Repost from the great crash 0f 08
I have heard this since I was a very young Christian. It seemed somewhat reasonable as it was explained to me by pastors in sermons and by Christians as they explained the seriousness of sin. Their theology goes something like this:
All sin is so bad that even the smallest of sins deserves eternal punishment in hell. It does not matter if it is losing your temper at a lousy referee, not sharing your Icee, or speeding 36 in a 35, every sin deserves eternal torment in Hell. Why? Although it may seem unreasonable to us (as depraved as we are), it is fitting for a perfectly holy God who cannot be in the sight of sin, no matter how insignificant this sin might seem to us. In fact, there is no sin that is insignificant to God. Because He is infinitely holy, beyond our understanding, all sin is infinitely offensive to Him. Therefore, the punishment for all sin must be infinite.
I have to be very careful here since I am going against what has become the popular evangelical way to present the Gospel, but I don’t believe this is true. Not only do I not buy it, I think this, like the idea that all sins are equal in the sight of God, is damaging to the character of God, the significance of the cross, and I believe it trivializes sin. Let me explain.
First off, I don’t know of a passage in the Bible that would suggest such a radical view. It would seem that people make this conclusion this way:
Premise 1: Hell is eternal
Premise 2: All people that go there are there for eternity
Premise 3: Not all people have committed the same number or the same degree of sins
Conclusion: All sin, no matter how small, will send someone to hell for all eternity
The fallacy here is that this syllogism is a non-sequitur (the conclusion does not follow from the premises). Could it be that people are in Hell for all eternity based upon who they are rather than what they have done?
Think about this. Many of us believe that Christ’s atonement was penal substitution. This means that it was a legal trade. God counted the sufferings of Christ and that which transpired on the Cross as payment for our sins, each and every one. Therefore, we believe that Christ took the punishment that we deserved. But there is a problem. We are saying that we deserve eternal Hell for one single sin, no matter how small. I don’t know about you, but I have committed enough sins to give me more than my share of life sentences. I have committed sins of the”insignificant” variety (I speed everyday) and significant variety (no description necessary!). So, if Christ were only to take my penalty and if I deserve thousands upon thousands of eternities in hell, why didn’t Christ spend at least one eternity in Hell? Why is it that he was off the Cross in six hours, payment made in full? Combine my sentence with your sentence. Then combine ours with the cumulative sentences of all believers of all time. Yet Christ only suffers for a short time? How do we explain this?
You may say to me that I cannot imagine the intensity of suffering that Christ endured while he was on the cross. You may say that the mysterious transaction that took place was worse than eternity in Hell. I would give you the first, but I will have to motivate you to reconsider the second. Think about it. Do you really believe that the person who has been in hell for 27 billion years with 27 billion more times infinity would not look to the sufferings of Christ and say, “You know what? Christ’s six hours of suffering was bad. It is indeed legendary. But I would trade what I am going through any day for six hours, no matter how horrifying it would be.” You see, what makes hell so bad is not simply the intensity of suffering, but the duration. Christ did not suffer eternally, so there must be something more to this substitution idea and there must be something more to sin.
I believe that Christ did pay our penalty. I believe that hell is eternal. But I don’t believe that one sin sends people to hell for eternity. Sin is trivialized in our day. Sin is first something that we do, not something that we are. In other words, people think of God sitting on the throne becoming enraged (in a holy sort of way) each time that someone breaks the speed limit. It is only the cross of Christ that makes Him look past the eternally damning sin and forgive us. Don’t think that I am undermining the severity of sin, but I am trying to bring focus to the real problem that has infected humanity since the Garden.
The real problem is that we are at enmity with God. From the moment we are born, we inherit the traits of our father Adam. This infectious disease is called sin. This disease issues forth into a disposition toward God that causes us to begin life with our fist in the air, not recognizing His love for us or authority over us. It is rebellion. While this rebellion does act according to its nature, the problem is in the disposition, not so much the acts. When we sin, we are just acting according to the dictates of our corrupt nature. But the worst of it—the worst sin of all—is that we will never lower our fist to God. We are “by nature, children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and as a leopard cannot change his spots, so we cannot change our rebellious disposition toward our Creator (Jer. 13:23).
This disposition is that of a fierce enemy that cannot do anything but fight against its foe. Paul describes this:
Romans 8:7-8 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
We are of the “flesh,” therefore we commit deeds according to the flesh. Does this mean that the person in this state does no good at all? Well, it depends on what you mean by “good.” Can an enemy of God love his neighbor? Of course. Enemies of God can and do all sorts of acts that the Bible would consider virtuous. But from the standpoint of their relationship with God, they cannot do any good at all (Rom. 3:12). Giving a drink to someone who is thirsty with the left hand while having your right hand in a fist clinched toward heaven does not count as “good” before God. Why? Because we are in rebellion against Him. This is our problem.
This I propose is the only sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity.
It is important to understand that hell not is filled with people who are crying out for God’s mercy, constantly hoping for a second chance. People are in hell because they have the same disposition toward God that they had while they were walking the earth. They do not suddenly, upon entrance into Hell, change their nature and become sanctified. They still hate God. People are in hell for all eternity, not because they floated a stop sign, but because their fists are still clinched toward God. They are not calling on His mercy. They are not pleading for a second chance. They are in hell for all eternity because that is where they would rather be. It is their nature. As C.S. Lewis once said, “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.”
Christ, on the other hand, was the second Adam. He did not identify with the first either in disposition or choice. He gained the right to be called the second Adam who would represent His people (Rom. 5:12ff). He is not spending eternity in Hell because he was never infected with the sinful nature which caused him to be at enmity with God. His fist was never clinched toward the heavens.
Will one white-lie send someone to Hell for all eternity? No! To say otherwise trivializes sin and makes God an overly sensitive cosmic torture monger. Sin does send people to Hell. People will be punished for their sins accordingly. But the sin that keeps people in Hell for all eternity is the sin of perpetual rebellion.
462 replies to ""One White Lie Will Send You to Hell For All Eternity" . . . and other stupid statments"
You totally missed my point William. My point was this:
How can people receive the benefits of Christ’s death in a personal way, such as experiencing the Spirit and growing, if they are people that Jesus never died for–as in limited atonement? After all, it is Jesus death for us that makes these things possible in our lives. Therefore, it is totally illogical to say that a person can experience these things when Jesus never died for them in the first place!
Re Tanksley’s post 448 and “legal fictions”
I, as an Arminian, do not believe that it is a legal fiction that a person was saved for a time, until they turned from God. Their salvation during that period of time was true and real. If that person (i.e., the person who had saving faith and then rejected God) died during the period that they had faith, they would go to heaven.
The Calvinist, on the other hand, would maintain that they never were saved. That is, I suppose, why you, a Calvinist, refer to it as a “legal fiction”. For the Calvinist, if person who has temporary faith, resulting from their experience of evanescent grace, died during their period of temporary faith they would not go to heaven because they were not elect and their faith was not saving. Of course, if they died afterward, during the time they rejected God, then they would not go to heaven then either.
It is thus not true that a temporarily believing person is in exactly the same position under the Calvinist and Arminian systems. Under the former the person never had salvation, while under the former the person did. That is a huge and substantial difference and outweighs the other accidents of faith such as an experience of love, fruits of the Spirit, fellowship of the saints, etc. What good is a short experience of these aspects of faith if one spends an eternity in hell?
1 John 2:19 is of no particular advantage to the Calvinist over the Arminian, since both can affirm the explanatory power of that phrase. The Arminian has the advantage in so far as she does not have to rely on the unscriptural and problematic doctrine of evanescent grace. Furthermore, the Arminian can take the warning passages of Scripture at face value, and also take the experience of people at face value. In regard to this latter point, it means accepting one’s own, or someone else’s, experience of faith as real and not mistaken.
regards,
#John
Further thoughts re Tanksley’s post 445
Tanksley states, “double standard: you demand that Calvinists know their final destiny merely because God has decreed it, while you don’t ask that Arminians know their final destiny, even though God foreknows it (and has on that basis predestined it).”
As discussed in my post 449, I do not have a double standard, but rather take only as a standard that which each system holds out as applicable to itself (what standard or claims do Calvinists hold out for Calvinism, same for Arminians).
Tanksley’s post 446 and paradox
Tanksley engages in some fallacious reasoning in order to avoid the point I made respecting the likelihood of an Arminian rejecting God on her death bed. Tanskley uses the fallacious reasoning of the Greek philospher Zeno, in what has become famously known as “Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise”.
In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise’s starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise. Of course, simple experience tells us that Achilles will be able to overtake the tortoise, which is why this is a paradox. The point at which Achilles overtakes the Tortoise can be calculated mathematically (111 1/9 metres after running for 11 1/9 seconds).
The fact that one can mentally divide time into infinitely small pieces does not give Tanksley’s reasoning any validity. Moreover, the smallest meaningful unit of time (for our universe) is a Planck unit, which is descrete and not infinitely small.
In any event, my point was only the one that I made later, which is that the longer one lives a life of faith, the less likely it is that one will reject God and His drawing and turn away from a life of faith. Furthermore, any issues that Tanksley has with Arminianism have no bearing on the inherent problems and contractions of Calvinism (which is what I have been arguing about).
regards,
#John
Why would you do that, though? If you actually believed the Calvinist system of theology you wouldn’t accept the doctrine of election without also accepting all the other doctrines and promises. In particular, you wouldn’t “worry for the future”; you’d pray about it to God.
Would it be so terrible for you to be praying to God all the time? Perhaps if you did so without paying attention to His word, in which He gives the means for you to be assured of your salvation… One shouldn’t neglect one’s responsibilities on the pretext of casting all your cares on God. Hopefully one of your fellows would counsel you.
The epistles of John appear to have been written to people with similar worries to yours, I think; they discovered from experience that beloved people could actually just “leave the faith” that they trusted in.
Is it more reassuring to be told “yes, any of you could leave also — there’s nothing you can do, you’re no different from them as far as you know”; or to be told “they left because they were not like the rest of you.” I think it’s telling that John said the second.
-Wm
You know what? I was just reading that I John 2:19 verse in context. It seems to me that the meaning of it has been very badly skewed by using it to say that anyone that falls away from the Christian faith–does not persevere–was never a Christian at all.
John says, “They went out from us.” However the “they” spoken of is obviously referring to the many antichrists that are already here that he was speaking of the the proceeding verse. Then he goes on the define the term “antichrist” in verse 22 as, “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.”
It sounds to me like the person spoken of here that was in their midst did a lot more than just not follow through in His Christian life, i.e. fail to persevere, or just say, “I am not going to walk in God’s ways anymore.” They are ones, it would seem that didn’t even believed that Jesus was the Christ and didn’t believe in the Father either. And probably never had.
Thoughts??
William,
Why would I do that?? Because in Calvinism it is a very real possibility, that’s why! And there is simply no way to know that I am truly one of the elect. I may have only been given temporary grace by God Himself. Frankly, I don’t like the thought that I may being going to hell and that I can’t be at all assured that what God has given me is the real thing!!
Even John Calvin himself admitted that pretty much every thinking person would have these thoughts regarding their election. He said something to the effect that one just had to be sure that those thoughts didn’t take hold. I have also read quotes by varous Calvinists that say that they have been troubled by these thoughts.
So I guess if they haven’t occured to you or troubled you, William, you are one of the very few exceptions that Calvin spoke of!!
I answered that the probability of a Christian (not an Arminian!!!) rejecting Christ on their deathbed was zero. That’s not avoiding your point; that’s answering it.
If you’d like to question that, feel free to say that the probability is “very small”, or something like that; then my previous argument holds, since very small isn’t zero.
I’ve already specifically denied twice that I was talking about a tiny amount of time. I specifically said in my proof — which, by the way, is a standard proof by induction with a limiting case, not a Zeno-style proof by repeated division — that the time unit was “the amount of time it takes to reject God”. I’ve said that in every post dealing with this issue, and you’ve assumed in each one that I MUST be talking about a mathematical instant. Very odd.
But if your proof that Calvinism is invalid also invalidates Arminianism, you’re required to either retract your belief in Arminianism, or retract your proof.
-Wm
In post 446 Tanksely quotes me as stating, “under Calvinism, one could die with a false assurance that one is one of the elect”, and then he goes on to state that he “den[ies] utterly that Christians have ever done this.” It is, of course, not possible to have proof of his denial, and my point is that it is possible given the Calvinist system. Of course, it is also not possible to have any proof that it does occur (at least not in this life)- – for obvious reasons (and who knows, maybe in every case of evanescent grace God removes that grace before the person dies, not that it would make any difference).
Nevertheless the mere fact that such a result is possible, and possible to imagine, under the Calvinist system is a reason to doubt the accuracy and veracity of the Calvinist system.
I. Howard Marshall has a good pithy saying, “Howard Marshall makes an excellent observation, “Whoever said, ‘The Calvinist knows he cannot fall from salvation but does not know whether he has got it” (as quoted by D.A Carson, “Reflection on Christian Assurance,” Westminster Theological Journal, 54:1,24).
I quote now the experience of a famous Calvinist, an experience that flows directly from his erroneous Calvinist system of theology: “R.C. Sproul writes in one of his Tabletalks, “A while back I had one of those moments of acute self-awareness…and suddenly the question hit me, “R.C., what if you are not one of the redeemed? What if your destiny is not heaven after all, but hell?” Let me tell you that I was flooded in my body with a chill that went from my head to the bottom of my spine. I was terrified… I began to take stock of my life, and I looked at my performance…” I do realize, of course, that Sproul was able to restore his assurance, but it is also my contention that his assurance was illegimate and unpersuasive given his Calvinist beliefs.
regards
#John
Guys, probably about time to stay this conversation. I can’t keep up with what is going on here.
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