Recently in our Bible study we were discussing universalism. The universalist, in short, believes that all mankind will be saved. One pro-universalist argument is that it would not matter how long it would take but eventually everyone would be made subject to God and eventually submit themselves to Him. No one who knew God’s love could resist Him forever. Another is that a good God could not punish someone forever for a finite infraction against his law. However, these universalist arguments are based on a flawed understanding of the relationship of eternity and time and an incomplete understanding of what it means to be good.
Eternity cannot be understood as billions more years after you have already existed for billions of years in an unending line of time. If this were true, then time would have to extend eternally in both directions; both forward and backward in order to understand God as having no beginning and no end; the traditional understanding of God’s eternality.
In physics there is a distance, at the smallest level, in which you can not go any smaller without loosing the concept of distance. The question of what is smaller than this distance can not be answered in terms of these distances and so can not be distance as we know it. This is called Planck distance. To go smaller something else, entirely other than distance, would have to exist. The same is true of time; there is also a Planck time. Before the beginning, something other than time existed, or exists, before time. Therefore, eternity must be something other than time. Perhaps, it is more precise, although imperfect because it is also being expressed in terms of time, to think of eternity as a single moment that exists forever. I am not yet sure what that would be, but it would be different than what we currently experience as time.
On the way home I started thinking about what that eternal moment would be like and could we enjoy existing in it. I am most fortunate because there have been moments in my life in which I would like to exist forever. Maybe those moments are imperfect similes of the eternal moment. One example of an eternal moment for me was the first hug between Sarah and I on my return from a deployment into a combat theater of operations. I can still feel her presence in that moment. Every curve of her body as she pressed hers into mine and I pressed mine into hers. The smell of her skin the warmth of her breath…; I can remember it all. I had not seen her and had been existing in a reality in which I might not have gotten to see her again. I missed her and longed for her and in that moment of reunion I wanted to be fully in her presence and not for mere physical gratification but because I loved her and she loved me.
What made that moment eternally significant, or at the very least more significant than every other hug before or since, was the gratitude that came with the fact of this specific hug’s existence as contrasted by the real possibility of its non existence. Our first kiss, the first time she told me she loved me, the moment her dad walked her to me down the isle at our wedding, the moment she told me she was pregnant, and the moment we found out together that she was pregnant again. All significant because they could not exist on the strength of my own will and had to exist in a context of gratitude towards something apart from me. All moments I could live in forever.
But those aren’t the only moments of my existence. If there are moments in which I could live forever aren’t there also moments that I would rather had never existed at all? There seems to me to be two kinds of these moments. Those in which there is pain inflicted on me, a recent trip to the dentist would suffice as proof of these, and those in which I inflict pain on others. And not by accident but by intent. That might be an oversimplification because I spend a lot of time at work not inflicting any pain that aren’t really painful in and of themselves but that are also not significant enough that I would think them worthy of living in forever or of eternal significance. But there are some moments that are significantly painful enough or in which I know I have inflicted a significant enough of a wound that I would rather they had not existed at all. I won’t list those here because the pain can be overwhelming and, well, I would rather you not know the pain I have inflicted on others to my own shame. It also seems to me these moments are defined by the justice owed or the justice demanded. I demand justice for the pain inflicted on me and I owe justice for the pain I inflicted on others.
If our understanding of eternity as a single moment existing forever is more accurate then heaven could be thought of as existing forever in a moment of perfect love, held there by perfect power, in a state of perfect gratitude that the moment can exist inviolate of perfect justice despite who we were. Hell would then be existing forever in a moment of perfect justice held by perfect power in the perfect knowledge of who you are. One you would never want out of and the other you could never escape.
With this understanding of heaven and hell the argument that a good god would never subject a finite being to an eternal punishment starts to look more and more like a straw man. Eternity simply is a binary in which you exist in one of the two states above. The reality is that justice is demanded and if you demanded justice would your demand be satisfied by something less? No, a good god would provide perfect justice or he would be a fraud. If injustice is evil and justice is good then isn’t an appeal for justice an appeal to a higher good and if justice is denied isn’t that denial of justice just another injustice. God’s goodness is tied to justice and in the face of injustice hell is required. The straw man is only put forth in order to deceive ourselves into thinking that we might escape the justice that is owed, by a good god. God’s mercy is appealed to at the expense of His goodness.
No, hell is necessary for God to be good in the face of the injustice of man. Or more Biblically accurate hell is necessary for God to be good in the face of Satan’s injustice while hell is merely convenient for God to be good in the face of the injustice of man. Heaven is not necessary it merely is as the abode of perfection. Philosophically the existence of heaven and hell are not hard to work out. However, until Jesus, bringing man into heaven was philosophically impossible. Jesus as an eternal being sacrificed in a single moment is still sufficient for your injustice, even if it were only in a single moment. Your single injustice against an eternal God would still warrant an eternal justice. That Jesus is sufficient and obedient is the mercy that saves you from the justice of God’s goodness without violating either His goodness or His love for us.
Anyway, I am more philosopher than physicist so don’t forget to remind me how I misused Planck’s ideas in the comments below. I am, however, confident in the sufficiency of Christ!
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