In college, I read a fury-filled sermon by Puritan preacher Jonathan
Edwards called "Sinners in the hands of an angry God."  
        "The pit is prepared. The fire is made ready.  The furnace is now hot,
ready to receive them.  The flames do now rage and glow.  … O sinner!
Consider the fearful danger you are in."
        The 18th-century New Englanders were said to have had fear struck in their
hearts when Edwards preached.  There was weeping and moaning and repenting.
 The eternal stakes were clear: hell was real; no one wanted to be there;
the flaming torrents were real.
        One hot July night when I was 14 an evangelist came through our small
Kansas town shouting and sweating: "There will be payday, someday."
Looking back 25 years, I have heard few sermons about hell.  I guess not
many folks preach from Jesus' words in the last few chapters of Matthew or
about the lake of fire described by John in Revelation 20.
        The U.S. News and World Report Jan. 31 cover story explores the concept of
Hell as we begin the 21st century.  "Hell Hath No Fury," reads the
headline.  The piece wonders whether Jonathan Edward would even recognize
the hell of today.  Has it disappeared?
        The article explains that last summer a prominent Jesuit magazine with
close ties to the Vatican declared hell "is not a 'place' but a 'state,' a
person's 'state of being,' in which a person suffers from the deprivation
of God."
        Historically, the church has taught the reality of hell as a major
biblical doctrine and preached about hell as a strong theological weapon in
the church's struggle against evil.  Many say the church should not falter
in preaching that message.
        "Scripture clearly speaks of hell as a physical place of fiery torment and
warns us we should fear," says R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.  Douglas Groothuis of the
evangelical Denver Seminary told U.S. News "separation from God may seem
like freedom from a domineering spouse or parent.  Why fear that?"
        A U.S. poll shows that more people believe in hell than they did 10 years
ago, but they see it as "an anguished state of existence" rather than a
real place.  A real hell, according to Prof. Stephen Patterson of the Eden
Theological Seminary in St. Louis, is "part of an understanding of the
cosmos that just doesn't exist anymore."
        The Rev. Mike Shea, pastor of the Community Evangelical Free Church in
Champaign, thinks the preaching about hell is unpopular, in part, because
the atmosphere of evangelicalism is very seeker sensitive.  But the
statement of faith that every Evangelical Free Church pastor must sign says
after death believers go to be with God and "the unbelievers to judgment
and everlasting conscious punishment."
        "The main reason we ought to lift up the doctrine of hell is that you lose
the concept of God's wrath without it, and when you lose wrath you lose
substitutionary atonement," Shea said.  Substitutionary atonement is the
obedience and death of Jesus Christ, substituting himself on behalf of
sinners to satisfy God's wrath.
        While hell as fire and agony is still the predominant view in evangelical
Protestantism and in some conservative corners of Catholicism, some
conservative theologians are promoting the view that the end of the wicked
is destruction, not eternal suffering.  Evangelical writer John Stott,
founder of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, contends
that those who ultimately reject God will simply be put out of existence in
the "consuming fire" of hell.
        Theologian Clark Pinnock wonders how God could inflict "everlasting
torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been."  Stott
observes that in biblical imagery, fire's main function is to destroy and
that while the fire of hell may be eternal and unquenchable, "it would be
very odd if what is thrown into it proves indestructible."
        John Piper, prominent Minneapolis preacher, says that Clark Pinnock and
John Stott are repeating the age-old objection that an eternal punishment
is disproportionate to a finite life of sinning.  Piper contends they
disregard the essential thing that Jonathan Edwards saw so clearly.  "The
essential thing is that degrees of blameworthiness come not from how long
you offend dignity, but from how high the dignity is that you offend."
        Hell's powerful images continue looming over humanity.  In our anger, we
humans keep sending each other there without wincing.  Indeed, it is all a
grim reminder of the reality of evil and its dire consequences. 
   

Don Follis is a University of Illinois campus minister.  His column appears
on Fridays.  Reprinted with permission from the Champaign-Urbana
News-Gazette, copyright 2000.