The Dawn Treader

"I think Lewis has a much more Arminian view of atonement."

Agreed. No question about it.

"I wonder, though, how do you (or can you) square the quoted passage with Reformed theology?"

"in the end" is a temporal term ... time bound ... which God is not, obviously. So Lewis' quote is entirely from man's perspective ... our view of things.

Trying to attributing time-bound actions to a being who exists outside of time will eventually get you into trouble.

The thing that rings true about Lewis's quote is that Hell will be occupied by people who do not want to be in the presence of Christ. There will not be one soul in Hell who will claim, "I want to be with Christ but you forced me here against my will." Many will claim, I don't deserve to be here because of X ... (e.g. "good person", "others were worse", "you didn't give me enough evidence" etc.). But what you will never hear, is "because I want to be in the presence of Christ so that I can worship and know him".

Self-choice.

Think of the conversation between the ghost and the murderer ...

Ghost : "That may be very well for you, I daresay. If they choose to let in a bloody murderer all because he makes a poor mouth at the last moment, that's their lookout. But I don't see myself going in the same boat with you, see? Why should I? I don't want charity. I'm a decent man and if I had my rights, I'd have been here [heaven] long ago and you can tell them I said so."

In each case, the ghosts argument always focuses on self ... never on Christ, or grace, or "charity" as Lewis calls it.

Lewis and I agree that the people in Hell are there because they have chosen self over God.

But Lewis is no Calvinist, and I am.

We see things differently in terms of "eternal reality" as Lewis calls it. Lewis considered "predestination" (i.e. reformed theology) as no different than determinism. Man's freedom was totally removed in his view. Chesterton was the same way.

I think God knows how to preserve man's freedom and still be sovereign too. I don't think it is possible for us to understand it, or explain it ... but I believe it is possible for an all-knowing, all-powerful, multi-dimensional, eternal being to be able to make both true at the same time.

Call it mystery ... or as Packer calls it, antimony (e.g. apparent contradiction)

Lewis and Chesterton did not think God could do that.

"Perhaps, but I feel compelled to point out that God isn't all-powerful :)"

I forgot that you count lying as being powerful ;)

That reminds me of a Homer Simpson quote: "Can God microwave a burrito so hot that even He can't eat it?"

I think we can call God omnipotent because doing so doesn't mean "anything is possible," but rather a more nuanced definition reflecting God's nature.

Rob,

"The people who believe as Lewis appears to have believed, or claim to believe as he claimed he did, do so only because they are aware on some level of the naked injustice of the Hell concept."

Your argument here doesn't stand up to logic. The "Hell concept" as you phrase it reflects an essential part of the belief in Christianity. If one does not believe in Hell and that they have been saved from it by Christ's sacrifice on the cross, then they cannot call themselves a Christian. If they choose to reject the concept of Hell, then they must necessarily reject Christianity. Consequently, for those who do not believe, there is no Hell to justify. For those who are Christians, Hell is our just desserts for having sinned against God, not a "naked injustice".

"I would not only not choose to be in Hell, if I thought it existed, I would take any step in my power to avoid it."

This is really the crux of the issue for most people, isn't it? If you don't believe Hell exists, then you don't take measures to avoid it. If you don't see your own sinfulness, then you don't see the need to seek forgiveness.

In Mere Christianity , C.S. Lewis discusses one aspect of the choice we can make:

"Another possible objection is this. Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil" Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks onto the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else -- something it never entered your head to conceive -- comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistable love or irresistable horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it." (emphasis added)

Rob,

Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the Christian doctrine of hell is true.

You get a choice. You become a genuine worshiper of God starting today and for all eternity. You submit your will to God's will, and join Matt and myself in praising God and giving our lives to Christ and worshiping the one true God.

Or, God leaves you alone for your time on this earth ... and when you die, God again leaves you alone ... and you spend the hereafter in eternal torment.

If you knew with 100 percent certainty that those were you two options, what would you choose?

Mr. D, you said:

"You get a choice."

No, only those who believe have a choice. Matt puts it this way: "...grace which is equally available to anyone who believes and asks for it."

See where my problem with your belief comes in? Unless I share it, I am condemned according to it. I can't accept a gift if I do not believe it even exists, can I? I could play along, as I suspect many people do. It seems to me, however, that an omniscient god would not be fooled or impressed by that. I don't believe what you believe; do you think I can choose to believe? You think Muslims are going to Hell. Muslims think you are going to Hell. Each of you think that if your children fall away to the religion of the other, they will be lost to you forever. This is why people fly airplanes into buildings. This is why neighbors kill neighbors. Competing religions with incompatible eschatologies can be counted on to produce violence. That's the big-picture problem. My own problem is simpler and more personal: it distresses me that you think eternal damnation for mild, short-term temporal disobedience is a just punishment.

Matt, you said:

"Is a life without choice and without risk really worth living?"

Perhaps not, but risk in general, loss, sorrow, injury, death, is not quite the same thing as eternal perdition, is it? All of the risks I perceive in nature are quite temporary and, although difficult, bearable. I have lost loved ones, suffered physical injury, endured terrible pain, had my heart broken. But none of this is even a fraction of what I would suffer in my first day of the afterlife if one like, say, Jonathan Edwards is to be believed.

Three good men die. One is a Muslim, and one is a Christian, and one is an atheist. One goes to Heaven, two go to Hell. I don't see the justice in that. None of them chose what to believe; they either believe it or they don't. Whether or not they believe it is more a function of their upbringing or personal credulity than it is indicative of worthiness. As my students would say, "That's messed up."

Rob,

I think you have a misunderstanding of belief. You seem to suggest that it is just something that happens; either you have it or you don't. It sounds as if for you, belief is the equivalent of walking down the sidewalk, minding your own business, and suddenly falling into a hole you hadn't noticed. You weren't looking for the hole and you certainly didn't expect it; it just happened.

While our beliefs are certainly shaped to some degree by our upbringing and the beliefs of our parents, there is still choice involved. We choose what to believe. We choose whether to approach a subject with an open mind or to reject an argument without careful consideration.

Let's say you assign a multi-week homework assignment to your class. At the end of the first week, you ask each of the students whether they have completed the first step in that assignment. Each student tells you he has. Undoubtedly, you would believe some and disbelieve others. You would likely evaluate the student's past history of completing homework assignments. You would rely to a certain extent on what you know of the student's reputation for being truthful. You probably would even pay attention to how they acted when they answered - did they look you in the eye, or look away. Based on all of that, you would decide whether you believed them. If you still had your doubts, you might still choose to believe them and take them at their word.

My point here is that you do have to make a choice whether you believe that Christ died for your sins and whether to accept His will for your life. I suspect Mr. D. will will say the same thing, but I find myself making this choice many times because I do have times of doubt.

If you expect to be able to make this choice without the exercise of faith, then I am afraid that you will wait too long. You will be the man saying you choose to lie down in God's presence when you no longer have the power to stand.

We can argue about how much evidence there is for or against the God of the Bible, about whether it is God's responsibility to reveal Himself to you such that your choice is clear, or about whether eternal torment in Hell is a just punishment for our sins and willing rejection of our Father and Creator, and there is, perhaps, some value in those discussions. But, in the end, if you are unwilling to ever accept Christ on faith, the discussions above will be meaningless.

Please ask yourself, from the time you wake up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, how many things you've taken on faith during your normal day. You act in faith every day. In some things, you have more reason to believe that your faith is well-founded than in other things, but you act in faith, nonetheless. What evidence would you require in order to believe that Christ died for you?

"I think we can call God omnipotent because doing so doesn't mean "anything is possible," but rather a more nuanced definition reflecting God's nature."

Ah yes, God is X, and we know that because X is defined according to what God is. Or to put it another way, I am omnipotent, for certain values of omnipotent.

"If you knew with 100 percent certainty that those were you two options, what would you choose?"

Mr. D., I would become a Christian and encourage everyone I love to do so as well. Our lifetimes are practically zero length in the context of eternity. I would hope, of course, that with this knowledge some understanding of the many problems I have with Christianity would follow.

"Or, God leaves you alone for your time on this earth ... and when you die, God again leaves you alone ... and you spend the hereafter in eternal torment."

There you go again, distancing your god from the fate of sinners, as if they were magically whisked without agency to Hell when they died and Hell is not the responsibility of God. Why do you do that? If Hell is just, you should praise God for sending those "not in Christ" to suffer eternal torment. If God created everything, then God is responsible for everything.

"Please ask yourself, from the time you wake up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, how many things you've taken on faith during your normal day."

Matt, I take very little on faith, actually, and I have a very sound basis for those things I take on faith. I assume the sun will rise in the morning (relative to my position on the earth) because it has done so every day of my life and, as far as I know, in recorded history. I expect my car to start when I turn the key, but if it did not, I would not be that surprised. I expect the two children I live with to be girls aged 12 and 9 and to respond to their names (usually).

Perhaps you can help me out here. What do you suppose I take on faith that I don't have very strong reasons related to past experience or present knowledge to do so? Can you think of anything I might take on faith at any time that is comparable to taking on faith that a man born of a virgin died for my sins and afterward rose from the dead? I'm drawing a blank here.

"What evidence would you require in order to believe that Christ died for you?"

What evidence would you require to believe that Mohammed is the messenger and prophet of God? I think I would require something approximating the strength of that evidence. Maybe even a bit more, because it's a bigger step for me than for you.

"Hell is simply eternal separation from God, contra Heaven, which is eternal union with God."

It is fashionable these days to refer to Hell as such, Steve, but the Bible and traditinal Christianity paint a much darker picture. I find my life to be whole and satisfying without a god-belief now; why would it be any different in the afterlife? For that matter, what reason have we to believe in an afterlife at all? My thought, my memories, my emotions...all that I am is in my brain. When that is gone, to what is my consciousness tethered?

Rob's doing an excellent job here, I think, but I'd like to chip in on the idea of choice. Looking at the example of our hypothetical students, I don't think I would *choose* to believe or disbelieve them. Joey I don't believe, Jacob I do believe, based on past experience. I certainly choose how to use that belief - I might decide that it's best to call Joey on my disbelief, to try to stop him piling up problems through that deceit. Or I might choose to override my belief and give him the benefit of the doubt. But the choice is in the action, not in the belief.

That's even more true when we talk about faith in God. I've examined more of the arguments for (and against) Christianity than the average Brit. I've been raised in the tradition, have family who are ardent Christians, and have certainly never been overtly harmed by some aspect of the Church. I've tried as well as I know how to have an open mind about the subject, and given that I find it naturally interesting that's not been too difficult. And in all that time I haven't been noticeably persuaded, let alone convinced. That's not been a choice; I haven't chosen to find the resurrection accounts unconvincing, and I haven't chosen to find the Christian creation myth to be broadly equivalent to any other creation myth. That's just how it has turned out. I just don't believe, and to choose to belief when I don't would presumably be an insult to God, as well as being pointless (assuming omniscience when applied to God means omniscience, and not merely 'veryscience').

"I asked the question in a very specific way ... which you altered in your answer."

Fine. Substitute your wording for mine, and my response is the same. I'm not stupid enough to value this world or even my own opinions when face with eternal perdition. I can change my thinking in the light of new knowledge. If I suddenly "knew" that the god of the Bible existed, that would mean a total paradigm shift for me. My opinion of what makes a monster would mean nothing, since God would provide the only meaningful standard of right and wrong.

Nonetheless, what it all boils down to is this: if you do not believe, you suffer eternal torment. You have to believe to even have a shot at salvation. That doesn't sound like a god-made plan to me. That sounds like the product of primitive men with a very limited understanding of themselves and their world.

Seems to me that we're right back to "God gets all the credit for all of the good stuff, but none of the blame for any of the bad stuff." Must be a good gig to have, frankly. Your argument is akin to me saying that if I give a gun to a murderer, and instruct him in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't use it, I bear absolutely no responsibility when he inevitably uses it anyway. And I can only be reasonably sure -- not absolutely, but reasonably -- that he's going to use it. God's absolutely sure that billions of His creations will reject Him and therefore be condemned to eternal suffering, but He did it anyway, and He gets let off the hook for this, because hey, it's not His fault!