What you are doing is making out that Gods wrath is a picnic. It doesn't really matter what cs Lewis or church fathers said but what really matters is the scripture. And you must realize God has a place and punishment after the day of Judgement.
The wrath of God is something else. The wrath of God is the reality that we are sinners held in condemnation under the Law. Hence the Apostle writes in Romans 1:18.
For Lutherans the proper way of understanding God's wrath is by rightly making the distinction between Law and Gospel, "rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15), and thus making the proper distinction between God in His hiddenness (Deus Absconditus) and God in His personal revelation (Deus Revelatus). Man when beholding God hidden behind the Law, in glory, is God as we behold Him at the Mountain in Sinai, where He says to Moses, "No one can see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20). And the people are terrified by the peals of thundering sounds, begging for a mediator to go up to the mountain and speak to them on God's behalf (see Exodus chs 19-20, emphasis on Exodus 20:18-21)
Wrath is the reality that we stand condemned under the Law, it is what we as sinners behold when we look to God through the Law--because in the Law we behold our failure, our sin. The Law becomes the mirror exposing our works as evil to ourselves (Romans 7:7-15).
The judgment and conclusion of this present and fallen age is still part of this condemnation--the rolling up of scroll, as it were, (Isaiah 34:4, Revelation 6:14), because the Day is coming when we must all stand and give account (Romans 14:12), and all human works will be exposed (1 Corinthians 3:13), etc. That's God's wrath in the Day of future Judgment when the Lord returns to judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1).
The lake of fire, after the day of judgement is by design a punisment. I do not think this is love to send people to this place but I do not think they ever had agape love to begin with so nothing has changed for them or in God.
It's the reality of future judgment, it's called "second death" by St. John. We are told that there is a fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels, (Matthew 25:41)--not prepared for human beings. Nevertheless, as we see in the same place (Matthew 25:41) those who deny the least of these are fundamentally colluding against their own humanity and with death, and the "destination" of such things is the same as what has been prepared for the devil.
But I simply refuse to believe in a God who denies Himself, which He would be doing if He did not love even those who will despise Him to the bitter end. We have a God who loves His enemies (Romans 5:10), so when He commands that we love our enemies, that we feed them, clothe them, give them drink (Matthew 5:44, Romans 12:20). For He has declared, "I, the LORD, do not change" (Malachi 3:6), and St. James says that in Him is no shadow of turning (James 1:17), and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that Jesus Christ "is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).
I believe in a faithful God, for He says His name is Faithful and True (Revelation 19:11). He has been the faithful God since before the foundation of the world, He who created all things and declared what He made "exceedingly good" is not going to turn His back on what He has made. That's what the Bible is about: The faithfulness of God to His creation, the faithfulness of God to rescue and redeem His creation.
For the Apostle reminds us that creation itself groans under the tyranny of death, longing for the day when God sets all things right, when the dead are raised, "the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:18-25).
The reality of "hell" is not because God is like some kind of Zeus sitting on Mt. Olympus who will consign us to a good or bad afterlife. The reality of hell is not Pagan like that. Rather the reality of hell is the sober fact that we human beings, though made in God's image, collude against God's image, collude against our own humanity, through sin. We transgress God's Law which was intended to bring life, and so the Law becomes death for us on account of sin.
Hell isn't about God being mad and wanting to hurt people. Hell is about people being mad and the tragedy that we would rather imprison ourselves up in a tower and hide away rather than live. God isn't our enemy, but we are enemies against God. This is made abundantly obvious (besides Scripture plainly saying so) in the Incarnation, and the reality that the Son of God was put to death by wicked men. We crucified the Son of God.
God comes down in peace.
We make war against Him.
God comes down in love.
We despise Him and spit in His face.
God comes down to give us life.
We crucify Him.
But just like the Patriarch Joseph, what was intended with evil was for good: For the Lord taught us that the Christ must suffer and give His life as a ransom. For in truth through these things God saves the world.
God came down in peace, we waged war against Him, and He won--not with violence, not with power, not with eloquent wisdom: He conquered the world in His weakness and foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18-31). His love, grace, mercy, and salvation--and in so doing has put to death the principalities and the powers, has defeated death itself, having risen from the dead He has defeated sin, death, hell, and the devil.
The idea of God loving people while he chose to send them to the lake of fire and still loving them in the lake of fire in their suffering and misery is unethical in most peoples views.
And if I thought that God was actively punishing sinners in hell, and that the point of hell is to punish human beings then I could possibly agree that it's at the very least ethically confusing.
But that's not my position. My position is fairly straightforward I think. I believe the Scriptures are abundantly clear about God's love and grace and the power of the Holy Gospel. Where Scripture does become more ambiguous is the topic of the final destination of the wicked, as the Scriptures employ graphic, imaginitive, figurative language to describe this. In much the same way that what we hear about the Age to Come is sometimes imaginitive and uses big bold language--for example describing the heavenly Jerusalem as a gigantic city descending from heaven, with foundations of precious gems.
Indeed, on this point, I find the language we are given in the penultimate vision of the Apocalypse truly fascinating, for St. John writes the following,
"
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." - Revelation 22:1-2
It is lines like this, that the leaves are for the healing of the nations, one can almost imagine a river flowing through the new city, with leaves being carried down river. Though one should not try and speculate about things we cannot know for they are not told to us. Only that, here is an example of where it almost feels like the Bible offers us a hopeful elipses.
We see similar things, for example, when the Apostle says that in the end God will be "all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). One might wonder how is God "all in all" with a whole segment of creation excluded from Him; but again, I dare not speculate.
When I read the Scriptures, when I look at the historic teaching of the Church, both East and West. I see that there is actually very little attempts to turn ideas about hell and the ultimate state of things into formal dogma. Eschatology is rarely dogmatized except when dealing with very elementary Christian doctrine: Christ's Parousia, the resurrection of the body, everlasting life, the Age to Come, future judgment, etc.
God doesn't torment people but they (Luke 16:24) are in torments as Jesus seems to indicate from the parable.
Which would be in keeping with what I've already said, both in this post and previous posts.
If what you're saying is true and all people are loved in heaven and lake of fire, what is the point of lake of fire and heaven? If there's no difference, why different destinations? And if there is a difference, why is that?
This is an interesting question, though not for the obvious reason.
Firstly, the point of God being faithful to His creation and setting all creation to rights is because God is faithful. Our salvation and being brought into communion with God and passing through judgment into life everlasting in the Age to Come is because God wants to rescue us.
God loves us, that's why.
I don't know what point, if any, there is for "hell". In a sense it's a bit like asking what was the point for the prodigal son to demand his inheritance early, and then go squander it and then live eating pig slop and living in mud with swine.
I think the sober tragedy of the reality of hell isn't that there is an ultimate point to hell--but that there may be no point in it at all. Why squander our humanity, why do we expend so much energy being selfish, and hateful, and prejudicial? Why do our societies expend resources that could go to providing for the health, welfare, and well-being of the least of these, to those who truly need it--but that's not how human civilization generally works. It's sin, sin obviously. But when we look at what our disordered passions bring into the world, we should realize that "hell" is less about a punishment for our sin, but rather the natural and organic fruition of our sin. If we choose ourselves, choose ourselves right to the bitter end, then we get exactly what we wanted. We wanted to be alone, so we have shut ourselves up alone, right into deepest darkest hell, miserable, spiteful, hateful, angry, vicious. Gnashing our teeth, seething. That's not life, that's something worse than even death. One could even call it "second death".
Well what happened was you tried to appeal to ontological grounds to support your cause and I am challenging you on this. I don't expect you to conceded but just answering questions will show the problem I am alluding to.
Do you think you could clarify?
-CryptoLutheran
