Friday, March 15, 2024

Part I

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What Happened to Hell? Pope Francis’s (Typically) Confusing Comments About Hell Raise Questions About Hell in Doctrine and in the Culture

Years ago, an author wrote, “Hell Disappeared. No one noticed.” Well, of course hell hasn’t disappeared. But that does tell you something about what has happened to hell in our culture. And sometimes this appears in some very strange places. Hell’s appearance or disappearance appeared in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal just recently, where Lance Morrow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center asked the question, “Has the old idea of fire and brimstone through all eternity gone out of business?” Now, very interestingly in the article that had the headline, “How We Think About Hell,” Morrow goes to a recent statement made by Pope Francis. Okay, so brace yourself.

So Pope Francis was asked about hell and what he said is, “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought, I’d like to think the hell is empty. I hope it is.” Well, on the one hand you can just say that’s Pope Francis being Pope Francis. That’s such a Pope Francis thing that sounds just like him, because Pope Francis is an agent of doctrinal confusion and he is intentionally an agent of doctrinal confusion. He has sought to confuse the teaching of his own church, the Roman Catholic Church, and much to the consternation of traditional and conservative Roman Catholics. But no one can be surprised anymore that Pope Francis shows up and sows seeds of doctrinal confusion, because that seems to be what he’s basically all about. So when Pope Francis says that his position is not a dogma of faith, but his own personal thought, “I like to think that hell is empty. I hope it is.”

Well, of course that flies in the face of the fact that the New Testament tells us that actually; wide is the way that leads to hell and narrow is the way that leads to heaven. By the way, I don’t think Pope Francis may be aware of this, but it is Jesus who actually in the New Testament, in the four gospels, has more to say about hell than he actually says about heaven. That doesn’t make heaven any less real than hell. It just shows well where we are needing to hear about a warning of the eternal physical torment by God’s righteous judgment of those who are in hell. So the Pope may like to say that he would like to think that hell is empty and then say, I hope it is. But that just shows how little he’s constrained at all by scriptural truth, and quite frankly, even by the words of Jesus.

But the article by Lance Morrow that did appear in the Wall Street Journal is not just about Pope Francis, but about the larger question as to whatever happened to hell. And by the way, this question goes back now decades. And I think it might be helpful for Christians that we just come back to a reminder of biblical truth and also, a bit of analysis of what’s at stake in this doctrinal question. And yeah, cultural analysis. What is going on in our culture? So if hell disappeared in our culture, where and when did it disappear? Well, I think we can actually answer that question with some specificity.

So when you are thinking about theological liberalism, and that is the movement that sought intentionally very explicitly to redefine Christian doctrine away from, I’ll just say it, a biblical definition and towards a more modern acceptable definition, the doctrine that was often first attacked by the theological liberals was the doctrine of hell. By the way, that was true in the development of theological liberalism in the United States of America. And it even predates the establishment of the United States of America. It goes back to a place like the Harvard Divinity School, which was established in order that there would be the perpetuation of an orthodox congregational ministry, but it fell to theological liberalism quite early, in particular to the heresy of universalism. And the issue of hell became the focus of liberal attack in the United States even before there actually was a United States of America.

But that didn’t have a lot to do with say the sermons that most people heard in most churches, most churches, most preachers continued to believe in hell, until the late 19th century when the effect of theological liberalism became more pronounced in many denominations, seminaries, institutions. And then you have to fast-forward to the 20th century when the big change wasn’t so much theological as cultural. It was a giant change in the culture in which the idea of hell and the idea of a righteous God who would punish sinners in hell, that became culturally unacceptable.

And so you of course had liberal denominations that were already shaky in terms of doctrine, and that cultural force basically just pushed them over the edge. And so they went from questioning hell to pretty much outright denying hell. And of course, that means denying the truthfulness of an awful lot of scripture. And so this is tied to the authority of Scripture. It’s tied to biblical theology, it’s tied to our understanding of the gospel. It’s even tied to our understanding of the authority of Christ, because again, as I said, Christ is quite clear about the reality of hell as a place of eternal physical suffering after the judgment. Morrow asks the question rightly when he poses it this way, “Has the traditional hell fire and brimstone through all eternity gone out of business either because as the Pope hopes there are no longer enough customers or because hell has become an atavism, medieval lurid and not credible to the 21st century mind?”

He goes on and ask the question, “Is the eternal fire a metaphor? If so, what does it mean? Is hell a physical place or a state of mind? Is there such a thing as eternal life? And if God’s verdict goes against you, does that mean a life of everlasting torment? Is it possible,” he says, “To believe in hell if you don’t believe in God or is hell the terrible solitude of living without God?”

Now what’s interesting is that I think in that paragraph, he really has distilled a lot of the confusion about hell at our times. I lament the fact that he doesn’t get to a biblical answer, but he does understand the question. He does understand the cultural displacement of hell. Here’s where I want Christians to understand, that basically by this time, we’re talking in the year 2024, all of Orthodox Christian doctrine has been culturally displaced. So hell was one of the first doctrines to be culturally displaced, but hell is right now just one of the major Christian doctrines that are just intellectually, culturally, aesthetically not acceptable to vast numbers of the American people. And this is the process of secularization. A society is basically broken from any authoritative understanding of the truthfulness of Christianity.

And so if you no longer believe the Bible’s the Word of God, if you no longer believe that Christian doctrine is true, then quite frankly you can throw aside any doctrine you don’t like, and over time by the way, that’s going to mean every doctrine and you’re just going to be left with some kind of vague spirituality. And in that sense, hell becomes something you have to make into a metaphor. Hell is personal suffering, hell is being lonely, hell is this, hell is that. Hell is a state of mind, many people would argue.

But you’re also looking at the cultural reality that the lingering power of the threat of hell still has an effect. It still shows up in literature with this understanding of some kind of moral judgment that will one day happen. It still shows up in some way in secular Hollywood and in other places when the narratives they tell simply cry out for the fact there has to be some kind of final adequate judgment upon this. And you see the reality that hell may have been displaced even as theological liberalism and secularism no longer find such things acceptable or credible. The reality is that the human heart still cries out. There has to be the reality of something like hell and it has to be tied to something like God’s eternal judgment, not just to some kind of psychological state of mind. Now, as I’ve said, this particular writer, Lance Morrow, doesn’t get us to an embrace or even an understanding of the biblical notion of hell, but he really does paint the picture of the displacement of hell in this society and raises many of those major issues.

The fact is this is a crucial theological test for Christians. Do we believe Jesus? Do we believe the Bible is the inherent infallible Word of God? Do we believe that Jesus warned the disciples and warned in preaching to the crowds about the reality of hell? Did Jesus really say wide is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to salvation? Did Jesus really say that Hell was being prepared for those who would face the eternal judgment of God? The reality is, yes, he did. Yes he did. He did say those things. We have absolute confidence. He said those things. And you know what that means? We have no theological right to back off of what Jesus revealed as truth, to back off from what Jesus taught is to back off from Jesus, which is to abandon Christianity. So yes, I’ll put it just that way. If you deny the doctrine of hell, you are leaving biblical, authentic orthodox Christianity and inventing a new religion. And by the way, you aren’t changing eternal destiny. God is not going to close hell because you don’t like the idea.

One final thought about hell, it’s not enough to believe in the quietness of your heart that the Bible is true and that what Jesus spoke is true. If, when an issue is questioned and a doctrine is undermined, you do not speak up in its biblical defense. That is what faithfulness requires of us not just thinking a right in the privacy of our own minds, but speaking up for what we know to be true because we understand eternity is hanging in the balance.

One final thought. It does tell you something that the Wall Street Journal would run a major article and then a succession of letters from people who are writing in the year 2024 about hell.

Part II

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What Does Natural Death Mean? Should We Use Modern Technologies to Forestall Death? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 15-Year-Old Listener of The Briefing

Alright, let’s turn to your questions. As always, I deeply appreciate the questions sent in by listeners to The Briefing, and as always, good questions for us to think about. All right, I told someone that one of the happiest things about doing the briefing and especially the segment on Fridays is understanding the quality of the questions that come from listeners and in particular from younger listeners. So here’s a really smart question sent in by Bill. Bill tells us that he’s a 15-year-old who’s being homeschooled, and he asked the question about the end of life. He says, “You often say from conception to natural death, you’ve talked a lot about the beginning, but not so much about the end. What exactly is natural death in a world where medical technologies can prevent what would in the natural world be a fatal disease? If the use of technologies is inappropriate around the beginning of life, why is it not at the end of life?”

Well, thanks Bill. And by the way, you asked not just one good question, but several, but all related to the question about the end of life. And the bottom line here is your question, what does natural death mean? And I’m glad to tell you that from a biblical theological perspective, we really do have a pretty good idea what natural death means. Natural death means that without external intervention, there is an end to biosis, or the process of life in a human body. So that is what natural death means. It’s not a death that is brought about intentionally, it is rather something that simply happens with the actual cessation, not only of a heartbeat, but a brain activity in order to get to an adequate understanding of the end of the process of life or biosis. And so as you look at that, you recognize, okay, okay, this requires us to have some evidence about natural death, and so it has to be confirmed in some way.

In most circumstances, it becomes pretty clear that natural death comes about when there’s a cessation of heartbeat and breathing. And so that’s just bluntly what happens in most cases, and that’s the way it’s gone through most of human history. In a clinical setting though, it can be more complicated than that, because it could be a situation in which there would be a rightful impulse to try to resuscitate someone, and that requires a medical knowledge of what is really going on. Is this a terminal disease? What is it? Is it the result of some kind of electrical impulse? Is this something that can be reversed or not? The big issue here, Bill, honestly, is the word natural. It means that you don’t use an unnatural process to bring about the death. We do understand that the wages of sin is death. We do understand that God’s judgment upon our sin means that we are mortal beings and that death enters into us with Adam’s sin.

So we do expect to die if the Lord doesn’t come before we die. But the big issue is, are we talking about some kind of intentional effort to bring about death? But there’s a second issue, and you really do get to this bill, I appreciate it. And that is that there are situations, especially clinical situations, in which there can be an artificial extension of what is called life rather than the acknowledgement of a natural death. And this is a big question, and quite frankly, it’s a question with which I’m pretty actively engaged in terms of policy discussions. And here’s where we have to watch the fact that there are people who want to say that someone can be declared dead whose heart is still beating, and that’s largely because they want transplant organs, or they want to take someone off of a medical technology that might be expensive or free up a bed in some kind of intensive care unit or something.

This is where we have to be very careful that we don’t allow the clinical redefinition of death, which doesn’t actually meet a biblical understanding of natural death. But I think Bill may be asking even deeper question here, and that is, is it legitimate from a biblical worldview perspective to try to force all death? I mean, after all, taking a measles vaccine could be such an effort. Taking an antibiotic could be seen as such an effort. Undergoing surgery could be seen as such an effort. And I’m glad to tell you, Bill, that it is not wrong to seek to continue normal natural life. That’s not wrong. In the New Testament itself, we believe that Luke was a physician, and there’s something very honorable, very, very honorable about the medical profession. But the medical profession must be operated and exercised within limits. And that limit is that there is no right to hasten death and there is no right to deny death.

In other words, one way to kind of ethically understand this is I don’t think anyone would question that it’s right to perform an appendectomy on a 15-year-old with an infected appendix in order to save the 15-year old’s life. I don’t think anyone asks whether that’s right or wrong or if so, we’ve got a whole different worldview crisis to deal with. The question becomes a little more acute if you’re talking about a 95-year-old and what it would mean to consider a medical technology or a medical procedure which might or might not actually extend life. And so when we get to the end of life, there is a medical equation which is fully consistent with the biblical worldview that says that it is not necessary or morally mandatory that someone, say, undergo every possible medical procedure in order to, in some sense perhaps extend life, because there’s a point at which we understand that death is natural. And so once again, Bill, thanks for listening to the Briefing and thanks for the question.

Part III

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How Can Lay People Support Their Pastor? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Question comes in from Benjamin. He says, “Given your experience training at pastors, what are things my family and I can do to best support our own pastor as laypeople? What are helpful things that we as members can do for our pastor that we might not always think of?” Well, that’s a fascinating question, Benjamin. I would say make sure your pastor is given respect for the necessity of preparing to preach sermons on the Lord’s day. Just make certainly, it is understood, that that too is ministry. That ministry is not just stuff when he goes and does something for someone or performs a wedding or makes a hospital visit, but ministry is what he does in his study as he is studying God’s word and preparing messages. That is actually the most important thing he can do.

But you ask a really nice question, and I mean that just in the ethical sense, when you say, what are things you and your family can do? Listen to the sermons and give him encouragement in preaching. I didn’t say affirmation. Affirmation can be something that is context-dependent. It is affirming when you receive encouragement, because as your pastor is seeking faithfully to provide exposition of the Word of God, it’d be really sweet if you and your family offered that encouragement. And I’ll tell you, that encouragement congregationally, comes not just with words, it also comes with faces. I can tell you as a long-time preacher, it means a lot when you look out at a congregation and you see a congregation that is attentive to the preaching of the Word of God and engaged in the sermon. That is payday, so to speak, for an expositional preacher.

Now, obviously there are a couple of other things we have to say. You need to be praying for your pastor. That’s actually a biblical exhortation. Pray for the elders of your church. Pray for those who are given particular spiritual responsibility. And you know what I just want to say? I love the fact, Benjamin, that you asked about your family, because I would say having your children present for the preaching of the Word of God and having them learn from you and your wife, how they should listen attentively to the Word of God, that is just a wonderful part of raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Part IV

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What Do You Think About an Abolitionist Position on Abortion? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Annie writes in, asking about the difference between the establishment pro-life position and the position that is described as abolitionist or abortion abolitionism. And she says, “Is the abolitionist movement’s argument that the pro-life people don’t actually want to criminalize the act of abortion true?” And then she goes on to say, “I know part of this includes criminalizing mothers who have had abortions, which some in the pro-life movement are hesitant to do, but is this not she asked the most consistent thing to do since we would criminalize a mother who kills a baby outside the womb?”

Well, Annie, thank you so much for posing this question and sending it in. It’s big and it’s going to take just a little bit of time for us to unpack, but I do think it’s very important. First of all, when you think about the mainstream pro-life movement, that includes a lot and it has emerged over time. So first of all, I’m thankful for it. I’m thankful for the pro-life movement. Hear me clearly. But the pro-life movement also has made some arguments that I think aren’t going to stand the test of time, not because they’re, say too anti-abortion, but because they’re not anti-abortion enough.

And a part of this is the question between legal theory and political pragmatism because there are people who are saying, “Look, it’s one thing to make an argument about the sanctity of human life and then say, that would lead us to A and B and C and D.” It’s another thing to understand that some of that is not politically plausible at any given moment. So I want to say first of all, the term abolitionism is actually, well, that’s a pretty morally important word in this case, we do want to abolish abortion. We do want the banishment of abortion. We want the elimination of abortion. And if that’s not what people want, then I’m going to say they’re not pro-life if they do not want to bring about an end to abortion. And by the way, here’s a little slippery thing. There are people who say, “Yeah, I want to end abortion, but I want to end it at the demand side rather than the supply side. I want to end it by say, taking care of people so that they don’t need to or want to obtain an abortion.”

Well, I’ll tell you, that just flies in the face of the moral fact that there are women who have sought abortions under almost every circumstance, and many of them are not in a situation of financial distress. And many of them are not in a situation of any kind of say, physical threat. The feminist movement, the pro-abortion movement, claims abortion as simply a choice made by autonomous women for any reason, or for no public reason at all, without any rationale at all. And I want to acknowledge there are women who are in very difficult circumstances. I’m going to speak more about that in just a moment. But if you’re not for the abolition of abortion, I’m just going to say you’re really not pro-life.

And so just stop riding on the coattails of this movement. On any number of issues, by the way, we’re about to find out who really holds to these positions, and I think this is one of the issues that’s going to crystallize. And so first of all, we want to abolish abortion. We want to be abolitionists in that sense. But the abolitionist movement when it comes to abortion has made some arguments, and some I think are frankly more urgent than others and more credible than others. So one of them has to do with basically the nullification of certain laws and invoking the Constitution as a right to life in which you nullify laws. Well, I want to oppose those laws. I want to reverse those laws. I would be thrilled to go into court as happened with Dobbs, and get Supreme Court precedents struck down state by state to get the laws corrected.

I think that’s the pro-life mission. But nullification of laws that we believe are morally wrong or even unconstitutional. But quite honestly, that has not gone well in American history. And there’s really very little political plausibility or moral plausibility, I would even say, for pushing that case right now until we are ready to declare the entire regime illegitimate. And if some people are there, they need to say so publicly. I don’t think most Christians are close yet to being there. I think we see danger signs and we understand that the regime could, the government could turn in a way that would require our fundamental opposition, and our withdrawal from the political process, but that is not where we are. And Christians have to be careful about using that language until we really do mean it. And I must say there could come a point in which we really do mean it, but we better not threaten that language until we really do mean it.

But the other issue that’s I guess most controversial in terms of the abortion abolition movement has to do with the fact that the argument is made that all persons who are morally and criminally responsible for abortion should be prosecuted. And the law should be very clear about holding persons accountable for the entire question of abortion, the entire practice of abortion. And so I want to say I think this is a far more compelling argument. And quite frankly, I think this is an embarrassing shortfall on the part of many who call themselves pro-life, where they have just decided to exempt women seeking abortions from really any moral accountability. And I want to be clear, I think there is varying moral accountability. I think a woman who’s coerced by a man into an abortion has far less moral culpability than a woman who brags about her abortion and celebrates it as a matter of personal autonomy and tweets about it, and goes to marches with pink hats bragging about it.

And this is where, by the way, the law knows how to make distinctions. The law makes distinctions between manslaughter, between murder and first degree murder and premeditated murder, all kinds of things. In other words, there are distinctions made in the law, but the categorical statement that women are just victims, when they seek an abortion, that’s just not morally credible. That’s just not morally honest, especially in a day in which so many women, particularly in the activist community, they’re actually bragging about their abortions. They’re suggesting that women need to shout their abortions and quite frankly, they’re flaunting their abortions. So I think it’s morally insane to suggest that there is no moral culpability there, nor that the law should not recognize that with some form of criminal sanction. I think that’s just clear. I don’t think it is equal, It’s the same thing in every single case.

But again, the law already knows how to make those distinctions even when it comes to the question of something like homicide. So just to get to the bottom line, I think we recognize there are two things Christians have to say about this. Number one, we’re talking about the objective reality of the unborn human life. A life that bears dignity and sanctity made in God’s image, which is to be protected. And that includes not only morally endorsed, but legally protected, and that includes criminal sanctions from fertilization until natural death. And the second thing is that there are women in particular, I’m not going to say pregnant people, that’s the confused world. Let’s just speak honestly. There are women who are forced into very difficult situations and sometimes coerced by other agents into getting an abortion. There are women who are lied to and manipulated. You could go through any number of moral permutations here.

And the reality is, again, I think we have to take that into consideration. I think the law knows how to take varying degrees of responsibility into consideration. And so I think Christians need to be those who reach out in compassion to women who are in such a difficult predicament. That’s why Christians are so involved in crisis pregnancy centers and in other ministries, and why local churches respond as local churches do reach out with compassion, but never confuse the truth.

Part V

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How Do We Obey God’s Word While Getting Everything Else Done in a Day? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a Busy Mom of Toddlers and Listener of The Briefing

Okay, finally, for today, a really sweet question that comes in from a mother of toddlers. Jennifer writes in saying, she knows she’s supposed to pursue holiness, practice self-control, pray without ceasing, fulfill all the commands of Scripture, and yet she’s got toddlers who seem to make incessant demands upon her every minute of the day. I just want to speak to this sweet mom. Jennifer, I believe that as you take care of those toddlers, put in your care, as you raise those little children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as you pray for them, as you take care of them, I believe you are pursuing holiness.

I believe you are practicing self-control, and I believe that you are likely also, in a very real sense, praying without ceasing, as you are in constant dependence upon the Lord for the care of those little toddlers in your house. We have times and seasons in life, and there will be other seasons in life in which you’ll have more time to devote to prayer and more time to devote to the study of God’s word and to obedience to other commands of God. But right now, those toddlers are, let’s put it this way, a command. And I just want to honor you for being faithful to that command. I believe in so doing, you are pursuing holiness. Bless your heart.

I want to remind you, I’m going to be teaching a class I’m very excited about for both Southern Seminary and Boyce College coming up this next modular term. The class is entitled 10 Battles that Define the Gospel: 20 centuries of Controversy that shaped and reshaped the Christian Church.

Through the last 2000 years of the history of the Christian Church, we’ve had several, many indeed theological battles. 10 of them I think are most important. Those are the 10 I’m going to consider. We’re going to start out with the battle for the gospel in the New Testament, in the very earliest church. We’re going to go through some of the early doctrinal battles in Christianity, such as over the person and work of Christ, over the doctrine of the Trinity. We’re going to go right through to the reformation and the great battles between Protestant and Catholic understandings of Christianity. We’re going to go into the challenges of the modern age, including the challenges eventually of theological liberalism, and by the time we get to the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, we’re going to be looking at the big battle over human sexuality and gender within the Christian Church. So it’s going to be a very, very interesting class, and it’s going to be a class that will combine theology and church history, historical theology, and apologetics. It really is going to be interesting.

Now, the purpose of this class is not just to understand the past, but also to understand our responsibility for defending and teaching and perpetuating the Christian faith. Now, the course is going to start on March the 19th. It’s available to students online and on campus. And this is new, it’s going to be available to those who want to audit the course. To learn more, just go to spts.edu/mohlercourses, one word, MohlerCourse. And it is going to be fun. We’re going to learn a lot together. I’ll hope to see you there.

Well, thanks to all those who wrote in questions, and thanks for listening to The Briefing. 

For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. 

Today I am in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.