See Part 1 General Comments
Part 11: The Problems with Luke
Part 16: My Conclusion
Okay, so I know I said in my last post that I was done with this book, but not
completely. I’ve got two addendums I’m
going to tack on here—one in this post, and then one in the next post.
As
I wrote in Part 1, this book review has undergone several
incarnations in the course of its evolution. Initially I had ambitions of tackling much more of the book before I
eventually decided to limit myself to only debunking Lee Strobel’s arguments about the
Gospels being eyewitness accounts.
The
section below comes from an earlier draft of the book review, back when I
thought I would tackle a wide range of other problems, including the problem of
Hell.
Although
I’ve since decided to narrow my focus, I had already written this section by
that time. Because it was already
written anyway, I’m just going to tack it on here as an addendum, so it doesn’t
go to waste.
This
section is also a good example of what complete nonsense the whole book
is. In fact it was after I had finished
writing this section that I sat back and said to myself, “What am I doing even
trying to make sense out of this gibberish? Why even bother trying to refute
this when Lee Strobel clearly doesn’t even care if he’s making sense or not?” It was after that revelation that I decided
to drastically narrow the focus of my review.
What
Does Lee Strobel Believe About Hell?
Like
everything else in the book, Lee Strobel’s thoughts on hell are an incoherent
mess. Again, it’s worth remembering here
that if none of this makes sense, it’s not supposed to make sense. This book is not meant to be picked over and
analyzed by a hostile reviewer like me—it exists solely just to make money off
of Christians who aren’t going to question it.
So it’s somewhat of a waste of time to try to make sense of it, but
since I’ve chosen to draw attention to the issue I suppose I have to go through
the motions anyway.
Lee
Strobel seems to believe there are some sort of eternal consequences for not
believing in Jesus. He never says what
these are, so everything’s very vague, but taken in conjunction with traditional
Church doctrine, it’s not hard to guess at what he’s implying.
I do feel a strong obligation to urge you to
make this a front-burner issue in your life. Don’t approach it casually or
flippantly, because there’s a lot riding on your conclusion. As Michael Murphy aptly put it, “We ourselves—and
not merely the truth claims—are at stake in the investigation.” In other words,
if my conclusion in the case for Christ is correct, your future and eternity
hinge on how you respond to Christ. As Jesus declared, “If you do not believe
that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins” (John 8:24)
(Lee Strobel p. 271).
Okay,
so he never says exactly what he means, but it’s not hard to guess. When he says your “eternity hinges” on the conclusion, he’s not talking about God
giving you really bad acne for all eternity, right? He’s talking about heaven and hell here,
right?
This
same kind of vague language is repeated all throughout the book. For example: “I hope you take it seriously, because there
may be more than just idle curiosity hanging in the balance. If Jesus is to be
believed…then nothing is more important than how you respond to him.” (p.
15)
He’s
obviously trying as hard as he can to imply something without saying anything
concrete that someone could take him up on.
Much of the book is like that actually—he’s very skilled at using weasel
language throughout the whole thing. It’s
extremely important that you believe in Jesus because….SOMETHING! (And yet, somehow not quite important enough for
him to bother explaining what that something is…)
The
only place where Lee Strobel directly addresses the problem of Hell is on page
164-166 when talking to D.A. Carson and again it’s very difficult for me to
figure out in concrete terms what they’re talking about, and I suspect that’s
deliberate. I’ll quote the whole
exchange first, and then I’ll go through and try to make sense of it.
The Bible says that the Father is
loving. The New Testament affirms the
same about Jesus. But can they really be
loving while at the same time sending people to hell? After all, Jesus teaches more about hell than
anyone in the entire Bible. Doesn’t that contradict his supposed gentle and
compassionate character?
In posing this question to Carson, I
quoted the hard-edged words of agnostic Charles Templeton: “How could a loving
Heavenly Father create an endless hell and, over the centuries, consign
millions of people to it because they do not or cannot or will not accept
certain religious beliefs.”
That question, though tweaked for
maximum impact, didn’t raise Carson’s
ire. He began with a clarification. “First of all,” he said, “I’m not sure that
God simply casts people into hell because they don’t accept certain beliefs.”
He thought for a moment, then backed
up to take a run at a more thorough answer by discussing a subject that many
modern people consider a quaint anachronism: sin.
“Picture God in the beginning of
creation with a man and woman made in his image,” Carson said. “They wake up in the morning and
think about God. They love him truly.
They delight to do what he wants; it’s their whole pleasure. They’re rightly
related to him and they’re rightly related to each other.
“Then, with the entrance of sin and
rebellion into the world, these image bearers begin to think that they are at
the center of the universe. Not literally, but that’s the way they think. And that’s the way we think. All the things we call ‘social pathologies’—war,
rape, bitterness, nurtured envies, secret jealousies, pride, inferiority
complexes—are bound up in the first instance with the fact that we’re not
rightly related to God. The consequence
is that people get hurt.
“From God’s perspective, that is
shockingly disgusting. So what should God do about if? If he says, “Well, I don’t
give a rip,” he’s saying that evil doesn’t matter to him. It’s a bit like saying, “Oh yeah, the
Holocaust—I don’t care.” Wouldn’t we be shocked if we thought God didn’t have
the moral judgments on such matters?
“But in principle, if he’s the sort
of God who has moral judgments on these matters, he’s got to have moral
judgments on this huge matter of all these divine image bearers shaking their
puny fists at his face and singing with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” That’s
the real nature of sin.
“Having said that, hell is not a
place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes but just
didn’t believe the right stuff. They’re
consigned there, first and foremost, because they defy their Maker and want to
be at the center of the universe. Hell
is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn’t gentle
enough or good enough to let them out.
It’s filled with people who, for all eternity, still want to be at the
center of the universe and who persist in their God-defying rebellion.
“What is God to do? If he says it
doesn’t matter to him, God is no longer a God to be admired. He’s either amoral or positively creepy. For
him to act in any other way in the face of such blatant defiance would be to
reduce God himself.”
I interjected, “Yes, but what seems
to bother people the most is the idea that God will torment people for
eternity. That seems vicious, doesn’t
it?”
Replied Carson, “In the first place,
the Bible says that there are different degrees of punishment, so I’m not sure
that it’s the same level of intensity for all people.
“In the second place, if God took
his hands off this fallen world so that there were no restraint on human
wickedness, we would make hell. Thus, if
you allow a whole lot of sinners to live somewhere in a confined place where
they’re not doing damage to anyone but themselves, what do you get but
hell? There’s a sense in which they’re
doing it to themselves, and it’s what they want because they still don’t
repent.”
I thought Carson was finished with his answer, because
he hesitated for a moment. However, he
had one more crucial point. “One of the
things that the Bible does insist is that in the end not only will justice be
done, but justice will be seen to be done, so that every mouth will be stopped.”
I grabbed ahold of that last
statement. “In other words,” I said, “at the time of judgment, there is nobody
in the world who will walk away from that experience saying that they have been
treated unfairly by God. Everyone will
recognize the fundamental justice in the way God judges them and the world.”
“That’s right,” Carson said firmly. “Justice is not always done in this world; we
see that every day. But on the Last Day
it will be done for all to see. And no
one will be able to complain by saying, “This isn’t fair.” (p.164-165)
Okay,
I’ve got to be honest—I don’t really understand what they’re talking about,
which makes it difficult for me to respond to it. (This is a problem I frequently encounter
when reading this book.)
On
the surface of it, Carson
appears to be rejecting traditional Christian doctrine that we are saved by
faith: “I’m not sure that God simply
casts people into hell because they don’t accept certain beliefs.” But at the same time he firmly believes in the
necessity of a hell because evil must be answered.
He
frontlines his argument for the necessity of hell with horrific acts of human
evil: the Holocaust, war, rape. (“It’s
a bit like saying, “Oh yeah, the Holocaust—I don’t care.” Wouldn't we be shocked if
we thought God didn’t have moral judgments on such matters?”) But then he quickly slides into a whole list
of thought crimes—bitterness, nurtured
envies, secret jealousies, pride, inferiority complexes. By including all of these on the same list, Carson appears to think that
the thought crimes are morally equivalent to the holocaust, war and rape. And although Carson uses the actual physical atrocities
like the Holocaust to justify the existence of Hell, it appears to be the
thought crimes (the failure to repent foremost among them) that land people
into hell. In other words, according to Carson, God needs to
establish a Hell to show he cares about the Holocaust, but that doesn’t mean
that Hell is necessarily filled only with Nazis and War criminals—it also
includes people who indulged in: bitterness,
nurtured envies, secret jealousies, pride, inferiority complexes.
Furthermore,
traditional Christian doctrine is that once you’re in Hell, you’re in for all
eternity. However Carson’s verb tenses imply that he thinks
someone’s time duration in Hell is directly correlated to their status of repentance,
and he appears to be implying that the unrepentant can get out of Hell at any
time by simply repenting. “Hell is not filled with people who have
already repented, only God isn’t gentle enough or good enough to let them
out. It’s filled with people who, for
all eternity, still want to be at the center of the universe and who persist in
their God-defying rebellion.”
But
if that’s the implication, then Lee Strobel is not getting it, because Lee
Strobel responds by asking a question about the problem of damnation for
eternity. “Yes, but what seems to bother people the most is the idea that God
will torment people for eternity.”
Carson hears this
question about the time duration of damnation, completely ignores it, and
instead responds with a statement about the intensity of damnation. “In the
first place, the Bible says that there are different degrees of punishment, so
I’m not sure that it’s the same level of intensity for all people.”
But
this idea of a Hell with carefully orchestrated levels of punishment is
immediately contradicted by his very next sentence, in which he talks of a laissez-faire type Hell, in which God simply removes his
presence, and leaves sinners to their own devices. “In the second place, if God took his hands off this fallen world so
that there were no restraint on human wickedness, we would make hell. Thus if you allow a whole lot of sinners to
live somewhere in a confined place where they’re not doing damage to anyone but
themselves, what do you get but hell?”
By
the way, note that second conditional verb tense: if God took his hands off this fallen world
so that there were no restraint on human wickedness, we would make hell. They are clearly implying that this is not the
way things are currently. In other
words, they believe that in the present world, God is restraining human
wickedness. I’ve noted the problems with this in a previous blog post when discussing World War II. If God is currently restraining human
wickedness, how do you explain most of human history? I mean really, how much worse could things
get? What could we possibly do to each
other that we haven’t already done?
Where, for example, was God’s hand restraining human wickedness when
babies were getting their heads smashed against trees in the killing fields of Cambodia?
Furthermore,
this sentence directly contradicts the one before it about the “different degrees of punishment”
doctrine. Most of the damage human
wickedness causes is not harm done to ourselves, but harm done to others. You could argue that the murder, thief and
rapist are hurting themselves in an indirect intangible psychological way, I
suppose, but you’d have to be especially thick not to notice that they are
doing the majority of harm to their victims.
If God simply allowed no restraint on human wickedness, this would not
mean that the most wicked would suffer
the most, it would mean that the most wicked would inflict the most suffering.
(By
the way, it’s not at all clear what Carson
imagines is going on in Hell. Given that
everyone is immortal in hell, I’m imagining sort of a scene like Prometheus
chained to the rock—where the eagles come down and eat his liver every day, but
then it regrows again because the gods are immortal. In other words, I’m guessing he’s envisioning
a hell where humans can still inflict physical pain and harm on each other even
though we will have immortal bodies. But
notice that this is not at all clear in his own explanation, and he doesn’t
seem to have thought out the details of what he is saying.)
And
then at the end comes the truly bizarre part—Lee Strobel and Carson believe
that on the day of judgment, everyone will believe that God’s judgment is
fair. So they believe there will be a
group of people in Hell, who believe that it’s absolutely completely fair that
God put them in Hell, but who are still refusing to repent? I have a hard time reconciling Carson’s belief that the
people in Hell are in permanent rebellion against God with his belief that the
people in Hell think it’s totally fair God put them there. Wouldn’t it have to be one or the other? If they acknowledge the justness of God’s
judgment, isn’t that really in essence the same as repenting?
According to Carson’s vision, we would
have to imagine a Hell filled with people who are saying to themselves, “Boy it
really sucks here. And I would love to
be in heaven. And it was totally just
for God to put me here, because I absolutely deserved it. But I’m still not going to repent.”
Right,
so what to make of all this gibberish?
He’s going on about something about sin and defiance of God and repentance,
and he clearly believes in a Hell and he believes that there are some people
going there, but more than that I can’t logically work out.
I’ve
got two guesses as to what he’s talking about: either he’s defending
traditional Church doctrine, or he’s not.
Firstly,
I’ll posit a guess that he might be defending Church doctrine. Having grown up in the church, I’m aware that
they like to use a certain amount of semantic shifting to get around difficult
theological issues. In other words, Christians
believe people go to heaven or hell based on their religious beliefs, but they
don’t like to phrase it in exactly those words.
They prefer to place the emphasis on the idea that people are going to
hell because of sin, and that only those who repent (through Christ) can be
saved. So the Christians are still going
to Heaven, and everyone else is still going to Hell, but for those being damned
the emphasis has been moved from a failure to believe to the doctrine of sin. (The fact that everyone is born into sin, and
that escape from sin only comes through belief, is regulated to a minor
detail.)
I
somewhat suspect that’s what he’s doing here with—just trying to change the
wording of the doctrine, but not its essence.
The “failure to repent” part could be interpreted as synonymous with “failure
to believe in Jesus.”
So
that’s guess number one.
But
if that’s not what’s going on, then it sounds like he is advancing the idea
that people are still given a chance to repent after they die, and anyone can
get out of hell anytime by just repenting.
Is that what he’s talking about?
Actually,
some religions, like Mormonism believe that after they die heretics
will be visited by an angel and still given a chance to repent and avoid
hell. This isn’t Christian doctrine, but
it sounds like Carson
is stealing this idea anyway.
Well,
if so, it’s an interesting idea, but remember this is a book that is supposed
to prove the truth of Christianity. And
where is the proof for any of this? It’s
not in the Bible, it’s not traditionally church doctrine—he appears to be just
making stuff up as he goes along.
Look,
you can either accept Church doctrine as divine revelation received from God,
and take or leave the whole package. Or
you can just admit that no one knows what happens when we die, and become an
agnostic. What you can’t do is just
start making up random stuff out of thin air, and then tell everyone you know
what God is going to do or what God isn’t going to do. It may sound good. It might be what you want
God to do, or what you would do in God’s place.
But there’s no proof. This is
nothing more than wishful thinking at its purest, without even the shell of
divine revelation to fall back on at this point.
The
Bible is not a short book. God clearly
wasn’t operating on some sort of word limit.
If you believe God inspired the Bible, and you think this is the view of
Hell that God wanted us to believe in, then I can’t understand why God didn’t
just say this in the Bible.
Not
to mention, the whole thing doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Given this liberal state of affairs, why does
he believe there will still be people in hell who are refusing to repent?
And,
if you can repent and get out of Hell at anytime, then doesn’t this undercut
Lee Strobel’s assertion that “your future
and your eternity hinge on how you respond to Christ.”
[Also,
while I’m nitpicking, Carson’s
whole idea about sin entering the world appears to rest on a literal version of
a creation account—in the beginning before sin entered the world, there was one
man and one woman and everything was perfect.
Unless you take a hard core creationist view of the world and deny all the science, this view has long since been discredited. Nature was filled with death and destruction long before humans evolved.]
But
I’m wasting my time trying to make logical sense of this mess. As with everything else in the book, Lee
Strobel is simply trying to play both arguments at once. If the threat of your eternal damnation
motivates you to become a Christian, then he’ll imply it. If Hell is a theological problem for you,
then you don’t need to worry about Hell—no one is going to Hell who doesn’t
want to go, apparently.
But
if there’s no advantage to belief, and no penalty for disbelief, then Lee
Strobel’s book doesn’t really make sense.
The whole thing is predicated on the idea that it’s extremely important
for you to get to the truth of Christ (…for some vague reason he’s afraid of
saying clearly).
Indeed,
not only Lee Strobel’s book, but all of Christianity seems predicated on the idea
that belief in Jesus is advantageous, and not believing in Jesus is
disadvantageous. The entire New
Testament is emphasizing over and over again the importance of believing in
Christ. (For example Mark 16:16—“Ye that believeth shall be saved and ye that
believeth not shall be damned.”)
Traditionally, the church has interpreted the emphasis on belief in
Christ as meaning that this was because believers were saved, and unbelievers
were damned. But if you take this away,
it’s not clear to me what the Bible is talking about. And while theologians continue to pretend to
know who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell, I wonder why, if God had
something he wanted to communicate about all of this, he couldn’t have just
said it.
But
as long as you’re operating under the assumption that belief does have some
sort of advantage, and unbelievers are at some sort of disadvantage (whatever
this happens to be) then the same criticisms of belief can be made—why is it
morally virtuous to believe in something without evidence? Why are some people
geographically disadvantaged? And why
doesn’t God just come down and tell us what he wants us to believe, instead of
leaving us to sort out ourselves what religion is true?
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