Life after Death by Thiselton Anthony C

Author:Thiselton, Anthony C. [Thiselton, Anthony C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 2011-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Claims about “Hell” and Wrath

This chapter has demanded more reading and reflection than others. Yet students have tended to express greater appreciation for considering the Last Judgment and kindred questions than many other themes in systematic theology or doctrine. Perhaps this is partly because many treatments of doctrine, and even sermons, simply sidestep these issues as if it is somehow unnecessary or bad taste to explore them. Certainly James P. Martin shows that the subject has rapidly declined in the light of liberalism, especially on the part of Schleiermacher and Ritschl toward the end of the nineteenth century. He writes that Ritschl refused to admit “any attribute of God save that of love. . . . Ritschl rejects wrath in the New Testament. . . .”1 Yet it is not difficult to understand why. Love remains a permanent feature of God’s character; wrath is not permanent. Moltmann thinks that “hell” denies God’s sovereign grace. However, we begin by showing that three different views were already prominent in the early Church: annihilation, universal restoration, and everlasting torment.2

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