Hell and Evangelism: Part 7, Embrace the Mystery

Some readers of The Book of Love might be disappointed with how I handle the issue of eschatology. Throughout the book, it’s clear I’m on the more hopeful side of the debate. But in my chapter on Judgment Day I ultimately land on mystery. And such an ending, even an equivocation, might strike long-term readers as too equivocal, even disingenuous.

A couple of reflections about all this.

First, as I state in Part 1 of the book, I didn’t want to write for an echo chamber. My book isn’t polemical. I didn’t want to write a book for the already converted. I don’t like preaching to the choir. So I tried to avoid connecting all the dots. I tried, rather, to point toward a horizon of possibility and gently invite readers to take a stroll in that direction. My hope is that, as people make this journey, they will start to ask questions, explore, and begin connecting some dots. And there are a lot of books already on the market that can help with that task.

Phrased differently, I was actually interested in trying to change people’s minds. I know! Most books aren’t interested in this project at all. Rather, books about the Bible tend to show you how to read the Bible in light of your current moral, religious, and political convictions. But if you want to change people’s minds, you’ve got to back up a bit and till the soil. You have to work with background assumptions and hidden worldviews. You’ve got to break the ice up a bit. And a book that does this sort of work looks different from your run-of-the-mill “This Is How Progressives Read the Bible as Progressives” and “This Is How Evangelicals Read the Bible as Evangelicals” type of book.

So, when I approached eschatology as a mystery in the book, a lot of that was due to the agenda of the book and its overall goals and strategy. Admitting mystery is a hospitable, open, and humble way to invite people into a conversation.

But beyond this consider-your-audience pragmatism, what about my eschatological convictions?

In the debates about so-called “universalism,” a contrast is often made between “hopeful universalism” and “dogmatic universalism.” Dogmatic universalism makes a strong doctrinal claim: that all persons will in fact be saved, treating this as a settled theological conclusion. Hopeful universalism, by contrast, stops short of that assertion. Hopeful universalism refuses to claim knowledge of the final outcome, yet maintains that Christians may rightly hope and pray that God’s saving will, revealed in Christ, might finally encompass all. Figures such as Hans Urs von Balthasar are often associated with hopeful universalism due to his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?, which argues for eschatological hope grounded in the mercy of God. Many also consider Karl Barth to be a hopeful universalist.

I have many friends who would describe their beliefs this way:

1. Biblically, I am committed to the view that hell exists and that people are going to hell.
2. And yet, I hope many of these people, perhaps even most or all of them, will eventually be saved.

To which I say, that’s good enough for me. I don’t debate the point much past this. And it’s here that I would like to talk about the varieties of dogmatic universalism.

One type of dogmatism would be dismayed at my charity toward my friends who express a weak hope. These dogmatists are more evangelistic than I am, feeling compelled to debate and argue people into changing their views. I am not dogmatic in this way. I have lived with minority views for most of my adult life within my denomination. I tolerate differences of opinion. I’m good to agree to disagree.

Concerning the coherence of the Christian faith as it relates to eschatology, I’m more dogmatic. I am argumentative on this point, and any dogmatism I’ve displayed in debate, personally and online, concerns this issue. I just don’t think Christianity is theologically and morally coherent unless all of creation, humanity included, is restored and reconciled to God. I think Colossians 1:19 is the lynchpin to the entire worldview:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

“To reconcile to himself all things.” Creation theology. Soteriology. Eschatology. Theodicy. Ontology. Morality. Logically, the theological edifice is held together by this crucial commitment. Pull that pin and the whole falls into fractured incoherence. This is why Karl Barth, our most systematic modern theologian, ended up with a hopeful eschatology. Barth saw the whole better than anyone and knew how it is held together. Piecemeal theologians never glimpse the gestalt Barth viewed.

Now, does all that sound a wee bit dogmatic? Yep. If you want to argue about the coherence of Christianity, I am absolutely dogmatic on this point.

And yet, there is a third type of dogmatism. Which brings me back to The Book of Love. Does my dogmatism about theological coherence mean that I’m right? Well, no. I'm not dogmatic about ultimately being right. You can hold your views with conviction and still espouse epistemic humility. Lord knows I think I’m right. And I’ll argue with anyone who thinks otherwise. But I’m humble enough to admit that we’re arguing about mysteries. We are children playing on the shore of a vast apophatic mystery. Here’s an analogy from Albert Einstein regarding science’s attempt to explore the cosmos:

In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.

If this is true of physics, how much more true of theology? Like the scientist positing an explanation for the closed watch, I think a hopeful eschatology is the best explanation for the “mechanism” of the Christian faith. Others disagree. And so we’ll argue about those rival visions, just like the scientists argue. But at the end of the day, we’re unable to open the watch to see who is right. I think belief in eternal conscious torment is wrong. A horrible explanation for the watch. For their part, believers in eternal conscious torment think I’ve got it wrong. And both of us are pretty darn dogmatic in our opinions. And yet, at the end of the day, we're unable to resolve the question. We’ll both have to wait until the watch gets opened.

Like I said, it's a mystery.