thinking, which a lot of Greek thought has through the early church. And I'm not one of those folks who reflexively thinks the Greeks are wrong about everything it is one of the great civilizations of the world. And in the providence of God, Christian theology was worked out largely with the help of Greek philosophical care and categories. But with any non Christian way of thinking, some non Christian ideas got in and one of them was the idea of immortality of the soul.
Now, the Scripture is very clear that life and immortality come to us only for the gospel, that’s virtually a quote from Paul's letters, that the only one who is immortal, invisible is God, only wise. As our hymn says, God's the only one who within himself has a the eternal power to live forever. So any kind of immortality we have is granted to us by God. And remember, you know, Adam and Eve, are set out of the garden of Eden, lest they eat from the tree of life and die. And so are we.
Seth
To recap, terminal punishment is just a change of term to more accurately described the end when it's all said and done, correct?
John
Now, let me also flag for a minute that of a few people who align themselves with my general point of view, I think, have a seriously defective you. And I say that with respect, but these folks believe that when we're all resurrected on that last day, Revelation 20, When those who are not recorded in the book of life, are cast into punishment, they're immediately annihilated, They're immediately disappearing. And that, to me, makes no moral sense at all.
I do think that Jesus talks about a servant who will be beaten with many blows, as opposed to a servant who will be beaten with few blows, that some people really are worse than others. Some people have caused a lot more damage in the universe than others, and their suffering will be a commensurate with the evil that they've done. Everybody really will atone for exactly, his or her sins. So I wanted to just mention to you, Seth, and to your listeners that some people hold to this view, which I think is going too far in the other direction. I think the Bible makes it pretty clear that all those books that are talked about in Revelation 20, I think, imply that God's kept the careful account of everybody's behavior. And If you don't put your sins on Jesus, they're on you line by line.
Seth
Sure. In in the book that I referenced earlier, the four views on hell, in your chapter, you talk about two different, I might say it wrong. So correct me if I am, two different poles of God's goodness, as a way to understanding that goodness. Can you elaborate on that a bit?
John
Yes, God is good in two ways. Our culture prefers us to emphasize one of those two poles.
God is love.
I've even heard quite orthodox theologians, people who should know better, say things like whatever else God is, fundamentally, God is love. Not just well, meaning preachers, but people who really have their theological grounding will still say stuff like that. And it's just not true. For one thing, everything that God is God is, so it's not like God has layers. And he's got, you know, a heart of love. But then he's got this other layer of holiness, you know, he's got this other side to him, as if he's sometimes angry, or he's sometimes wrathful or, or is it? So I know the trying to get at.
But in the very same letter of the New Testament that tells us God is love. First, john, The same letter tells us God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. And God is his straightforwardly continually against anything that is not optimal. Anything that is not right. This is why God is the God of justice and righteousness. God is the God who judges the world and make everything right. I sometimes say that God's a perfectionist, and he's the only one who's a perfectionist who's not neurotic, as a Supreme being you know, you can make things right. And in the Hebrew, the judge is not only the one who deserves what's right or wrong, he makes what's wrong, right. Again, he levels things that are out of out of whack. So when Jesus comes back to judge the world, he's going to make it right. And This is God's settled opinion against evil. This is the wrath of God, God doesn't get raffle, God is always against evil, even as he's always a God who loves us and wants us to flourish.
And so any view of God on any doctrine, and particularly in the doctrine of Hell, needs to hold these two ideas together. The God is always against evil, he is always right to us even as he's always just even as he's also loving. And I think sometimes then some some, some defenders of the traditional view, have tended to emphasize God's justice and righteousness and dignity and holiness, at the expense of the obvious declaration of God's love for everybody. And some of our friends on the Universalist side, it seems to me have run into the danger of under playing the fierce resistance God has to evil and his insistence that evil be properly atoned for. I don't think you have to go that way. I think you could be a Universalist, on more Orthodox grounds. It's just that I don't usually find many Universalists who are strong believers in substitution atonement, who are strong believers in otherwise orthodox doctrines, they, they tend to kind of shift to the left on a whole bunch of things at once. And I think we need to hold this together.
Seth 30:58
Yeah. Atonement is a whole different beast. And I'm, I'm trying to work through that now. I'm know we're talking about that another time. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I thought there were only three versions. And apparently, there's not there's so many different, even some subset. So I actually spoke with Robin Parry. And I've also spoke with Thomas Talbot. And they both used a similar metaphor, and I will probably butcher it. But I'm curious as to your thoughts on it. So when I asked them what hell is, and I'll ask you the same thing in a minute. One of Robins terms and again, I'm probably very badly doing this is… it's a form of, to put it into better terms like a chemotherapy that's going to ultimately result and be painful throughout the process, but ultimately results in everyone. And In this case, everyone universally being reconciled. And so your view is obviously not that so. So what are some issues with that? I guess scripture really or or personally and then and then what in your in, I guess in in a terminal punishment version of hell? What is? Hell?
John
Yeah, the problem I found with with Robin's chapter in this book on the four views of hell, which is really, of course, three views of hell plus a chapter on purgatory. Yeah, there's there really are that's only three views in case your reader or your listeners are confused. There's just the traditional view is my view. And then there's the view of universalism. And when I've encountered universalism and other thinkers as well, whether it's somebody as lofty as Karl Barth or somebody more like the rest of us mortals. It always precedes deductively, it's always you know, given that God is good given that God is unwilling than any should perish, there's usually some reference to some scripture on the way. How can we possibly believe that? Hell has no backdoor how can we believe that God's purposes will be frustrated? How can we believe that God won't get what God wants? And all of this, these are all good rhetorical questions. And If one was willing to grant, Robin Parry his premises, only ,then I think he argues pretty validly to his conclusions. The problem is, there's a whole bunch of Scripture that he simply does not take into account hopes you won't notice, I'm being a bit cheeky here. And if you do notice. I think he has very poor responses to that.
In particular, Seth, I would say that the idea that hell is therapeutic, like chemotherapy is an interesting idea. It's just nowhere taught in Scripture. There's just nowhere When Jesus talks about Gehenna, that he says this is going to hurt quite a bit. But you come out the other side, and you'll all be all better.
There's nothing like that in Revelation, the lake of fire is a boiling cauldron of awfulness into which Satan, death, Hades are all plunged. There's no indication that they're coming out the other side, new and improved. And that's where the last go as well within verses of each other.
So the fundamental reason why I think universalism is wrong, is that every description we have of Hell is punitive, not therapeutic. And it is a, I think, and I say this respectfully, a willful recasting of what the scripture I think, pretty plainly says, to bring it into conformity with what one would prefer God and the afterlife to be.
Seth
Yeah. Okay-processing that you broke my brain a bit…Scripture, really, at least from what I can gather, all three of us use very similar passages, they may use a first part of the passage more than the back half, but they all are going to use the same specifics, or the same text.
So my question is, they all seem to use the word eternal or hell in a different way. And so is, since everyone's using the same scripture, how can we make a claim as to who is best interpreting either what eternal means? Or what any of that means? How can we know who's making a better scriptural case?
John
In my book, Need to Know Vocation as the heart of Christian epistemology, I do try to set up at book length, how we should think about things as Christians, because this questions bother me my whole life. How do I come to the best answers on next questions, not only a theology, but a politics or marriage, child rearing? How do I know who to trust? How do I know how I'm supposed to live my life. And so I wrote this book, published it a few years ago called Need to Know. And I hope that'll be helpful, perhaps, to you and to some of your listeners as well. In this case, I would say what we try to take into account everything that we think we know that's relevant to the subject, We try to make sure we do our homework, or we borrow from people who we trust, have done their homework. And we make the best conclusion we can, even though in any given case, the complexity of the situation may be such that there are still a few corners sticking out, there is still some ways in which my friendly opponent might argue one verse better than I can. But my obligation is not to make all the pieces of the jigsaw fit carefully. My obligation is to make the puzzle fit as best I can, recognizing the I’m limited, recognizing that I'm a sinner, that there are some things I really don't want to perhaps acknowledge.
And I tried to to make the best sense of things as I can. So In this case, I would say most of what you would find in the three views book, we agree an awful lot we agree on on actually most of the Christian faith, which is why we can identify each other as Christians. So I don't want to exaggerate the differences. Hell's really bad, right? I mean, Robin Parry isn't saying Hell is a nice spa in the country. He's saying it's chemotherapy, right. Yeah, awful. It's toxic. And and the folks in the underside, agree it's torment. Right. So we all agree, it's torment. We all agree, it's terrible. We all agree it has to do with people paying or just desserts. The differences then have to do with whether it's therapeutic, as I said, which I don't think it is. And the traditional view doesn't think it is we see it as punitive.
The traditional view, thinks that eternal always means lasting forever. And I think whatever is five shows is that that's not true. It's not true. The Hebrew alarm in the Old Testament, isn't that true of only on in the Greek New Testament. And so I think what Edward does is when the biblical fight against the traditional view, because he I think he's done more careful work. And that's something everybody has to decide for themselves. Whereas I think with with my friends in the Universalist side, I think that their argument is a strong one deductively, but I just don't think the scripture actually gives them what they need to make their case.
Seth
Yeah. So how then if it's as simple as just knowing how to read Hebrew, which I can’t so yeah, I agree. You have to, you have to find somebody that knows how to how to do it better than you. How then was it eternal conscious torment for so long? I can assume it's only since recently that people realized, Oh, this is not what this word is implied to mean. So why is it just recently that people have begun to deduce that?
John
That's a really good question. I wrestled with that question a lot. When I changed my mind about gender. And when I wrote my books on gender, First one, finally feminist, which has that F word in the title, which throws people off this good alliteration to it, it is so that the kinder gentler version of that the newer version called the partners in Christ, And I've actually explicitly deal with that question in those books. Why is it that the majority of the church through the majority of the churches life and even in the world today, has a male headship model and restricts clergy, to men? What is it that makes me think that we should change our minds about that? Was everybody wrong in the past? And I think a lot of biblical feminists, as well as liberals, have basically said, Yeah, they were wrong in the past, and we were enlightened enough. We know the Greek background, and we're right and they were wrong. I think that's really intolerable. I think the Holy Spirit must have done a really bad job of inspiring the Bible, and leading the church; if for 19 centuries, everybody got this question really wrong. And we alone have seen it in the clear light of a new day.
So I actually suggest why when it comes to gender, God did want us to read the Bible, patriarchaly until now. And now we are supposed to pick up on the clues that tell us to change our minds about how to treat men and women in the church and society today. But I'll leave that for another time. But I think you say that, I do care about that. And I think you're right about this. And I'm not sure I have a great answer to it on this one, Seth.
I would say though, that pragmatically, The difference between my view and the traditional view, pragmatically doesn't make a lot of difference. It doesn't make a lot of difference evangelically, it doesn't make a lot of difference in the main point, which is Hell's really bad, and you need to flee it and run to Christ. Whereas our Universalist friends, they is its father, they wouldn't want us to run to Christ, because of course, it's better to be reconciled to Christ. Now then, at the end of 1000 years of hell, Of course, it's better. But it's not the same, right? That's not the same as saying there are two eternal destinies and you're going to one or the other, get right with God now. So pragmatically, it didn't make a lot of difference. And what I find interesting, though, is that I think apologetically, it does, I think; why offend people today with the idea that God somehow is okay with the people roasting forever, so to speak. And it's not clear to me why that wasn't more offensive to our Christian forebears and why they didn't wrestle more with that, because it would have been just as upsetting in the 13th century as it is to us today. But Aquinas tries to make it okay. And I would say, why don't you revisit the doctrine? So I don't have a really good answer to that yet.
Seth 41:44
Yeah, you're right, that would make a great conversation. I was thinking about that earlier. I was driving back from South Carolina, yesterday, and there's a longer ride the need be with three children under the age of 10. A lot of bathroom breaks, but something that I was thinking about, and I'm sure I've heard it elsewhere is the Bible, much like the way people argue about the Constitution, but in my mind, I don't know why the Bible has to be static, and how we understand it. And, and like there was a time that slavery was fine. And it was scriptural. And obviously, now it's not. So there's a lot of those not just gender related,
John
The obligation for us, then Seth, is to explain now, Did the Holy Spirit Want us to practice patriarchy? Until he didn't want us to do so anymore? No, I think I can make a case for that. Whereas I think it's very hard to make the case that the Holy Spirit wanted us to hold slaves and then changed his mind. Right. And so that's where I think when it comes to LGBTQ questions today, when it comes to universalism, when it comes to other proposed alterations that people have for our thinking, Sometimes we got things, We had different views in the past because of our sin.
Other times, it's because God accommodated himself to our sin to make the best of a bad situation, right? And then still other times there are fresh challenges that didn't occur to our forebears. I would say, for instance, that the whole rise of “creation care” and ecological concern and theology" isn't really an issue until human beings possess the technological power to really wreck the earth; it's really only a modern phenomenon. So it's not surprising Augustine and Calvin had nothing to say about it, because it's not an issue for them.
Seth
Yeah, I heard Um, I think I heard I think was Rob Bell said something similar that of, you know, you're doing other things better, but they also weren't destroying the planet, and it's fine. So they were doing I think his words were they did Leviticus better than you, and you're doing something else better than them. But that doesn't mean you can't learn from both sides. Something, and I'm sure I've heard it elsewhere, but something that has nagged at me over the last few months is in an eternal conscious torment version of, of salvation. Why would someone…so if Christ can die on the cross and cover the sins of everyone ever, in all times; in a finite amount of time? I'm mean he's not still hanging there. Why then would someone have to suffer for a infinite amount of time when Christ is able to suck up all sin in a finite amount of time?
John
Yes, that strikes me is exactly right. I think an argument for the case I'm making, And what my friends on the more traditional side, will then say, they'll stop bringing this fair bringing more infinities into the conversation. So God has infinite moral worth God's dignity is infinite. And so to sin against that it deserves infinite punishment. But Jesus is God who is himself infinite. And so you got all these infinities is like a whole bunch of math problems with infinity you just cross them all out. And I find that both in math and in theology, infinity is a very tricky concept, and it's usually better if you can to avoid it entirely. So I think here, it just ends up in obfuscation.
I think if Jesus is able to say as he does on the cross, It is finished. It's paid in full. I think it's kind of sneaky to say and he can say that, because his infinity cancel their infinity as if we're talking about the same order of things. Philosophers would say that's a category and steak. You're not talking about the two kinds of things on the same level or the same category. And It's not helpful to see it that way.
Seth
Okay, I got one final well, maybe two, but but definitely one final question for you. Um, so and it's, it's something that I asked Thomas Talbot as well. And I don't know where I say with his answer. So I was privileged enough to be born in America. But had I not been privileged enough. And I was born in India, and I was raised as a Hindu. Is there any hope for someone that has not been evangelize to and that death? Is there any? Is there any recompense or that's probably a bad word of them finding Christ, which I guess would be an appeal, and why universalism is so attractive? Is there anyone in a terminal punishment view, Conditional this view, that there's any hope for that person if they've never had the opportunity to hear?
John
Oh, sure. And I, in a couple different places, defend the what I call them Evangelical Inclusivism. I share with my traditional brothers and sisters, the idea that the only way anyone is reconciled to God is on the finished work of Jesus Christ, who atone for our sin on the cross, and let us come back from the dead and his resurrection, and govern the world through his essential and his continuing lordship, all of that is orthodoxy. Where I disagree with some of my traditional friends, is the idea that you somehow have to know about that to benefit from it. And I think that the New Testament is actually pretty clear that everyone in the Old Testament benefits from that without knowing about it.
Hebrews 11, is full of examples of faith, for the church to be impressed by, and all of them are pre-Christ. What Hebrews 11 does say is that, if you want to come to God and faith, he was believed that God exists, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. And then it goes on to show all these people who believed that God existed, and that he was good and kind and wise and would reward those who sought him out who gave their allegiance to him. You gotta believe that some of those Old Testament Saints had pretty sketchy theology, even what they knew was probably pretty sketchy how much Jessa, or Gideon or these guys knew, theologically, even an Old Testament terms would have been pretty sketchy, let alone falling short of having any clue about Jesus of Nazareth and the story of the gospel.
And yet, this is what the author to the Hebrews commends to us as a pattern of faith. So I draw from there, as well as some other New Testament Scriptures, the idea that one does have to respond to God in faith. But Paul tells us in Romans 1 that he has not left himself with a witness around the world, there is no one who can say I never knew, I had no idea who the true God was. Their theology might be terrible, It might be Hindu theology. It might be Muslim theology might be Buddhist theology, the theology they're being taught might be really bad.
Frankly, there's a lot of people in American churches today are also being taught really bad theology. But If through that fog, the Holy Spirit reaches down to you. And of course, that's what he does for all of us, right, God comes first and reaches down to us, none of us just reach up to God and our own goodness, God reaches to us. And if we will believe that God exists, and that he is the reward of those who diligently seek Him, we will be saved, Even if we haven't yet heard of Jesus Christ. So my confidence is that when somebody dies in India, or China, or some other place in Africa, who's never encountered the gospel, but has been visited by the Holy Spirit, and has given himself or herself to Christ, or to God, I would say, the true God, then when they need Jesus, that's going to be happy for them, No one's going to reject Jesus who loves the true God, his father. So I don't worry about that ever happening.
I think that in this case, we can say, there are lots of good reasons to be aggressive in the missionary enterprise of the church, because people don't just need to be converted. That is to say, regenerate, they need to grow up and become mature in Christ. As Paul says, this is what we do. We teach and admonish everyone so that everyone, we may present everyone mature in Christ. People need the Bible, they need the church, they need the resources that we can bring to bear and not only to just get away from hell, but to grow up into maturity. So there's lots of good reason to carry on the missionary work with zeal, without worrying that if we don't millions of people, through no fault of their own, are going to go to hell. That's what terrified some of our forebears and I don't think it needs to terrify us.
Seth
So my last question for you would be a building upon that. So you're obviously in a in a in a privileged position that you can educate those that are then going to educate others in religious, philosophical, theological issues. So what would be the one thing from what you've observed and unrelated to hell, that that the church could adopt what would be one thing that the church should or could adopt to really move the the mission of Christ forward, I guess, for the next, you know, 15-20 years with something that they were doing poorly or just is not on the radar, and we really should look at it as, as a society?
John
there's not much that we're doing as a church today really well, in your country, or mine. I think our worship is pretty thin. I think our fellowship is even thinner. I think our commitment to mission is about third or fourth or 10th, on our list of priorities after we focus on our family; qnd we do our jobs, and then we give what's left maybe to Christian work, per se. So there's not a lot we can be excited about. But I would say the one thing that has been shown to help adult believers live integrated, strong Christian lives is adult Christian education.
Among our many problems is that we just are stone ignorant, and we don't know our own faith very well. We don't know how other people think and how they believe. We don't know how to relate our faith to what they think We don't know how to contend for it. We don't know the Bible. So I think frankly, podcasts like yours help people because we have a lot of learning to do before we can really make ourselves clear to other people in the name of the gospel.
Seth
Yeah, that'll be hard, though headed midst, I have to admit that I don't know what I'm talking about to make that worthwhile, which is hard. We'll plug the new book a little bit, and also point people to where they can find more about you and some of your words as well, before I let you go.
John
Yeah, Thanks, Seth. Well, it's easy to find me, I'm just JohnStackhouse.com. And my website will show you around If you're interested in finding out more about me and where I write, my latest book is called why you're here, ethics for the real world. And so that will maybe something we can talk about other time. But my other books are listed there as well.
Seth
And then in a nutshell, hopefully will sell you 15 more copies, what what specifically, Are you are you trying to approach in the new book about about why I'm here?
John
Yeah, the new book is if I tried to get my publisher to call it the meaning of life, because it really is from a Christian point of view, I'm trying to suggest…Why is it that God has put human beings on the earth? And why is it that he has kept us here? As Christians? Why doesn't he just all rapture us into heaven? What are we supposed to be doing? And how do I think Christian Lee about my work about art or politics or child rearing, not just about Bible study and evangelism. And so this is an attempt to give us a very basic ethics a sense of what is it the God's trying to do with us and through us and to us While We're here on this planet? And What do we have to look forward to? One of the things I say in this book is that we're not going to have it, We're not going up to some kind of spiritual place in the sky, that we are going forward to a new Jerusalem on a new earth. And that's enough to get some people thinking…just a second, I always thought we were just going up to heaven, but we're really not. And this book tries to suggest why we're not and how this can invigorated everything we do here and now.
Seth
You know, I am intrigued, especially when you say we're not going to heaven. I don't know if you saw that my eyebrows did raise. So Well. Yeah. Look, I look forward to having you back on to discuss that. And I greatly appreciate your time today.
John
You too. Thanks, Seth.
Ending
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