Hell and Pretzel-Shaped Apologetics

I emailed William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Ministries with the following a while back:

Hi there, Dr. Craig!  

I have a question for you: Imagine that a Jewish woman who lived in Nazi Germany was sent to die in one of Hitler's concentration camps. She lived a good life. She didn't sin more than most people. Maybe she lied every now and then, or she got a little too mad at her kids every so often. But she also never accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Even up to the point of dying in one of the ovens at Auschwitz. Would God really be so cruel as to send her to hell just because she didn't believe in Jesus as the Messiah? And if you believe that God would be just to do this, how can that possibly be the case? And why should I worship such a God?  

Best regards, Becca

One of his associates emailed me back with this response:

Hi Becca.   

Thank you for submitting a question to Reasonable Faith. Due to the high volume of questions Dr. Craig receives, he cannot personally answer every one, so I have the privilege of answering your question on his behalf. Your questions bring up very good points. The issues of heaven and hell, good and evil, right and wrong, are all very difficult to answer because of the emotional force attached to them. Often times our emotional reactions are shaped unconsciously, by our experiences and relationships rather than by logic, and as a result, we sometimes make irrational decisions. Please don’t misunderstand me here. I am not making any inferences about you, only making a point regarding how people think in general as a precaution of rejecting an answer that is logically coherent but not emotionally fulfilling. You may want to watch or listen to Dr. Craig’s debate with Ray Bradley on the topic of hell. Here is a link to an audio version of the debate.   

If you’ve ever seen the movie Schindler’s List, there is a scene at the end of the movie that relates to your questions. After the war is over, Oskar Schindler, who saved over 1100 Jews, breaks down crying as he comes to the realization that he could have saved even more people. He could have sold his car for 10 people, his gold Nazi pin for another person, and spent less money frivolously in order to save more Jews, but he didn’t do it. In some ways, made sacrifices to save lives, in other ways, he refused to make sacrifices to save lives.  

The Russian novelist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said 'the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.' Every person, no matter how good, does wrong. We’re accustomed to this because we recognize it in ourselves, but God is perfect and judges based on His perfect standard. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. When someone wrongs us, we expect they will be punished for it. It seems unfair to expect differently from God. Could we still call Him just if He didn’t punish evil?  

Another important factor is the relationship between our beliefs and our actions. Our actions flow from our beliefs and reveal what we truly believe rather than what we merely claim to believe. The Bible teaches that our ultimate purpose in life is to know and love God. We cannot know and love God if we don’t believe in Him or have vastly incorrect views of Him. Moreover, our incorrect views will prevent others from knowing and loving God, no matter how good we are in this life.   

Christians believe that God is omnipotent, which means He can do all things that are logically possible. He cannot do what is logically impossible. If God is just, which Christians believe He is, then He cannot ignore evil. If He ignored evil, then He would no longer be just, and hence, He would be evil and not worthy of worship. Just because a person does less evil than others does not mean they are innocent and undeserving of punishment.   

C.S. Lewis was an atheist for a long time because he said God was evil. Eventually, he realized that without God, he had no objective foundation to say God was evil in the first place, and He became a Christian. The only way to truly make sense of good and evil, kindness and cruelty, is if we have an objective, unchanging standard for figuring out what is right and wrong. If morality is merely cultural opinion, we should not be troubled by 'evil' or 'cruel' acts because our opinions are no more correct than someone else’s. I will close by referring to Lewis again. He said that if we are truly troubled that people go to hell, the best thing we can do to save people from that fate is to spread the good news of salvation, not fight against it. Thank you again for contacting Reasonable Faith. I know this is a difficult and gut-wrenching topic and I hope I was able to help you think deeper about the subject. Please let us know if you have any further questions.   

Jay 

So because this is the intellectual exercise I'm deciding to engage in this Sunday evening, I'm going to respond piece by piece to this email and give my thoughts on his responses.

Your questions bring up very good points. The issues of heaven and hell, good and evil, right and wrong, are all very difficult to answer because of the emotional force attached to them. Often times our emotional reactions are shaped unconsciously, by our experiences and relationships rather than by logic, and as a result, we sometimes make irrational decisions. Please don’t misunderstand me here. I am not making any inferences about you, only making a point regarding how people think in general as a precaution of rejecting an answer that is logically coherent but not emotionally fulfilling. You may want to watch or listen to Dr. Craig’s debate with Ray Bradley on the topic of hell. Here is a link to an audio version of the debate.

This debate that Jay links to here between William Lane Craig and Ray Bradley on the subject of hell is well worth listening to because it forces listeners on both sides to grapple with the subject matter. I included the original hyperlink in this quotation because I think that if you're interested in this topic, it's worth checking out for yourself, whether you're closer to the position of Craig or that of Bradley.

I would say that "rejecting an answer that is logically coherent but not emotionally fulfilling" is of course not a wise course of action. There are plenty of things that upset me but are nevertheless true. For example, Trump is currently the president of the United States. No matter how much that distresses me (and oh, it does), it's no use to pretend it isn't true. 

But in my view, it's probably best not to suggest that one's own answer to someone's questions about theology are "logically coherent," and the reason is that avoiding such self-descriptions avoids potentially problematic overconfident answers. While it's true that questions about hell are challenging to discuss "because of the emotional force attached to them," that emotional force doesn't just come from those of us who are troubled by commonplace evangelical theologies about hell. It also comes from those who weaponize the concept of hell against others. This isn't to suggest that Jay, the answerer of this question, didn't realize this. It's just to point out something that I think is worth mentioning at the beginning of this discussion.

I do agree with Jay that we should approach this topic from a logical standpoint and not let our emotions be the sole decision-maker as to what's "right" here, but I think that emotion is impossible to separate entirely from any discussion people have on anything, particularly when it's about a topic like hell that is often used to intimidate and frighten people into a religion. In fact, sometimes I would say that emotions flow from our logical processing of things, and rightly so. It's how we express and harness our emotions that matters.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Schindler’s List, there is a scene at the end of the movie that relates to your questions. After the war is over, Oskar Schindler, who saved over 1100 Jews, breaks down crying as he comes to the realization that he could have saved even more people. He could have sold his car for 10 people, his gold Nazi pin for another person, and spent less money frivolously in order to save more Jews, but he didn’t do it. In some ways, made sacrifices to save lives, in other ways, he refused to make sacrifices to save lives.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my original questions, other than its allusion to the Holocaust. I have seen the movie Schinder's List, but Oskar Schindler wasn't in a position of sending Jews to hell unless they believed in Jesus.

The Russian novelist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said 'the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.' Every person, no matter how good, does wrong. We’re accustomed to this because we recognize it in ourselves, but God is perfect and judges based on His perfect standard. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. When someone wrongs us, we expect they will be punished for it. It seems unfair to expect differently from God. Could we still call Him just if He didn’t punish evil?

But shouldn't the punishment be proportionate to the crime? How is an eternity of torment in hell (whether you understand that as literal flames or in some other way) a reasonable response to someone who maybe had some selfish tendencies in life or stole something one or two times? I think a "just God" certainly would (and should) "punish evil," but it should be proportionate to the crime.

Another important factor is the relationship between our beliefs and our actions. Our actions flow from our beliefs and reveal what we truly believe rather than what we merely claim to believe. The Bible teaches that our ultimate purpose in life is to know and love God. We cannot know and love God if we don’t believe in Him or have vastly incorrect views of Him. Moreover, our incorrect views will prevent others from knowing and loving God, no matter how good we are in this life.

Is God really so petty and insecure that he needs us to "know and love" him and understand him correctly before he decides not to torment us forever? I hope not.

Christians believe that God is omnipotent, which means He can do all things that are logically possible. He cannot do what is logically impossible. If God is just, which Christians believe He is, then He cannot ignore evil. If He ignored evil, then He would no longer be just, and hence, He would be evil and not worthy of worship. Just because a person does less evil than others does not mean they are innocent and undeserving of punishment.

But if a person has had selfish tendencies yet has done mostly good things throughout life, how can the bad things they've done be enough to be deserving of a punishment of eternal condemnation?

C.S. Lewis was an atheist for a long time because he said God was evil. Eventually, he realized that without God, he had no objective foundation to say God was evil in the first place, and He became a Christian. The only way to truly make sense of good and evil, kindness and cruelty, is if we have an objective, unchanging standard for figuring out what is right and wrong. If morality is merely cultural opinion, we should not be troubled by 'evil' or 'cruel' acts because our opinions are no more correct than someone else’s. I will close by referring to Lewis again. He said that if we are truly troubled that people go to hell, the best thing we can do to save people from that fate is to spread the good news of salvation, not fight against it.

There's the namedropping of C.S. Lewis! (Sorry, I was just playing Christian apologetics bingo for a second there.)

So let's say you're right. Let's say we can't make sense of morality without "an objective, unchanging standard" for morality, which we'll say is God as he is described in the Bible. But then what about when God changes his mind? (See, for example, Exodus 32:9-14.) The next question is, how do we know that God as he is described in the Bible is even described accurately (so we can know with accuracy what the "objective standard" is)? And if he is described accurately throughout the Bible, then how do we make sense of the narratives in which God commands genocide? (This is aside from the fact that the archaeological record doesn't support the historicity of the conquest narratives.) Perhaps this just means that killing kids is morally neutral unless we hear from God about it, which is a rather troubling way to measure morality, isn't it?