An article in the October 10 New York Times, “Tormented in the afterlife, but not forever,” shows us how theology “progresses.” After thinking about the issue for a few millennia, some theologians have decided, based on rumination and judicious Biblical exegesis, that Hell might not consist of eternal immolation after all.  Maybe you just fry for a while and are then extinguished:

[Minister and Christian publisher Edward] Fudge’s inquiry into the nature of damnation resulted in his seminal 1982 book, “The Fire That Consumes,” in which he argued that the suffering of the wicked in hell is finite, that after a time their souls are extinguished. This view, called “conditional immortality” or sometimes the more macabre “annihilationism,” is in direct opposition to the traditional Christian view that suffering in hell lasts forever.

Conditional immortality is not new — it has been proposed by Christian thinkers almost from the beginning — but it is having a moment in the (gentle, non-fiery) sun. Several new scholarly volumes about conditional immortality have been, or are about to be, published. In July, leading proponents of the theory gathered in Houston for Rethinking Hell, a conference in honor of Mr. Fudge. The group that produced the conference maintains a website, rethinkinghell.com, dedicated to its theology.

And in 2012, Mr. Fudge achieved the ultimate mark of American celebrity, the biopic. “Hell and Mr. Fudge” can be streamed in its entirety on the web, allowing one to see Mr. Fudge — played by Mackenzie Astin, best known for his childhood role on the 1980s TV series “The Facts of Life” — first as a boy, then in his college days, courting his wife, and, as an adult, doing the research that led him to renounce the traditional view of hell.

Click on the screenshot below to see the hilarious trailer for “Hell and Mr. Fudge” (you’ll have to pay to see the whole thing):

What is obvious from this trailer, and the paragraph below, is that theological “progress”, at least in this case, came simply from pondering how unjust it seems for a loving God to torment someone forever for, say, homosexuality. And indeed it would be, so advocates of this Hell Lite simply decided that Hell wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.  And, of course, they could find Biblical support for their revised theology:

Advocates of conditional immortality say that their view reflects a common-sense reading of the Bible. They point to passages like Romans 6, where Paul says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The “eternal life” of the saved is contrasted with the ultimate “death” of the unsaved. And in the Book of Revelation, Jesus refers to a “second death,” which these theologians say means the dying-again of the resurrected wicked. Their final, irreversible punishment may involve torment, but it will come to an end.

There is no limit to how these people’s ability to hang their “truths” on the thinnest string of words in scripture.  And then, like good theologians, they pretend their view of Hell was actually the traditional one all along!:

“I don’t think the traditional view became popular among Christians until the late second and early third centuries,” said Christopher M. Date, a software engineer and independent theologian who helped organize the recent conference. He believes that conditionalism was the rule for early thinkers like the second-century bishop Irenaeus, who wrote that God “imparts continuance for ever and ever on those who are saved,” while denying that same continuance to the unsaved.

And it really take theologians two millennia to realize this:

If you stop and think about it, some conditionalists say, theirs is a compassionate theology. Which is the kinder God, they ask, one who lets sinners suffer forever, or one who gives them, say, a few decades of hellfire, then administers “capital punishment” (to use Mr. Date’s matter-of-fact term)?

Well, the most compassionate God is one who doesn’t let anybody burn in hell (imagine being licked for flames for only a few minutes, much less a few decades) and then wipes them out forever. Is that compassionate? No forgiveness, no chance for rehabilitation, just some fire and then extinction?

Any hell that includes fire is incompatible with a compassionate god. And could these “compassionate” theologians tell us exactly how long God lets the miscreants suffer before he snuffs out their souls?

The article continues by saying that many “compassionate” Christians aren’t buying this: for them, hell is, as always, forever. As the piece notes, “Many Christian churches and organizations have statements of faith, which members must sign, attesting to a belief in eternal torture for the unsaved.” Yep, that’s the way to settle issues.  If science were done like this, we’d all sign statements saying that everything in the Origin of Species was literally true.

What a contrast with science, where such disputes are settled either with evidence or, if evidence is lacking, a statement that “we don’t know the answer.” Christians, however, settle the issue based on whatever seems most congenial to them, or what comports with the kind of God they imagine. In other words, theology advances by “wish thinking”: in this case, the realization that maybe a good God wouldn’t sent people to hell forever. But maybe he would. For centuries theologians have thought that, and you can support the “eternal hell” view with scripture, too.

But maybe before they start arguing about how long Hell lasts, they should look for evidence that there’s a hell in the first place. You’ll find such evidence only in the Bible, for no scorched sinners have returned to tell us of their travails. And then these revisionists might contemplate if a “good” God would even practice “conditional immortality.”

It is issues like this that makes me realize the total intellectual vacuity of theology, as well as how strongly it contrasts with science in the way it settles issues about reality.

h/t: Barry

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