Author: David Opderbeck

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been engaged in a discussion on The Ooze that has ranged from the nature of Hell, to the meaning and purpose of the atonement, to the nature of God. It began as an inquiry I posted, looking for some “emergent” perspectives on Hell. It became a debate on universalism vs. the “traditional” view of Hell. (The primary universalist proponent wasn’t really an “emergent” person, he charcterized himself as a modernist who no longer believes in a personal God).

Universalism seems completely untenable to me in light of scriptures such as Rev. 20:11-15. But the discussion challenged my complacency about what exactly the Bible says about Hell. Is Hell really a place where people will be burned alive forever, regardless of what kind of life they led?

This became an important question to me, and has led to something of a “dark night of the soul” I still find myself in this week. What is our God really like? Is He vindictive, inflicting unspeakable, unending punishments on billions of people who may die in poverty without ever hearing His name, with no sense of proportionality?

All of this also stirred up remembered feelings of fear and literal trembling, when as a young teenager I was exposed to old-time “fire and brimstone” preachers. And it made me recall exhortations to abandon “worldly” pursuits such as education and recreation for bare-knuckled evangelism. Is the grim “evangelistic headcount” ethos really correct after all?

As I studied the question (I read, among other things, Zondervan’s Four Views on Hell, a useful summary of four different views), I came to the conclusion that the Biblical imagery concerning Hell is not intended to be precisely descriptive. It speaks, for example, of Hell as a place of fire but also a place of “gloomy dungeons” (2 Peter 2:4) and as “darkness” (Matt. 25:41). Further, Jesus seems to suggest there are differing degress of punishment based on a person’s works (Mat. 11:21-24 and Luke 12:47-48). So, there seem to be internal scriptural reasons to conclude that the language about Hell as “fire” is not necessarily literal. My personal conviction is that we cannot know exactly what Hell will be like, and that it will not necessarily be the same experience for every lost person, but will be in proportion to the person’s works; yet for all it will be an unending separation from God’s blessings.

This eased my mental anguish a little. Whatever Hell is like, it is perfectly consistent with God’s pefect justice and perfect love. It isn’t arbitrary. No one will be there who has not rejected God and His gift of salvation. Yet, it’s still unspeakably awful. Doesn’t it still suggest we should reduce the faith to the barest bones of evangelism?

On this score, it was helpful for me to re-read J.I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. As Packer so plainly yet artfully notes, it is God who calls and saves people. The Holy Spirit is the instrumentality by which people are saved. Thus, we do not need to constantly feel as though we must “force” the issue with unbelieving friends and acquaintances. As we submit to God, and look for opportunities to explain the hope that is within us, we can be assured that we will be used in accordance with His plans to bring people into His Kingdom.

I was still left, though, with the question of God’s nature. Why would God create a world in which some — many — will face the anguish of being separated from Him forever? Here, a focus on the atonement was helpful. The substitutionary theory of the atonement — that Jesus bore God’s wrath for us on the cross — does not suggest some divide between a loving Jesus and a hateful God. Jesus is God. Thus, God himself, in the person of the Son, took the punishment of Hell, bore the force of His own wrath, for us. This is a mystery beyond all mysteries. God himself, in Christ, took my place! What greater confirmation of His goodness and love could there be?

Finally, the problem of reductionism yet looms. As I reflected and continue to reflect on this, it seems to me that the reality of Hell, and the real urgency of missions and evangelism, should not lead to reductionism about other important things such as art, education and recreation. God gave us the cross not merely to snatch us from the flames, but to build His Kingdom. We take part in that even now, and in a very real sense take part in His work of calling people to Himself, as we mirror the varied aspects of His image in us. And this is so in some sense even of human culture at large. Although the world is corrupt and at odds with God, nevertheless His image shows through in the power of great music, film and other art, in the grace of a young pitcher’s fastball, in the moral impulse of philanthropy and relief efforts, in the intellectual effort and rigor of scholarship. As we celebrate these things, and even enjoy them, we have the unique opportunity to show how they point to the creator who gave Himself to redeem the world.

What, then, of emergent and Hell? In my view, it’s a terrible mistake to marginalize Hell, or to suggest it’s an outdated doctrine leading to a wrong view of an angry God. As one of the characters in the Narnia Chronicles said of Aslan, “he’s not a tame lion.” Part of God’s majesty is that His character encompasses the perfection of justice and holiness as well as of love and mercy, without contradiction. Hell is part of the reality of free people relating to a Majestic God. We might be more careful in how we explain the scriptural imagery of Hell, but we cannot lose Hell and retain a meaningful faith.

I’ve been spending some time lately hanging out at The Ooze, which has been fun and fascinating. There seem to be two related by different strands in the “Emergent” movement. One is missiological: an effort to relate to the “heart language” of post-modern people. The other epistemological: an effort to reenvision theology in light of post-foundationalist epistemology.

The latter trend is the most interesting, but also the most dangerous. Christianity has always adapted to shifts in epistemology: from “authority” based, to “rationality” based, and now to post-foundationalism. The difficult trick is to treat epistemology as simply a tool for understanding truth, rather than an ideological fortress. This is true not only of “modernists” who cling to the notion that reason provides a universal foundation for truth claims, but also to post-foundationalists who reject anything “modernists” say because of their foundationalism. It’s fascinating to see this process in development at sites like The Ooze.

Following is a comment I posted on a thread at The Ooze concerning whether “postmodern Christian” is an oxymoron:

It seems to me that people on either side of this question usually are talking past each other because of different definitions of “postmodern.” Most conservative Christians who take the “no postmodern Christianity” line define “postmodern” as meaning a rejection of the concept of objective Truth coupled with a rejection of the concept of objective authority. With that understanding, they are correct. If you reject any notion of Truth existing outside your own perceptions, and you reject any notion of authority existing outside that which you create for yourself through your own perceptions, then you cannot say “Jesus is Lord.” If we glean nothing else from the Christian story as expressed in scripture, it must at least be that “Jesus is Lord” in a real way that doesn’t depend on whether I perceive or believe him to be Lord.

I gather that most in the emerging conversation wouldn’t accept that limited a definition of “postmodern.” It seems to me that in “A New Kind of Christian,” for example, McLaren uses “postmodern” to mean mostly a set of cultural attitudes — a skepticism towards sweeping “Truth” and “Authority” claims rooted in a strong sense of the limitations of human perception. With this definition, clearly one can be a “postmodern Christian.” Indeed, one could argue that “postmodern Christianity” in this sense is not something radically new, but rather represents an outgrowth of trends from the Protestant Reformation, Romanticism, German Higher Criticism, the Great Awakenings, and Evangelical reactions to Fundamentalism.

I suppose there are also many shades of meaning to “postmodern” between these two poles. In part because of this definitional confusion, I think I’m starting to lean toward the term “postcolonial” that some have started using. For me at least, much of the struggle is to examine the cultural assumptions that pervade my faith as an American Evangelical, without taking the extreme view that “faith” is nothing more than “culture.”

The New York Times today carries a fascinating article about a recently rediscovered Vivaldi work called Andromeda. The work was located by a violinist in an old Venetian orphanage where Vivaldi worked as a music teacher.

The violinist is an amatuer Vivaldi scholar, and developed some traditional evidence for the provenance of the manuscript. However, some of his most compelling evidence is the “feel” of the piece under his fingers as he plays through it. Having played and performed Vivaldi works many times, this violinist believes he has an intuitive sense for how Vivaldi pieces play.

Some traditional music scholars disagree. In particular, a leading academic Vivaldi scholar believes the work is an amalgam that contains only a very small contribution from Vivaldi. Perhaps not coincidentally, this same scholar had a copy of the same manuscript in his possession years before, and had summarily dismissed it.

The New York Times writer describes his own visit to the Venetian orphanage’s archives. Over two hundred years ago, the orhpanage was brimming with infants who had been left by abandoned mothers. Many mothers would leave broken pieces of religious pin-medallions with the babies, in the hope that they could some day reclaim their child with the matching half of the medallion. The Times writer had examined some of these medal pieces, and sensed the desperation of the mothers who left them, never to reclaim their child. He writes:

There are issues only scholarship can settle. But the boundaries of our knowledge are still limited enough to leave us mired in guesswork. And while scholars speak their guesses in the voice of reason, there’s something to be said for hte interpretive force of hands-on-experience: for the touch of a 200-year-old pin or the feel of a violinist’s fingers.

A lovely illustration, I think, of the limits of “objective” propositions, and the need for other ways of knowing to flesh out the Truth.

In an earlier post, expressing some frustration with the state of evangelicalism, I asked where to find the “real thing.” This morning I was humbled to receive an e-mail concerning some family acquaintances who had serious trouble with the birth of their new baby. The mother nearly died and the baby was born prematurely. In the e-mail, these folks were expressing heartfelt thanks to many people who had been praying for them, sending flowers, and offering assistance, including their friends, friends of friends, and others who hardly knew them. This, it struck me, is the “real thing.” It’s not so much the recovery the mom and baby are making — although that seems to be remarkable and perhaps even “miraculous” in a sense — it’s the way the Christian community, the Church with a capital “C”, rallied to their side.

If you’ve ever experienced that kind of love in a time of personal crisis — and I have, in a major health crisis of my own a few years ago — and if you’ve ever seen and felt God work to bring blessing through such a time — and I have — you know that all the problems and shortcomings of your local church (with a small “c”) and all of our theological debates pale in significance. That’s the “real thing.”

I need to point out an outstanding post by David Wayne regarding the intersection between systematic and Biblical theology, and the relationship of those ways of doing theology to other ways of reading the text. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a wonderfully concise yet comprehensive summary of the landscape.

I don’t have time to dig too far into it now, but there’s an interesting point of contact here with some “emerging” ways of reading the text. In Beyond Foundationalism, for example, Grenz and Franke note that the emphasis on systematic theology had a paradoxical result:

In effect, the scholastic theological agenda meant that the ongoing task of readining the Bible as text was superceded by the publication of the skilled theologian’s magnum opus. If the goal of theological inquiry was to extrapolate the sytem of propositions the divine Communicator had inscripturated in the pages of the text, it would seem that systematic theology could — and eventually would — make the Bible superflous.

One of Grenz and Franke’s concerns in developing a post-foundationalist theology is to recognize the “second order” nature of systematic theology and even, I think, of Biblical theology. In other words, theological propositions that we derive from the text are not precisely the same thing as the Spirit speaking to the Church through the text, which is the first order of communication.

On the other hand, it seems to me that many “emergent” folks go beyond this recognition of the proper role of systematics in seeking to dismiss propositional statements altogether. The fact that systematic propositional statements are “second order” doesn’t mean they’re untrue or lacking in value. It simply means they’re subject to reevaluation as human statements about the divine first order Truth.

Today is my 38th birthday. To celebrate, I thought I’d create a list of things that didn’t exist, or at least weren’t pervasive, when I was 28, 18 and 8. I’ve tried to focus on some things that are basic to daily life, and to show the evolution of those things through these decades. It’s amazing to see how much our daily lives have changed over these decades. My oldest child, Abbey, is 9, and I wonder what the list will look like when she’s 39. Read on to the extended entry for the list. And check back from time to time — hopefully I’ll add to it over the next few days.

I was helping my 9-year-old daughter do math tonight. Here is one of her word problems; the purpose of these problems isn’t to find a solution, but to explain why the logic is correct or incorrect:

Dan tells Matt, “If you add something to anything, you get more of it.” “Ok,” Matt says, “I’m digging a hole in the dirt. Add some more dirt and let’s see if we get a bigger hole.”

I had to laugh out loud at this one. Kind of The Zen of Math.