God's Judgment (1964)
Part of a panel at Urbana 64by Kenneth Kantzer
This talk came as part of a panel entitled “Man's Lostness”: Kenneth Kantzer—God’s Judgment; Eugene Nida—Man’s Awareness; Donald Hoke—Christian’s Responsibility; Paul Little—Student’s Response.
See below for Kenneth Kantzer's introduction by Urbana 64 director Eric Fife.
"It is the greatness of man which represents his greatest tragedy. Wicked man is not a farce; he is unutterable tragedy. It is only biblical Christianity, because it exalts man so highly, that also dares to speak of man's eternal punishment."
God's judgment, the wrath of God, divine condemnation, hell, eternal punishment—what harsh sounding, uncompromising, anachronistic words these are in today's one world of all mankind. What would you like me to say about these words? I don't know what you would like me to say, but I know what I for my part should like to say to you.
I should like to say to you: God is too loving; God is too kind; God is too generous to condemn any soul to eternal punishment. The God of John 3:16 and eternal punishment are radically and essentially contradictory.
Either God is not the all loving God that the Bible speaks of, or hell—if it exists at all—can only be the anteroom to heaven, a temporary and frightful discipline to bring perverts to final moral perfection. My soul draws back in involuntary dread at the awful thought that conscious, living, human beings should ever be punished eternally. No, God, it can't be! It can't be!
Would it surprise you to know that two thousand years ago the Apostle Paul had just the same feeling? The Apostle Paul said, "I would gladly be damned if by my damnation Jews could be brought into fellowship eternally with God." It's not surprising that you and I and the Apostle Paul and the biblical writers and all humanized mankind experience a revulsion of soul against the very thought of eternal punishment. God Himself, in the depths of His being, wishes, according to the Bible, that no single human soul should ever perish but that all might come to repentance, faith, and the good life of heaven. The God of the Bible wishes to save all men so desperately that He sent His only begotten Son to die for mankind.
From His side, having Himself tasted of death for all men, He removed the last barrier to the complete redemption and universal salvation of every soul that has ever lived. I long to reassure you, therefore, that all men will eventually be saved. And according to the Bible, this is exactly what God Himself wishes. But. . . .
But the hard structure of reality cannot be clawed out of the webs of human wishes; and not even Almighty God, the holy and wise God of Scripture, always chooses to bring His own divine wishes to pass.
What are the facts, the rock-ribbed realities of human existence and human destiny? I recall the intuition of Paul Tillich, that ultimately all existing humanity will be absorbed like Christ into the eternal ground of all being. I recall the sentimental hope of Nels Ferre that love in the end must dissolve all hate, the demythologized symbol of Rudolf Bultmann's infinite triumph beyond history, Emil Brunner's despairing compromise in the annihilation of all not ultimately redeemed, Karl Barth's revival of Friedrich Schleiermacher's universal predestination of all men to life in Jesus Christ.
But, I am also reminded of the cogent arguments for eternal punishment set forth by Immanuel Kant, certainly no light weight dilettante in the realm of logical argument. I recall too Julius Mueller in his classic work on sin, the weightiest tome ever written on the topic of human sin and human destiny, to say nothing of Nietzsche and his contention that all thoughts of life beyond the grave are merely the projection of wishful thinking by men who are afraid to face the harsh realities of human finiteness.
The fact is the human mind cannot penetrate by rational argument through fragmentary data to any certain conclusions as to the nature of life after death. On this all-important topic of what is the ultimate destiny of mankind, we are shut up to a dismal, helpless ignorance or to divine revelation.
In the divine revelation of Holy Scripture we are given, not an answer, but the answer to the basic questions of human destiny. Here we have no precarious guesses as to what might happen, but divine revelation of what God himself chooses to do and what He, in his omniscience knows will happen.
Unfortunately, the biblical answer is not an answer which is suited to satisfy the wishful sentiments that I may have. It is a hard and crushing word, devastating to human hope and to human pride.
To the amazement of many, the fullest words of Scripture, and certainly the most uncompromisingly dreadful, flow from the- lips of the Divine Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us hear His words:
"And he (God) will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. Then he will say to them on his left, ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.' And these will go away into eternal punishment."
"It is better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."
"Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. But rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell."
"The Son of Man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that have been, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
That is our Lord speaking. Other parts of Scripture convey the same solemn message. Christ is the eternal judge who will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Gehenna, hell, is described as everlasting punishment, everlasting fire, the fire that shall never be quenched, everlasting chains, eternal fire, and so on. The word gehenna itself means the dump heap, the refuse heap of the universe; and that awful word appears twelve times in the New Testament. But the amazing thing about it is that in eleven of those twelve times it occurs on the lips of our Savior. It is our Lord who stresses the finality of decision in this life, and His words are echoed by the Apostle, "Now is the accepted time;' behold, now is the day of salvation."
I give serious consideration; indeed, I must confess, I am deeply impressed by the arguments of brilliant thinkers like Tillich, and Ferre and Bultmann and Brunner and Barth, not to mention John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas, the Pope, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Bertrand Russell, and many more. But what do these men know? What are the data on which they base their judgments? When it comes to the important question, "What is man's destiny after this life?," I prefer Jesus Christ, the God-man as my authority, to Paul Tillich. I prefer Jesus Christ to Rudolf Bultmann. And above all, lest you misunderstand me, I prefer Jesus Christ to my own blind human guesses based on woefully inadequate data.
For those who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, there is no escaping the clear, unambiguous language with which He, more than anyone else in all the New Testament, warns His hearers of the awful truth of eternal punishment. No universalism, no annihilationism, no probation in the hereafter satisfies His word. The awful stark reality, so Jesus Christ teaches us unequivocally, is just this: the soul that rebels against God and chooses to remain in his sinful rebellion, unrepentant throughout this life, separates himself from the good kingdom of God by the inexorable moral law of the universe placed within it by its righteous and sovereign Creator and Judge. God, if He is an absolutely holy God, must punish the unrepentant wicked by eternal banishment from His presence and His good fellowship.
The God of the Bible takes man seriously. We hear people jest occasionally about a canine heaven. Did you ever hear anybody, even in jest, speak of the eternal punishment of a dog? I doubt it. It seems incongruous. The dog being is not sufficiently noble. It doesn't warrant eternal punishment. The dog is not a divine-like being made like God. But man, according to the Bible, is a noble creature made like God for eternity. And it is the greatness of man which represents his greatest tragedy. Wicked man is not a farce; he is unutterable tragedy. It is only biblical Christianity, because it exalts man so highly, that also dares to speak of man's eternal punishment.
For modern man, all too often, man is not created in the image of God. He is merely a more complicated animal, a planetary eczema on a nondescript body drifting off into directionless and meaningless faith. Eternal punishment for such a man is ridiculous egotism.
By contrast the biblical God of John 3:16 personally and intimately loved man and valued him so highly that He sent His only begotten Son to die for mankind. The God of the Bible takes man seriously and, therefore, He takes man's rebellion against the Good and the Truth seriously. Only a biblical view of man provides an adequate backdrop for a biblical view of the divine wrath directed against a rebellious sinner.
No doubt there have been many foolish things said about divine punishment. Foolish appeals are made to the sensuous imagery of the Bible. There have been those who, without regard to historical realism, have conjured up visions of millions of noble and virtuous savages who, ignorant, are unjustly condemned in spite of their innocence. Others have argued, on the basis of verses taken out of context, that all good men will be saved—forgetting what the Bible says about the true nature of man.
Still others assert that he who has never heard the gospel may repent of his sin, cast himself upon the mercy of God, and remain forever lost—forgetting that the Bible says that the man who reverences God and does what is right is welcome to God. You and I dare not lay down our own rules as to how God must draw human souls to himself through Christ.
In spite of all such foolishness and much more, the basic teaching is abundantly clear, and we dare not obscure it. According to the Bible and, above all, according to our Lord the sinner who will not repent of his sins but chooses to exist in rebellion against God stands under the condemnation of a holy and loving deity and will be barred forever from participation in the good fellowship of the righteous kingdom of God.
One last word. Never confuse the truth and reality of eternal punishment with the Christian gospel. The gospel is not the terrible heart-rending news that some men will actually be lost forever. The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. It is good news for a blind, bewildered, broken-hearted world of men and women lost in sin and crushed under the burden of human existence. The Christian gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, this wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ whom we know, is able and eager to save all men everywhere, whoever they may be, wherever they have wandered off into nothingness and however drastically they are bowed down by sin. He, Jesus Christ, is able to heal their souls and give them life—full, free, joyous, meaningful, eternal life with God.
Kenneth Kantzer's introduction by Urbana 64 director Eric Fife
We come to our third panel this morning, continuing the subject of yesterday, "Witness Unashamed." One of the factors that perhaps has tended to lead to a diminution in the witness of Jesus Christ in the world today is a certain theological change that has come about. Some hundred years ago, the attitude was very simply summed up "All men without Christ are lost. They are brands to be plucked from the burning. Let us get busy to save these people."
At times, conceivably, this was stated with a little too touch extravagance. I don't know. But we have gone from one extreme to the other at this time, and there is a general doubt and fuzziness as to whether men are lost without Jesus Christ. This has in many cases impaired and diluted the sense of missionary concern that should characterize us, both in our attempts in this country and in our ministry across the seas.
So we come this morning to consider this very important and very difficult subject of "Man's Lostness." First of all, we are going to have a theologian speak to us—and I am not sure; when we, assigned these subjects and the time, whether we did the greater injustice to the men or to the subjects. But I think you will all bear with Dr. Kenneth Kantzer in the very difficult task that is his as a theologian in speaking on the subject of "God's Judgment" in connection with man's lostness.
Dr. Kantzer is, as you know, the Dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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