THE MIRACLE GOD

Perhaps, because so many of us grew up playing make-believe games and controlling what we imagined—whether teddy bears, dragons, paper dolls, or invented companions—we wrestle with the concept of a real God: the Creator, Ruler, Judge. A real God would have ultimate control. His very existence could demolish our comfortable mental castle of retreat from personal failures and mistaken choices. For this reason, some of us try warding off this real Deity from attacking our fantasy world by using such magical phrases as: “I can’t accept a God like that!” or “My concept of God is. . .” (and each fills in the blank with what he or she wants).

Those familiar with C. S. Lewis know that in his younger years he was a skeptic. He doubted God’s existence and certainly could not accept the Triune Deity revealed in the Bible. But his philosophical journey of dealing honestly with logic led him to face the real God. That confrontation toppled the castle walls of his agnostic dreams or illusions of less “threatening” gods. When he finally bowed his knee in allegiance to the true, living God, Jesus Christ became his King.

Some who read Lewis become infuriated at how his logic gnaws away at their dysfunctional fantasies about God. That was his purpose: to dismantle their comfortable, make-believe worlds just as divine truth stripped away his own escapist imaginations. One such effort was his book Miracles. The following passage¹ from it may lure you to read the whole work. But the quote serves to conclude the brief point I’m making and to reinforce it by stating it even more clearly. . . .

Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance. If He were the truth, then we could really say that all the Christian images of kingship were a historical accident of which our religion ought to be cleansed. It is with a shock that we discover them to be indispensable. You have had a shock like that before, in connection with smaller matters—when the line pulls at your hand, when something breathes beside you in the darkness. So here; the shock comes at the precise moment when the thrill of life is communicated to us along the clue we have been following. It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. “Look out!” we cry, “it’s alive.” And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back—I would have done so myself if I could—and proceed no further with Christianity. An “impersonal God”—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (‘Man’s search for God’!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He found us? 

So it is a sort of Rubicon. One goes across; or not. But if one does, there is no manner of security against miracles. One may be in for anything.

_____________________

1. C. S. Lewis, Miracles (Macmillan: New York, 1978), pp. 93-94.

A HOLY HELL, NO LESS. . .

Although some evangelicals treat Rob Bell as a heretic, I tried keeping an open mind as I read his book Love Wins. Most of Bell’s critics habitually quote C. S. Lewis, whose literary mentor was George MacDonald. Do they realize MacDonald was a Christian universalist who believed with all his heart that God’s love would eventually win every soul?

Lewis disagreed with MacDonald about the eternality of hell, because he believed that the perpetuity of human freedom made hell an everlasting probability. But even Lewis—while portraying his mentor’s change of mind about hell in The Great Divorce—suggested the possibility of an escape. (Shame on you, if you’ve not yet read that masterpiece! . . and I won’t let my description of his “escape” episode tempt you to avoid this insightful novelette by Lewis.)

No matter what their theological degree or expertise, only the heartless can trample over the pathos and moral outrage exuding from Rob Bell’s question: “Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?” The question is as old as the early church, and there have been others who stood within the orthodoxy of the ancient Creeds yet struggled until answering it in much the same way Bell does.

A quick search online will provide all the arguments you need against Bell’s optimism, if that’s what you’re looking for. However, while disagreeing with him, I share his logical pain over the thought of a place where the lost forever receive cruel and unusual punishment. But if that’s the straw man Bell sets up to knock down as a foundation for his theories, then he must be talking about a destiny that exists only in the theological imagination of Calvinists. I say this not because of the disagreeable nature of hell’s intense suffering, but because of the unloving nature of a Calvinistic deity who doesn’t care about keeping a certain large number of lost souls from going there.

Calvinist intellectuals may ridicule the "simple-minded" enthusiasm of Arminians, but it’s the sovereign will of the all-loving God, celebrated first in Catholicism and later in Arminianism, that freely grants prevenient grace for awakening sin-bound souls. This grace allows every sinner the awesome freedom to responsibly choose or adamantly refuse the light of Christ. Divine grace to obey must logically accompany each and every divine command to repent, otherwise the whole concept of human responsibility is as much an illusion as the maya of Hinduism. At the same time, it’s the endless mercy of that all-loving God—forever desiring none to perish—that maintains a place called hell for all the impenitent. Yes, a real hell, and for very holy reasons.

How could it be otherwise? God sovereignly sets the will of sinners free to respond to Him. When they resist, God refuses to abandon lost souls to their miserable, relentless flight from truth. Ongoing divine Love and Light are never silent or complacent in the midst of ongoing human rebellion. C. S. Lewis believed “that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” (The Problem of Pain). And so, right along with Lewis, I believe that “God in His mercy made \ The fixed pain of Hell.” (from Lewis’ poem “Divine Justice”). Hell’s ceaseless pain is divine Love’s incessant knocking on doors kept shut by the perpetual defiance of self-will against the healing of divine Light.

No, I can't agree with Rob, who tries to defend God’s reputation by making hell into a short prison sentence, nor even with Master MacDonald, whose fearfully fiery purgatory would set Brother Bell's teeth on edge. Their big mistake, so similar to that in Calvinism, is to make God's loving grace irresistible, while underestimating His sovereign enabling of human wills to freely choose their ultimate destiny.

Neither the bliss of heaven nor the blast of hell need a further defense to free-willed minds than this: Light’s passionate marriage to Love forever celebrates in heaven every human’s pursuit of truth, and Love’s absolute allegiance to Light persistently refutes in hell all stubborn commitments to lies (Romans 2:6-11). Both conditions—that of paradise and that of perdition—mercifully demonstrate God’s eternal promotion of authenticity. Both destinies validate the everlasting duty of humans to choose goodness. Therefore, both forever glorify the grace of a holy and loving Creator.

[for further thoughts along these lines, see my poems, “Inviting Visitations,” “Hellfire and Damnation” and “The Knock.” See, as well, my previous blog article, “The Problem of Hell.” Also, you might benefit from a very Biblical sermon on YouTube called "Hell Explained," well worth listening to.]

THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST’S ATONEMENT

It may interest, anger, befuddle or flabbergast you, but there’s no one specific view of Christ’s atonement that fully explains the spiritual transaction in history and in eternity that transpired at the Cross of Calvary. It remains as mysterious as the doctrines of the Trinity or the Incarnation.

Those interested can survey the various theories of the Atonement on the Web. My purpose here is not to recount them, but to decry how so many Bible teachers haughtily assume theirs to be the right one: “How dare anyone question the legal-penal substitution theory? Doesn’t it undergird all our evangelical preaching?” A better question is, “How could the church even use the word atonement to describe what happened on the Cross?” Most theologians readily admit that it’s a major misappropriation of terminology in Christian thinking, but also that it's a term we're stuck with.

In the Old Testament usage of the Hebrew word atonement (kaphar, “to cover over”) is a concept of hiding sin’s guilt by covering it with the blood of animal sacrifices. Ecclesiastic prudery insists that God clothed the first sinners with animal skins to approve or accommodate the very first independent idea and action of their sin nature: a felt need to hide their bodies. A view more in keeping with His gracious character is that God was providing His delinquent image-bearers either physically—with warmth and protection in a fallen world—or spiritually—with the first recorded kaphar, an atonement or covering for their sin.

Not only is the concept of atonement etymologically absent from the New Testament, but a new idea is introduced. We first hear it from the lips of John the Baptist upon seeing Jesus at the Jordan: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus came to take away sins, not to cover over them, which was all that animal sacrifices could do. These sacrificial repetitions, year after year, only reminded sinners that personal guilt was put away from sight not taken away (Hebrews 10:4-5). Jesus accomplished the latter.

But how did the transaction at the Cross work? Was it a debt repayment, a redemptive trade-off, a substituted punishment, an absorption of divine wrath? A narrow focus on the Cross alone, in conjunction with certain Scriptures, might elevate any of these motifs to the exclusion of others. But there is a larger picture, one that weaves the Cross and the Resurrection into one solid and inseparable tapestry of redemption. That is the ransom or restoration theory of the Atonement.

In Gustaf Aulén’s book, Christus Victor, I learned that this understanding of the Atonement dominated Christian thought for the first millennium of Church history. C. S. Lewis employed it as the basis for his allegorical representation of the death of Christ in Aslan’s death for “the traitor” and subsequent resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I first read Christus Victor, I was inspired to write the following poem with the same title, as an attempt to capture this idea of strategic ransom:

            CHRISTUS VICTOR

Drawn into a web of darkness,

Duped and drugged with sin's seduction,

Down we drank the Devil's lie

And were lost within the starkness

Of a wasteland of destruction,

Damned and doomed, condemned to die.

Love Almighty, Love Creator,

Love, Who breathed His image in us,

Love, the awesome Trinity,

Planned to foil the Fabricator,

Planned to plunder hell and win us

By strategic mystery.

God descended and invaded

Human flesh and limitation,

Preaching Heaven's Reign begun,

Waging war where sin pervaded,

Buying reconciliation,

Tasting death for everyone.

Had they known the power hidden

In the Lion's crucifixion,

Hell would not have killed the Son.

Now the human race is bidden

To depart from self-addiction

Through the victory Jesus won.

Christus Victor!  God descended

To fulfil the Law's postponement.

Slain, He slew the death we died!

Christ is risen!  God ascended!

Sinners, purchased by atonement,

Rise with Christ, the Crucified!

Christ Triumphant!  Christus Victor!

Captives freed by hell's disruption

Soar like eagles taking wing!

Ransomed by the Liberator,

Slaves to sin and death's corruption

Gain new life in Christ the King!

            -- David L. Hatton, 11/21/95

Because of its heavy dependence on a realistic view of the Incarnation, this atonement theory has quietly influenced the development of my theological thinking. Yet, in general, I forgot my initial excitement in discovering it . . . until recently, when I saw the video clip of Brian Zahnd giving, “The Gospel in Chairs.” I encourage you to watch it, maybe more than one time. If it doesn’t immediately blow your mind, then ask yourself, “Does how I view and preach the Cross accurately represent the heart of the Heavenly Father who ‘so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son’?” You may find yourself reaching back to the minds and helpful illustrations of our early Christian ancestors for a balanced view of this mystery.

It’s important to approach unfathomable mysteries in the Christian faith with deep reverence and godly humility. Glib confidence and sometimes outright cockiness in Christians mouthing their beliefs may not only be a turn-off for the prospective convert, but a point of great future embarrassment, or even tears of regret, in the presence of our risen, conquering King, Christus Victor.

THE PROBLEM WITH HELL

Christians who think about what they believe have usually thought about the problem of “Hell.” Why does a loving Creator allow such a place? Some try dancing theological circles around the doctrine of Hell revealed in Scripture. But Hell will not go away, and for a very good reason.

In my journey of faith, I’ve many times been helped by the writings of C. S. Lewis. While reading The Problem of Pain, I made a giant step in understanding Hell. Later, in his book The Great Divorce, I found these words that many will recognize:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”

Before ever seeing that popular quote, I heard a sermon on the “love of God” which downplayed the reality of “hell.” During the message, I thought about how the words of Deuteronomy 4:24, “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God,” related to 1 John 1:5 and 1 John 4:8, where John says, “God is love,” and “God is light.” I got this sudden insight on Hell: God, as Light and Love, reveals the truth and is so passionately jealous of its integrity that He consumes the darkness of lies. Our God of fiery Love is also the God of consuming Light. Hell is not the result of His absence, but an effect of His ongoing presence. Love and Light are omnipresent.

Later, when studying the doctrine of Hell in graduate school, these previous meditations congealed into the following poem that describes God from two opposite perspectives:

HEAVEN AND HELL

“Consuming Fire, Eternal Light,

 Who shines Your grace to heal our sight;

 Life-giving Flame and Loving Blaze,

 Our open hands to You we raise,

 Secure within Your purging gaze,

 With joy we praise: we sing our praise!”

“Unquenching Heat, Infernal Light,

 That fries our souls, disrupts our night;

 Tormenting Blast and Burning Fate,

 Our fists we raise in stern debate,

 Enraged beneath your scorching Weight,

 In pain we hate: we scream our hate!”

 

— David L. Hatton, 3/8/1983

(in Poems Between Heaven & Hell © 1991 by David L. Hatton)

As C. S. Lewis explains, Hell is God’s last mercy to the unrepentant sinner. The perpetual pain of Hell is Love’s endless commitment to teach the truth to free moral agents who forever choose to ignore or deny it. Ignorant skeptics may zealously hate the concept of Hell. But in His own perfect hatred for it, God confronted the realistic results of humanity's misuse of free-will with the only remedy that could maintain human freedom: His personal incarnation, death, and resurrection in Christ. At His own expense, God offers us an escape from the self-made choices which brought Hell into existence and make it such a hellish place.

So, the familiar question stands: “Where will you spend eternity?” The Gospel of Jesus Christ lays the ultimate responsibility on each human soul for individually determining the answer.

[One of the best sermons I've heard on this subject, from a totally Biblical viewpoint, is "Hell Explained" (a bit over 40 minutes long, but well worth listening to). ALSO, see my other blog article: "A HOLY HELL, NO LESS..."]