Is Keller discussing “The importance of hell” or “The importance of an eternal hell”?
FIrst I’d like to point out something that missed my attention at the outset of these posts. If you notice, in the same way that the title of Keller’s article says “The Importance of Hell” and does not specify an “eternal” hell, Keller continues to defend his belief in what he simply calls “hell.” In other words he did not entitle his article “The Importance of an Eternal Hell.” This is very misleading for it creates the assumption in people’s minds that those who do not believe in an eternal hell do not believe in any form of hell. This is an inaccurate impression given by the very title and continues throughout the article. Please keep this in mind as you read other material in defense of an eternal hell. Often the author does not make a distinction making it an all or nothing kind of argument confusing the reader. (Mark Galli did this on the cover of his book God Wins.)
Keller’s defense of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement as it applies to an Eternal Hell
We are at his 4th point in the article. Keller continues his survey regarding the importance of an eternal Hell as it is supported by the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement:
4. The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us….Unless we come to grips with this “terrible” [eternal hell] doctrine, we will never even begin to understand the depths of what Jesus did for us on the cross. His body was being destroyed in the worst possible way, but that was a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul. When he cried out that his God had forsaken him he was experiencing hell itself. But consider–if our debt for sin is so great that it is never paid off there, but our hell stretches on for eternity, then what are we to conclude from the fact that Jesus said the payment was “finished” (John 19:30) after only three hours? We learn that what he felt on the cross was far worse and deeper than all of our deserved hells put together.
That Jesus experienced every human pain as our substitute and associate is true and one of the most precious truths for us to embrace. That he took upon Himself the hell of our sin is indisputable. But the fact that Jesus in His humanity felt alone and forsaken was fundamentally something He felt as our representative for “He was tempted in all points as we are” (Heb 2 ). When Keller uses Psalm 22 to support his belief that Jesus was abandoned by the Father (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?”) he is failing to note that to quote the first line of a Psalm was to introduce its entirety. If you read Psalm 22 you will find the exact opposite conclusion by David, a foreshadow of Christ: “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (vs. 24). Ironically the Psalm ends with one of the most inclusive and restorative passages in all the Bible: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and return to the Lord…for He has done it”(!) And it is not inconsequential that Psalm 22 is followed by Psalms 23 and 24 where God is claimed the Shepherd and where ownership of “the earth and all its inhabitants” is proclaimed.
The forsakenness that Christ felt was on account of His identifying with every human suffering and emotion. When we sin we feel a separation from God. That is the lie that sin produces, every time. The very first pain mankind felt in Adam was separation from God. But as was pointed out in our first post it was an alienation in our minds (Col 1:21). It was man who ran away, hid, and was afraid and God who came seeking after His fallen image-bearers. It was God the Missionary who came seeking to save that which was lost. It was God who sent Jesus as the one who embodied and carried the name, “God With Us.”
Consider again how Keller’s trajectory of this notion of actual separation from God is moving towards a pagan dualism. And consider how it moves toward another form of dualism: that sin and death will be forever perpetuated in eternal beings paralleling the God of the universe never paying for sin because it never ends. How is this a reflection of Biblical restorative justice where Keller says we “deserve hell” yet it is “never paid off for all eternity?” This again is incoherent as well as reflects a pagan notion. (See article on true Biblical Justice.)
Keller then states:
And this makes emotional sense when we consider the relationship he lost. If a mild acquaintance denounces you and rejects you–that hurts. If a good friend does the same–that hurts far worse. However, if your spouse walks out on you saying, “I never want to see you again,” that is far more devastating still. The longer, deeper, and more intimate the relationship, the more tortuous is any separation. But the Son’s relationship with the Father was beginningless and infinitely greater than the most intimate and passionate human relationship. When Jesus was cut off from God he went into the deepest pit and most powerful furnace, beyond all imagining. He experienced the full wrath of the Father. And he did it voluntarily, for us.
Please postulate the implications of this view upon the doctrine of the Trinity! How can the unity and mutual love within the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit ever be broken? How can there be a disunity between the justice of God and His love? We have addressed the conundrum of possessing two opposing purposes for God’s justice in Part 2 and elsewhere so we will not repeat it here. But we cannot avoid facing what this understanding does to the very integrity of God: It splits Him in two! And the unanswered question remains: As Dr. Baxter Kruger asks,”Where is the Holy Spirit in all this? Is caught between two lovers?” Is He undecided between the two?
Keller then offers the following arguments:
Fairly often I meet people who say, “I have a personal relationship with a loving God, and yet I don’t believe in Jesus Christ at all.” Why, I ask? “My God is too loving to pour out infinite suffering on anyone for sin.” But this shows a deep misunderstanding of both God and the cross. On the cross, God HIMSELF, incarnated as Jesus, took the punishment. He didn’t visit it on a third party, however willing.
So the question becomes: what did it cost your kind of god to love us and embrace us? What did he endure in order to receive us? Where did this god agonize, cry out, and where were his nails and thorns? The only answer is: “I don’t think that was necessary.” But then ironically, in our effort to make God more loving, we have made him less loving. His love, in the end, needed to take no action. It was sentimentality, not love at all. The worship of a god like this will be at most impersonal, cognitive, and ethical. There will be no joyful self-abandonment, no humble boldness, no constant sense of wonder. We could not sing to him “love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Only through the cross could our separation from God be removed, and we will spend all eternity loving and praising God for what he has done (Rev 5:9-14.)
And if Jesus did not experience hell itself for us, then we ourselves are devalued. In Isaiah, we are told, “The results of his suffering he shall see, and shall be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). This is a stupendous thought. Jesus suffered infinitely more than any human soul in eternal hell, yet he looks at us and says, “It was worth it.” What could make us feel more loved and valued than that? The Savior presented in the gospel waded through hell itself rather than lose us, and no other savior ever depicted has loved us at such a cost.
First, it is completely disorienting to bring up folks who say they don’t believe in Jesus Christ because they can’t believe in a god who would pour out his wrath on his innocent son so he could love and forgive us. This is not a rejection of Christ but the rejection of a false paradigm of His role in our salvation! Keller is painting an either/or picture here: either you believe in penal substitution or you can’t believe in Jesus Christ. This is scandalous for the reasons we mention above (historically, scripturally, and also relationally as it pertains to the Trinity).
Then Keller asks the emotionally charged question of “What did it cost your god…?” as if to say that any other explanation of the cross is short on love and grace! The above conclusion by Keller fails to allow that Jesus’ death was in every way as painful, agonizing, and horrifying as He became the Last Adam assuming our sin, hell and doubt. Penal Substitutionary Atonement is not the only way for Christ to “pay” for our sins. The first is coherent and has biblical merit whereas the PSA has its roots in paganism and possesses absolutely no revelatory merit. It only reflects the scapegoating violence that has raged within societies from the dawn of time.
To reject the PSA, according to Keller, is to reject Jesus and his cross because we are saying “it was all unnecessary.” This is a vastly unfair and misleading statement. Nothing could be further from the truth! What did it cost our God? It cost Him everything! It was the highest most sacrificial demonstration of love ever imagined, beyond our comprehension Scripture says (Eph 3). He laid down His “right to be equal with God” as He emptied and humbled Himself and became obedient unto death on a cross (Phil 2). He was “numbered among the transgressors” (Isa 53). He paid the highest price! “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). There was no other way as “He became sin for us” identifying as the “Last Adam.” We believe as Paul said in 2 Cor. 5:14: “One died for all; therefore all died.” Our union with Him in His death, burial and resurrection was the only way for us to know salvation (“sozo“). Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The only source of Life. “All things are by Him, through Him and back to Him” and “In Him all things consist.” And finally, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
As you can see, to reject penal substitutionary atonement is far from saying His death was unnecessary! We could not live, or move or breathe without the cross! But our salvation goes so much deeper than the cross: we were included in the eternal life of the Father, Son and Spirit before the foundation of the world as well as included 2000 years ago in Christ’s life on earth, His death, His resurrection, His ascension to the Father and His glorification at the righthand of the Godhead! This is the full salvation with which we were granted in Christ Jesus.
The question you must ask yourself while exploring this gospel of inclusion: Does it make Jesus Christ bigger or smaller? Greater or lessor? If you are honest with the desires of your redeemed heart and mind, you know the answer.
Final Conclusion to Timothy Keller’s “The Importance of Hell”
On our web page, included with the several articles listed under “2001 writings,” are three articles challenging the Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory. They are: “The Great Misrepresentation;” My Dad, God;” and “The Atonement.” They might be of interest and helpful to brethren as confirmation of their own fresh direction of thought on the subject, or to instigate the same.
John G.
You are an enemy of God. Whether you are truly saved or not is between you and Christ. But your attack against the Biblical fact of penal substitutionary atonement is a satanic lie, like the attacks against the virgin birth and eternal security of the saint. God has to quarantine lost sinners, angels and humans, in the eternal concious torment of Hell forever, the lake of fire, because their spirits will not go out of existence and their sin will poison the new creation if He did not.
I side with God and not fallen human emotions, whereas you side with fallen human unbelief and emotions.
I understand your reaction. I believed the PSA as the only atonement model for over 40 years. However, your statements cause me to doubt that you read the articles in full. In them they explain how the penal substitutionary atonement theory is a relatively new idea. Therefore you must conclude that the Church was without the “true model” of the atonement for over a thousand years.
There is no place in God’s universe to “quarantine lost sinners” for there is no place where God is not. Separation from God is a pagan dualistic notion. It is Greek and not Biblical. God will not quarantine lost sinners He will transform them because, “Only good where evil was is evil dead. That alone is the slaying of evil.” (MacDonald)
Further, there is no divine revelation in the penal substitutionary atonement model for it is simply a reflection of thousands of years of pagan sacrifice. God says He came to turn human wisdom on its head and subvert it by the cross (I Cor 1) not endorse it.
If you have received mercy you would desire for everyone. That is the nature of the new heart: “Love your enemies and do good to them,” says Jesus.
All grace and peace…
Hebrews 9:14 – How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Hebrews 9:22 – And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.
Acts 20:28 – Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
Revelation 1:5 – And from Jesus Christ, [who is] the faithful witness, [and] the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,
Romans 5:9 – Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
Colossians 1:20 – And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, [I say], whether [they be] things in earth, or things in heaven.
Leviticus 17:11 – For the life of the flesh [is] in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it [is] the blood [that] maketh an atonement for the soul.
Hebrews 13:12 – Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.
Matthew 26:28 – For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
Exodus 12:13 – And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye [are]: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy [you], when I smite the land of Egypt.
Ephesians 1:7 – In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
Romans 3:25 – Whom God hath set forth [to be] a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
Acts 4:12 – Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Hebrews 10:12 – But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;
THESE VERSES CLEARLY SHOW AS WELL AS OTHER VERSES THAT THE SUBSTITUTIONARY PROPITIATORY SATISFYING BLOOD ATONEMENT OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST is the only thing that can save lost sinner man. The Bible is clear: The eternal torment of the lost in HELL is forever and real and eternally concious.
you make the error of thinking that lost people will somehow wake up in Hell and ask God for forgiveness. It is TOO LATE.
Hebrews 9:27 It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement.
Hebrews 11:1 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. You can only have faith in life, once you die, it is sight. Satan can never be saved because Jesus did not die for him, and, he has sight. He saw God and rebelled. He and his devils cannot have faith. Those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ and die lost will be forever experiencing God’s wrath. They will be in the presence of God and His righteous holy hatred against them. The smoke of their torment goes up day and night forever and ever.
The Jews studied the Scriptures like no one in history. Jesus said to them, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me.” We could “proof-text” ad infinitum. Each of the Scriptures you cite have a scriptural context and ultimately the context of Christ Himself, the Living Word, God’s Last and Final Word according to Hebrews 1. You may take a look at our list of 188 Scriptures here on Ultimate Restoration.
But a couple of thoughts here for our readers to ponder. First Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory describes what we as humans do, not what God does (Adam Ericksen). Penal Substitutionary Atonement is anthropologically true in that man took out his scapegoating wrath on the Son of God but it does not describe what God did. God exercised forgiveness on the cross. He restored relationship (reconciliation) through forgiveness and oneness (identification and union). The cross is something we participated in: “One died for all; therefore all died.” Christ was our representative not our penal substitute (there was a sense of substitution but not the way in which we have twisted it to mean). If our salvation was dependent upon God punishing His Son instead of us John 3:16 would read, “For God so hated the world and was so opposed to it that He had to give His only begotten Son as a sacrifice in order to love and save us.” Penal Substitutionary Atonement turns the Gospel on its head.
Second, as was stated in the article series Penal Substitutionary Atonement denies the relationship of the Trinity. PSA and the trinitarian life of God contradict one another; you cannot have both. This is because it pits the Father against the Son leaving the Holy Spirit in limbo. It also undermines the true meaning of holiness as it pertains to and originates from the eternal relationship between Father, Son and Spirit. God’s holiness is inherently relational. God’s holiness is something that was true long before sin was in the picture. God did not need sin in order to define His holiness. He was holy before sin entered because He was in perfect harmony and union with Himself as Father, Son and Spirit. The Perichoresis of God is holiness.