Christus Victor, the Doctrine of Hell, and Indeterminism
I want to propose an expansion of the doctrine of Christus Victor, the victory of Jesus Christ over sin, death, and Satan, to include His victory in the infinite future, after the eschatological Day of Judgment. In other words, is Christ finally victorious over Satan? More explicitly, how does the ultimate victory of Christ over Satan square with the traditional doctrine of hell as eternal, conscious torment? Does it not seem that an eternal, conscious, punitive place called hell, full of tormented souls (and bodies?), is a victory for Satan rather than Christ?
Given for the sake of argument that the orthodox doctrine of hell (eternal, conscious punishment) is accurate, there appear to be two predominant responses to this question (forgive the oversimplification of categories):
1) The Determinist (Calvinist) Response: Christ's victory over sin is displayed by his just judgment of it as infinitely offensive to an infinitely holy God. While Satan may have thought himself at least partly victorious, he (perhaps unwittingly) was merely a pawn in the hands of a sovereign God, and ultimately shares the fate of those he deceived.
2) The Indeterminist (Arminian) Response: ?
That's where my analysis ends. Does the indeterminist have a response? If so, what is it?
Given for the sake of argument that the orthodox doctrine of hell (eternal, conscious punishment) is accurate, there appear to be two predominant responses to this question (forgive the oversimplification of categories):
1) The Determinist (Calvinist) Response: Christ's victory over sin is displayed by his just judgment of it as infinitely offensive to an infinitely holy God. While Satan may have thought himself at least partly victorious, he (perhaps unwittingly) was merely a pawn in the hands of a sovereign God, and ultimately shares the fate of those he deceived.
2) The Indeterminist (Arminian) Response: ?
That's where my analysis ends. Does the indeterminist have a response? If so, what is it?
My thoughts on this are by no means authoritative, but my understanding is that Arminians agree that Satan will share the fate of his followers, and thus he ultimately is the loser.
ReplyDeleteI think it's very dangerous for any Christian to refer to Satan as a pawn in God's hands. That would suggest that God is culpable for Satan's deeds. No, if life is a chess game, Satan is the opposing player (with the black pieces, if you will.) However, let there be no yin-yang here... God is clearly, clearly the dominant player, and the bet-your-life-on-it favorite. This is a view held easily by both Calvinists and Arminians.
Well, that's what common sense (and much of Scripture) seems to tell us, but all Calvinists are determinists, some "soft" and others "hard". Soft determinists, or "compatibilists", believe that God decrees all the events of history as well as the means by which those events will occur, i.e. He quite literally decrees, and causes to happen, "all things". But they also hold to human free will as compatible with their view, i.e. because God is not (in most cases) the direct agent of any human action, then He does not usurp human volition. Nevertheless, as determinists, they believe that God foreordained, decreed, and causes all the minutiae of history (the doctrine of specific sovereignty).
ReplyDeleteHard determinists see divine sovereignty and human free will as incompatible, and that humans are not volitionally free in any sense. They would be perfectly comfortable calling Satan a pawn in God's hands. In their theology God causes all evil. After all, if he controls all things (the very thing they claim He does) deterministically, that includes Satan and even evil itself, and so even Satan and evil are instruments by which God glorifies himself.
The fundamental difference between Calvinists and Arminians is the degree to which God exercises his power over his creation. We all (for the most part) believe God is all-powerful and sovereign, but Arminians (and free will libertarians in general) believe He constrains the use of His power when it would override human free will, whereas Calvinists believe God exercises absolute power and control over literally everything (except perhaps the laws of nature, although He certainly intervenes even there at times). The God of the Arminian "takes risks", even if he be the "dominant player" and sure victor of His ultimate or general purpose in creation and redemption (the doctrine of general sovereignty). The God of the Calvinist takes no risks, conditions His decisions on nothing but His foreordained decree, and so His will is carried out in all the minutiae of created history, including every deed of evil. Calvinists (I am learning) are uncomfortable with the idea of God's "permissive will", i.e. God's sovereignty in allowing things to happen which He does not wish to happen. According to soft determinists (compatibilists) God wills things to happen (i.e. decrees that they should happen) that He does not wish to happen. Of course, this sounds like utter nonsense (at least to me), but it is the lynch pin of the compatibilist position.
As to your first point, I thought about the fact that Satan shares their fate, which makes him a loser in one sense. But if he accomplishes his objectives—to deceive, "kill, steal and destroy" people—then insofar as he accomplishes them he "wins" on that account. If he does not win, then would we say that God wins by executing eternal justice in the eternal damnation of sinners? That's the orthodox answer, but does it square with the Arminian understanding of God's goodness and love? For the free will libertarian, condemned sinners freely rejected God and so, in a sense, chose their eternal fate (hell); therefore, God is not culpable for their condemnation and so does not act contrary to His goodness and love. According to this understanding, God is the loser: when those whom He desired to be with Him in heaven ended up choosing hell instead. They certainly aren't the winners, even though they got what they wanted, for at the Day of Judgment "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." No one in hell is going to be eternally happy with his decision. No, they are going to be eternally tormented by the utter foolishness and horror of their decision, which will become crystal clear at the Great White Throne. So they are not the winners. Then Satan must be, insofar that he accomplished what he intended to accomplish, even if he shares their fate. So he is a winner in one sense and a loser in another. But how can it be that the fruits of his "victory" go on forever and ever in "some dark corner of the universe" (Pinnock)?
Either Christ is fully victorious, even in the eternal condemnation of sinners, or He and Satan are both partially victorious. And the latter is simply, utterly contrary to Scripture.
So how do you reconcile that "Christ is fully victorious, even in the eternal condemnation of sinners" with your thoughts that "God wills things to happen...that he does not wish to happen" as being nonsense? Can he be victorious even in the eternal condemnation of sinners if he did not will it to happen?
ReplyDeleteI am not Calvinist, and I have way more questions than answers, but I wanted to dig deeper here.
Nice food for thought.
To answer your question simply, no, he cannot. I wrote this post not to prove a point, but to ask a question: Does the indeterminist have a valid response? I want there to be one, and a logically coherent one, but I can't presently see it. Like you, I have more questions than answers.
ReplyDeleteIt almost feels silly to only address this one point in the whole discussion, but I can relate quite well to the concept of "willing to happen what one does not wish to happen." I think is what God does when he consigns some to hell.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you could play around with the definitions of "will" and "wish" to where I would either agree completely, or disagree completely, but in the sense that God does things that he does not take joy in, or that regrettable things must happen in order for a larger purpose to come about, I would agree.
Although you might say that he wishes them to happen because he has the larger purpose in mind. God may take no joy in the damnation of an individual, but he both wills it and wishes it in the sense that it is part of the accomplishment of a greater scheme of justice and free will.
Taken as a standalone statement outside of the question posed in the post, I agree, although understanding humans "willing what we don't wish" is much easier than understanding God—as infinitely good and wise, all knowing, and all powerful—doing the same. Nevertheless, the distinction between God's permissive and decretive will jives with the Arminian position (though most Calvinists emphatically reject it). Still, it doesn't help answer the question I posed about Satan's "victory".
ReplyDeleteI've struggled a lot with that question, and I've never come up with a satisfactory answer. If even one soul goes to hell, how can that be a victory for Christ? But I do have some related thoughts, in case you're still reading your comments from a December 2008 post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that soft Determinism is nonsense and hard Determinism makes God the author of evil.
I think the best analogy remains the biblical one of warfare, for several reasons:
First, Christ has already won the victory even if there are (and will be) casualties. I don't believe that Satan will have any real victory. In the end, every knee will bow to Christ and Satan will be stripped of his power. Most likely he will not "reign" in hell in any real sense because he will also be in torment. And God's people will belong eternally to him.
Second, in the same way that wars are often fought over freedom, I believe that God allowed evil into the world for the same reason. Adam and Eve, as well as the fallen angels, had perfect freedom to choose good or evil. We are born in bondage but called to freedom. If WE consider freedom worth dying for, is it such a stretch to believe that God (in whose image we are created) values it just as highly? Would any of us choose to live in a totalitarian regime? Why then would we expect the kingdom of God to be spiritual totalitarianism?
C.S. Lewis said that "omnipotence is the power to do all that is intrinsically possible," in the context of whether it's possible to give creatures free choice while simultaneously making it impossible to choose evil. He concludes that it's not. So if God is not the Calvinistic puppet master, he had to allow evil in order to further his plan.
God's plan is to bring us to the point where we find perfect freedom by surrendering our wills, letting God work in and through us. But he stops short of overpowering our wills. He uses his Spirit, circumstances, people, and his word to bring us to the point of surrender, even if it takes years. I think most of us believers know that from personal experience. If grace is irresistible, why aren't the elect more holy? I think the only possible answer is that he values freedom so highly that he respects even the most wretched will, in order to (if possible) nurture it to the point of willing surrender. And that surrender is the means by which he fills us with his Spirit, which brings us under his authority while preserving our freedom.
The third reason has to do with God's sovereignty. Calvinists believe that everything happens according to God's will. I disagree, because as long as there is evil God's will is thwarted. He is sovereign, but not in the way he will be on the New Earth. Also, in the Lord's Prayer we say: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Why would we pray for something if it happens by default?
God's perfect will is in the cross, and that's where we find the weapons of warfare. He has already won the victory, which we lay hold of by faith. A few months ago, I saw the Hebrews 11:1 definition of faith in a new light. The KJV says that faith is the "substance" of things hoped for. I don't usually look up the Greek, but the word "hypostasis" means "essential nature, reality, essence, assurance."
So it occurred to me that faith is our measure of an objective reality (Christ and everything he accomplished on the cross). That's why it is so powerful. It's not just a state of mind, it IS the victory of Christ. If God's perfect will is in the cross, it follows that the greater our faith, the closer we come to God's will, which is victory. And our faith grows when we abide in Christ like the branch on a vine.
In the cross, we find power to further God's kingdom on earth, so that as many people as possible will share in his victory and inherit his kingdom.
Again, I agree that it's hard to reconcile the victory of Christ with the reality of hell. Feel free to point out holes in my reasoning and biblical understanding. It's nice to read something written by another Arminian!
Anette,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtful, well-articulated comment. I'm pretty much with you, right down the line. Where I've landed for the time being is this: God lets Satan have his cake, but he doesn't get to eat it. We see in Job that God allows Satan to wreak havoc, and while this havoc is within God's permissive will, it certainly is not God's "desire" in the sense that it "pleases" Him. (Bearing in mind, of course, that we can speak of God doing as He "pleases" even when that involves punishing sin, which He obviously does not derive pleasure from. But this is simply a problem of the flexibility of language.)
I think this principle applies to the eternal state of those who are consigned to hell. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden and they gave in, it was a "win" for Satan and a "loss" for God. Of course, God could have thrown his scaly tush into the lake of fire right at that instant, and be done with it... but He didn't. He let Satan have his "victory," and many, many more to come. But I think that The Coreman is right: Satan "ultimately is the loser," because this victory, while sweet now, will not be sweet for him in eternity. Clearly his torture will be equal to, if not greater than, that of lost humanity. Perhaps from the Fall until the Day of Judgment, Satan experiences some degree of God's presence, and hence His goodness and grace. He has yet to experience the full measure of God's wrath, so at the very least, Satan has experienced God's mercy. But there will be a time when all of lost humanity, Satan, and the fallen angels, will be "cut off" altogether from God's presence—and hence from everything good, for He is the source from which all good emanates—and in that Day, the time of God's mercy will be over.