WL Craig on why God Torturing Billions is Fine
To me, the idea of a God who tortures billion of people by casting them into a lake of fire for eternity is horrific. When you couple that to claims the same God is perfectly good and all-loving, you have good grounds for rejecting Christianity as incoherent nonsense. I will note in passing that many Christians reject the idea of hell, but it is well established in the Bible, so in doing so they are rejecting their own holy scripture.
This post is about how Christians reconcile God torturing billions with the other claims made about God. More specifically, I am looking at how William L Craig explained it in a debate some years ago. A transcript of the debate is here.
On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God is love, and yet, on the other hand, it warns that those who reject God face everlasting punishment, and it contains frequent warnings about the danger of going to hell. But aren't these two somehow inconsistent with each other? Well, a lot of people seem to think that they are inconsistent, but in fact this isn't at all obvious. After all, there is no explicit contradiction between them. The statement "God is all loving" and "Some people go to hell" are not explicitly contradictory. So if these two are inconsistent, there must be some hidden assumptions which would serve to bring out the contradiction and make it explicit.
First point is that Craig has rather skewed the hell bit. The issue is not merely that "Some people go to hell", the issue is that God chooses to cast some people into hell to punish them for rejecting him.
What craig is choosing to ignore is that:
- It is God doing it
- He is doing it to punish
- It is punishment for rejecting God
But what are these assumptions? It seems to me that the detractor of hell is making two crucial assumptions. First of all, he assumes that if God is all powerful, then God can create a world in which everyone freely chooses to give his life to God and is saved. And second, he assumes that if God is all loving, then God prefers a world in which everyone freely chooses to give his life to God and be saved. Since God is thus both willing and able to create a world in which everyone is freely saved, it follows that no one goes to hell.
This is essentially a straw man. The contradiction is between:
God is love VS God chooses to cast some people into hell to punish them for rejecting him
There is only one assumption underlying that: Choosing to cause unnecessary suffering in someone is the antithesis of loving them.
According to the Bible, God's nature is both perfect justice and perfect love. Both of these are equally powerful, and neither can be compromised. Let's look first at God's justice. I was talking to a student once about his need of salvation, and he said to me, "I trust in God's justice. I don't think that there could be anyone who would be more fair or just than God. I have complete confidence in His decision." Now this is true. God is just. He is totally fair. He has no axe to grind. He is not out to get you. He is the most competent, intelligent, impartial, and fairest judge you will ever have. No one will get a bum decision at God's judgment seat. Every human being can be guaranteed absolute justice.
I find it bizarre Christians can claim this, when the whole point of Christianity is that if you accept Jesus, you can dodge God's justice. Christians tell us God is perfectly just - but also that he is merciful! How can he be both? Either he always and without fail dishes out the punishment deserved or he sometimes acts with mercy and does not dish out the punishment deserved!
It cannot be both.
Furthermore, the whole idea that someone else can take the punishment for your transgressions is unjust.
And further to that, the idea that a man who rejects God, but lives a mostly good life, freely giving to charity will end up in hell with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot is a travesty of justice.
The idea that God is perfectly just really does not fit with what Christianity tells us about God.
But this is precisely the problem! For God's justice exposes man's inadequacy. The Bible says that every person has failed to live up to God's moral law and so finds himself guilty before God. The Biblical word for this moral failure is sin. The Bible says that "All persons are under the power of sin. None is righteous; no, not one; all have turned aside, together they have gone wrong. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3.10,12,23).
See, there is that so-called justice of God. If you are not perfect - and nobody is - then you are a wicked sinner who deserves to be tortured in hell for eternity. Whether you are a generally good person who spends his life helping the needy, or a serial rapist. In God's so-called "justice" it is all the same.
Craig asserts that this is justice, but it is far, far from it. Considering everyone equally sinful regardless of how they lived their lives is the opposite of justice.
On the one hand are His justice and holiness, which demand punishment for sin, rightly deserved.
Here we see Craig telling us that he agrees that everyone is so thoroughly wick that they deserved to burn in hell for eternity. I find that appalling. I find it disturbing that he thinks that of himself but even more that he thinks it of his friends and family. How can a man interact with people he thinks are so evil they should be tortured for eternity?
In order to receive forgiveness, we need to place our trust in Christ as our Savior and the Lord of our lives. But if we reject Christ, then we reject God's mercy and fall back on His justice. And you know where you stand there. If we reject Jesus' offer of forgiveness, then there is simply is no one else to pay the penalty for your sin--except yourself.
Can anyone explain how that is perfectly just? I really do not see it.
Thus, in a sense, God doesn't send anybody to hell. His desire is that everyone be saved, and He pleads with people to come to Him. But if we reject Christ's sacrifice for our sin, then God has no choice but to give us what we deserve. God will not send us to hell--but we will send ourselves. Our eternal destiny thus lies in our own hands. It is a matter of our free choice where we shall spend eternity.
And yet the Bible says he does. Craig is using weasel words to rationalise away an issue he does not want to confront.
Craig here is saying that if I choose to reject Jesus sacrifice, that some how trumps God! Poor little God wants to save me, but cannot stand up against the might of a human who says no!
God is all-power. If he can forgive those who accept Jesus he can, if he chooses, forgive those who reject him.
God chooses to send those who reject him to hell
And he does so to punish them. Matthew 25 is very clear on that, but Craig just ignores that inconvenient fact.
Mat 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Later Craig addresses God one-size-fits-all punishment.
This is an interesting objection because it argues that hell is incompatible, not with God's love, but with His justice. The objection is saying that God is unjust because the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
1) The objection equivocates between every sin which we commit and all the sins which we commit. We can agree that every individual sin which a person commits deserves only a finite punishment. But it doesn't follow from this that all of a person's sins taken together as a whole deserve only a finite punishment. If a person commits an infinite number of sins, then the sum total of all such sins deserves infinite punishment. Now, of course, nobody commits an infinite number of sins in the earthly life. But what about in the afterlife? Insofar as the inhabitants of hell continue to hate God and reject Him, they continue to sin and so accrue to themselves more guilt and more punishment. In a real sense, then, hell is self-perpetuating. In such a case, every sin has a finite punishment, but because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment.
Wow. So if anyone in hell hates God - say because God is torturing him in hell - then the guy is further condemned to stay in hell. Meanwhile the torturer gets to watch on with glee.
Rev 14:10 they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.
This is such twisted morality it beggers belief.
2) Why think that every sin does have only a finite punishment? We could agree that sins like theft, lying, adultery, and so forth, are only of finite consequence and so only deserve a finite punishment. But, in a sense, these sins are not what serves to separate someone from God. For Christ has died for those sins. The penalty for those sins has been paid. One has only to accept Christ as Savior to be completely free and clean of those sins. But the refusal to accept Christ and his sacrifice seems to be a sin of a different order altogether. For this sin decisively separates one from God and His salvation. To reject Christ is to reject God Himself. And this is a sin of infinite gravity and proportion and therefore deserves infinite punishment. We ought not, therefore, to think of hell primarily as punishment for the array of sins of finite consequence which we have committed, but as the just due for a sin of infinite consequence, namely the rejection of God Himself.
So now Craig is admitting that God's justice has nothing to do with whether you rape and murder; it just comes down to whether or not you reject God.
In Craig sick world, rejecting God is reason enough for you to deserve to be tortured forever. So in fact he is saying a guy who lives a mostly good life, freely giving to charity should be punished the same as the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
God's supposed justice, ladies and gentlemen.
3) Finally, it's possible that God would permit the damned to leave hell and go to heaven but that they freely refuse to do so. It is possible that persons in hell grow only more implacable in their hatred of God as time goes on. Rather than repent and ask God for forgiveness, they continue to curse Him and reject Him. God thus has no choice but to leave them where they are. In such a case, the door to hell is locked, as John Paul Sartre said, from the inside. The damned thus choose eternal separation from God. So, again, so as long as any of these scenarios is even possible, it invalidates the objection that God's perfect justice is incompatible with everlasting separation from God.
Craig makes the assumption that there are only two alternative - heaven or hell. Either with God, singing his praises 24/7, or being tortured by him in hell. Why can he not envisage a third possibility? It is especially odd given he lives on one.
In his summing up Craig does another popular trick - getting cast into a lake of fire is not that bad really.
I don't have to defend such ridiculous things as what "Father Furnace" had to say. These are metaphors for eternal separation from God. And it is interesting that Dr. Bradley misquoted II Thessalonians 1:9 a minute ago. He quit reading right in the middle of the verse. The verse goes on to say they shall suffer "exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." And that's really the essence of what hell is. It is eternal separation from God. And that is awful! I don't want to minimize it. It is horrible. The metaphors of flames and weeping and gnashing of teeth are meant to convey what it's like for a person to be lost forever in a world just of his own, with his own selfish heart, his own selfish desires, and away from the source of all love, all goodness, all truth, and so forth. So it is terrible.
Do those in hell suffer? Craig is claiming they do not suffer, they just experience life without God (or is he saying that torturing some for eternity is perfectly reasonably as long as they do not suffer too much?).
That is really not the image the Bible conjours up.
Matthew 13:50 “furnace of fire…weeping and gnashing of teeth”
Matthew 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Mark 9:48 “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”
II Thessalonians 1:9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might
Revelation 14:10 “he will be tormented with fire and brimstone”
Revelation 14:11 “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night”
Revelation 20:14 “This is the second death, the lake of fire”
Revelation 20:15 “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire”
It may not be a literal lake of fire, but it is clear that those in hell will suffer. Craig is pretending otherwise because he knows as well as anyone that what God does is an atrocity beyond anything any human could ever do, so he wants to downplay it.
He is tacitly admitting that casting someone into a lake of fire for eternity is evil.
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