"God's love is unconditional" seems to have come from the same folks who gave us "Personal Savior". It sounds good but isn't in scripture.
Would there be a hell if it was unconditional? Would the Prodigal be welcomed home with a harlot under one arm and a pig under the other?

It is unconditional in the sense that we cannot earn his love or meet certain criteria to achieve it.

"While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

I believe we are loved on the condition of Christ.

Not to start a debate about Calvinism, but are you saying that the elect are loved unconditionally but others are not?

Not sure if that's the way I'd frame it. Certainly if God loves everyone without conditions, hell doesn't make much sense, although how we define love is probably plays in.

I guess I'm saying that God elects the elect on the condition of his own prerogative (or foreknowledge, I suppose) and loves them on the condition of Christ. But as it pertains to what the loved can contribute to the dynamic, that love is unconditional.

I believe God loves everyone, elect and non-elect, but I don't believe he loves everyone the same way.
I think hell/judgment is a pretty good indication of that, and that makes "God loves everyone" an issue for the Arminian as well as the Calvinist.

God's covenants have always been born out of love, but conditional. Yes, our covenant depends on the faithfullness, righteousness and enduring life of our Great High Priest and Savior, Jesus, but we enter that covenant through faith and repentance. So, there are conditions, for Him to cover us with mercy, (or love) and for the Gospel to save us.

Jard - Are you saying, that as a Calvinist, you can believe that God's election could be based on His foreknowledge of one's salvation?
I've never heard of a Calvinist that believes that before - they always seem to think that means that God isn't "sovereign" anymore.
Just curious.

I'd say God's love is unconditional, but his approval is not. Love does not equal approval.

Think of your kids, if one grows up somehow to be an axe murderer, would you love them less? I bet most would say no, but I certainly wouldn't approve nor would I withhold punishment.

Salguod makes the key point here I think. I don't see why hell and God loving unconditionally cannot co-exist.

God's "type" of love is fully poured out at the cross. There are no conditions in it whatsoever, for anyone.......that's how He loves.

We're also told to love as we were first loved. I don't see one ounce of allowance for me to love conditionally if I am to love others in the way that God loves me.

I would be very uncomfortable saying God's love is conditional.

Are you saying, that as a Calvinist, you can believe that God's election could be based on His foreknowledge of one's salvation?

No.
I believe foreknowledge in the Romans sense is "relational foreknowledge." (For whom he foreknew . . . Not for what he foreknew they would do. :-)

I believe the elect are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. God foreknows who his children are and saves them on the condition of Christ despite their fallenness.

Hope that clarifies.

I would be very uncomfortable saying God's love is conditional.

Yeah.

Again, I think it depends on what we mean by "love" and what we mean by "condition."

Salguod's distinction between love and approval is helpful, I think.

I am finding this conversation very fascinating as the hell doctrine is one of several deal-breakers for many, and just for this reason.

Using Salguod's clarification, can anyone comment on this: While a parent of an axe-murderer might love their child and at the same time feel that punishment is warranted (even if it's capitol punishment), I don't think the same parent would feel their child should be tortured. For infinity. No matter the crime, can any being "lovingly" be the ultimate sadist? I don't see how love can fit in there.

Great question Hobo.

Here's something I heard once that was an interesting theory. First, before you read it, keep in mind that love and justice are two sides of the same coin. D.A. Carson (a hoss if there ever was one) said that "justice is God's love distributed". OK, now look at this theory:

Imagine the following:
Crime - Punishment
squishing an ant - None
Running over a squirrel on purpose - none, save some feelings of guilt. Others might be shocked if they knew about it.
killing a cat - if done cruelly, you will pay a fine.
murdering a person - serious jail time.
murdering a police officer - capital crime
killing the president - treason

I know that it doesn't work out perfectly, but can you see how the punishment increases with the status of the one sinned against? Is this just and fair? Most would say, "yes".

(I realize that killing an ant is not a sin, but this is an analogy designed to show that when the value of the "victim" goes up, so does the "punishment" required.)

That said, What punishment is deemed fair for a crime committed against the eternal, all-good, supreme ruler of the universe and the creator of us all?

Would it not have to be worse than death itself in order to be fair?

If eye for an eye, is fair, what do we have to give an eternal God other than eternity itself?

I've always thought the above was an interesting way to explain the severity of hell.

I know there are other explanations, that's just one.

Hobo - that's a pretty "heavy" question. But that particular question is answered with respect to God's holiness and not with respect to His lack of love or His conditional love.

God's holiness demanded that He turn his back on his own Son, but it didn't demand that he love him any less.

I think it works with us the same way with regard to hell........answering any further would be to unpack what we think hell is like, which is a whole different discussion. Suffice it to say, for all the eternal torment and gnashing of teeth that we read in Scripture about, I think the bigger issue is that hell is a place where God is not........His love is not withheld there, its just not there because He's not there......what a miserable place.

Hobo - that's a pretty "heavy" question. But that particular question is answered with respect to God's holiness and not with respect to His lack of love or His conditional love.

nhe is right. I don't think it's about a lack of love, per se. Because as Jared mentioned, the Bible says, "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." So, obviously he loved us when we were clearly not lovable. Thus, his love is not conditioned upon something we do to earn it. I think if we start suggesting that his love is conditioned upon something we do, we'd be travelling down the road that no Calvinst wants to go down. It really is more about God's holiness. Holiness demands justice and God is perfectly just. Therefore, the only way to avoid his judgement is through Christ. I don't think that means he loves us any less.

God's love is completely unconditional. It falls on the just and the unjust. Hell is an act of love in the sense that it is an act that completely annihilates evil and all sources of evil for all eternity. Evil will "never" invade God's dominion again. That is an ultimate act of love and it cost God everything.

It was previously stated that the debate over what hell literally is is another issue. Quite. I believe that the weight of Scripture defines hell as an "event" more than a "place."

There are two things that lie frustratingly beyond our grasp that would settle this issue. First, we have no concept of the depth and height of God's love. Our mightiest speculations fall shorter than a gnat's leap toward Everest. Second, we are equally ignorant of what life will be like outside of time. Eternity is not a long time; eternity is the absence of time itself. The physics of it is beyond staggering. You can say that hell lasts for an eternity if you want to, but eternity does not "last." Eternity is timeless. It has no "lastness." The debate is moot, but "endlessly" fascinating nonetheless.

Let's try this on for size: God's love is unearned, freely given to all, in Jesus who is the atoning sacrifice for sins, not only for our sins but for those of the whole world. But "unconditional" implies that God never has the ability or right to exercise his wisdom or judgment when that love that he has given is rejected and held in contempt. The one who continually despises God's love will earn God's judgment for having hated the good.

If someone presents God with the choice between either destroying a spiteful person or letting that spiteful ruin paradise for all eternity in the world to come, God's going to do the right thing. The evil will be destroyed. If the person allows himself to be separated from his evil; great! If the person loves evil and will not be parted from it, his destruction is on his own account, not God's.

So I think "unconditional" hides a baited trap, where two things are put together which God has separated: whether God's love is unearned and unmerited (which it is), and whether God has an obligation to his character to continue loving everybody even if they hold his love in contempt (which he doesn't).

Take care & God bless
WF

The Father in the parable of the prodigal son is a picture of God's unconditional love for sinners, IMO.

Good points are made above regarding the fact that we have to be careful to define what we mean by "love" (who said that love is incompatible with punishment or disapproval?) and "conditional."

What does scripture say? Is the word "unconditional" even in it? Is there anywhere a description of God's love promised outside of a covenant?

I may be misunderstanding some of you, but what I hear in response to my question is this:

In order for everything to make sense, you have to limit your appraisal to the context of the question. If you are pondering the severity of hell, don't consider love, only consider "justice" and "holiness". If on the other hand you are pondering the sacrifice of Jesus, you can consider "love" but maybe not so much "justice" (if God had conservative mates at the time they might have called him a liberal for giving everyone a free ride!).

So my issue with this is that I should be able - especially in light of the thread - consider everlasting torment in the context of God's love.

Which takes me to "justice". I have never seen a legitimate explanation for how any torture, much less "everlasting" torture, could be called "justice". Crimes against God, an eye for an eye?

If an ant sins against you (and you are so much greater than the ant), do you punish the ant so much more severely because you are greater? For me, the answer is clearly no! You have pity on the ant who knows no better, and you let the ant go. Or you kill it. But your "greatness" in comparison to the ant would serve only to lessen the punishment - if it had any affect on the situation.

Modern Christians avoid this by suggesting all the 'hellfire' talk in the bible is symbolic... that hell is simply "without God". But there's enough literalism out there for this issue to stand- I'm not asking about the mysterious "things suck without God" version of hell... I'm talking about the traditional "everlasting torment" version... the torture version.

"What does scripture say? Is the word "unconditional" even in it? Is there anywhere a description of God's love promised outside of a covenant?"

I'd suggest that a more helpful question would be "what does scripture *show*?" Scripture doesn't "say" trinity, or inerrancy, or numerous other things that evangelical Christians are pretty much agreed upon. Nor does it say that God's love IS conditional in so many words, either. So what is the picture that scripture paints for us of God's love?

Consider the woman looking for the lost coin, the shepherd leaving the 99 to look for the single lost sheep, the prodigal son's prodigally-loving father. These are all pictures, according to Jesus, of God's love. Jesus doesn't use the word "unconditional" but neither do I see conditional love on the part of the woman, the shepherd or the father.

Of course we have to deal with the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the language of covenant, and the language of grace. It's not a simplistic pitcure. But is there really anything in the picture that is incompatible with unconditional love, when you get down to it and rid yourself of mushy, sentimental pictures of love and replace them with more a robust understanding of the word?

Hobo, there are other posters more equipped than I am to speak to your question - I'm thinking of someone like Ancient Mariner, for instance. But my understanding is that the "traditional" picture of Hell in many of our minds owes a great debt to medieval Catholicism, much more so than to the early church.

Thinklings' patron saint C. S. Lewis didn't hold to the torture version of hell, and he wasn't (at least in most senses) a mushy liberal sentimentalist:

"Lost souls have their wish - to live wholly in the Self, and to make the best of what they find there. And what they finds there is hell. Should God increase our chances to repent? I believe that if a million opportunities were likely to do good, they would be given. But finality has to come some time. Our Lord uses three symbols to describe hell - everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46), destruction (Matthew 10:28), and privation, exclusion, banishment (Matthew 22:13). The image of fire illustrates both torment and destruction (not annihilation - the destruction of one thing issues in the emergence of something else, in both worlds). It may be feasible that hell is hell not from its own point of view, but from that of heaven. And it is also possible that the eternal fixity of the lost soul need not imply endless duration. Our Lord emphasises rather the finality of hell. Does the ultimate loss of a soul mean the defeat of Omnipotence? In a sense, yes. The damned are successful rebels to the end, enslaved within the horrible freedom they have demanded. The doors of hell are locked on the inside.

"In the long run, objectors to the doctrine of hell must answer this question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins, and at all costs to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty, and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so - in the life and death of his Son. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, that is what he does. Hell, it must be remembered, is not only inhabited by Neros or Judas Iscariots or Hitlers. They were merely the principal actors in this rebellious drama."

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I think Nehemiah chapter 9 demonstrates pretty effectively that God's love is not conditioned upon our deserving it or earning it in any way.

Hobo, I am short on time at the moment, so please forgive the brief, choppy replies. But I wanted to respond to a couple of things.

if you are pondering the severity of hell, don't consider love, only consider "justice" and "holiness"

No, I don't think they're extricable that way.
When we ponder the severity of hell, we consider both God's justice on sin and his zeal (love) for holiness.
We also consider love for the victims of those who are consigned to hell for their interpersonal sins and abuse.

Hell and love are compatible if our theological center is held. Meaning, if we define love on our terms, hell doesn't make sense because we love ourselves and don't think we deserve to be in hell. :-)

If on the other hand you are pondering the sacrifice of Jesus, you can consider "love" but maybe not so much "justice"

Red flag!
And this is another reason why I am frustrated with Christians wanting to downplay or do away with the penal substitution theory of the atonement.

The cross is justice, because Christ is taking the punishment for sin. It is also love, because Christ was taking the punishment for sin.
The cross is the (literal?) intersection of God's grace and God's wrath.

If an ant sins against you

Ants don't sin against us because:
a) we are not their creators
b) they do not have fallen natures or consciousnesses
c) we aren't infinitely holy
d) there is no possibility of an interpersonal love relationship between an ant and a person

It means nothing for an ant to bite me. It means nothing for me to squash an ant. (For me. I know it pains the super sensitive with too much time on their hands. :-)

Which takes me to "justice". I have never seen a legitimate explanation for how any torture, much less "everlasting" torture, could be called "justice".

It is legitimized by the holiness of God. If God is infinitely holy, then sin against him is an infinite offense deserving of infinite punishment.
But if one doesn't believe in God or in an infinitely holy God, you're right, hell doesn't make any sense.

Modern Christians avoid this by suggesting all the 'hellfire' talk in the bible is symbolic... that hell is simply "without God".

Well, not all modern Christians go this route, but plenty do, I know.
The traditional view, though, is not that hell is symbolic.

But there's enough literalism out there for this issue to stand- I'm not asking about the mysterious "things suck without God" version of hell... I'm talking about the traditional "everlasting torment" version... the torture version.

May I be direct? Is this really an issue for you? Or is this just a rhetorical, philosophical diversion?

I guess I'm unclear on the philosophical integrity of the conversation here. If you don't believe hell exists, why all the pressing against the theology of the traditional view?
Do you really care if it's fair or not?
I don't understand why one would care if it's fair or not if one didn't believe it existed in the first place.

Or are you attempting to get us to think it unfair and abandon the view?
I'm just wondering what the point of the conversation is.

Our belief in hell does not exist in a vacuum. Hell is a bummer. But the good news is that God does love the world enough to provide for its avoidance. (To put a fine point on it.)
If you believe punishment for sin exists, believe in your heart that Jesus is God and that he has raised from the grave, and you will be saved from it.

Jared,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I'm not trying to change minds. I am honestly interested in knowing how some individual Christians reconcile "unconditional love" and "everlasting torture". I want to know if there is something I am not seeing (which doesn't seem to be the case) or if people basically use the "first you believe, then the contradictions will make sense" approach.

My interest is personal, like a puzzle that I've pondered since I was a child. How can all of these people reconcile this? What do they see that I (and others) can't? I want insight.

I don't want to derail the thread, though, or to argue :)....

No, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

I think the ways Christian reconcile it is as diverse as there are Christians. Some better than others, some worse, perhaps some equally. I don't know.

From my particular viewpoint within the faith (fairly Reformational on matters of salvation), I would say that they are not reconciled really, because God loves the elect on the condition upon which he's chosen them (Christ) and eternally punishes those he doesn't love that way.

The notion of unconditional love has to be unpacked, and I think the way we (and by "we" I mean everyone, including well-meaning Christians who say God loves everyone unconditionally) often think of unconditional love is not really found in Scripture.

In that sense, the question itself doesn't make sense. It assumes God loves everyone unconditionally (or that all Christians believe that, or that Scripture teaches that) and then asks Christians to account for that. I'm sure there's a technical term for this fallacy of logic, but I don't know what it is. :-)

Hobo, how do you feel about the post earlier stating CS Lewis's position? I think he's right - people choose to go to hell, and God is loving enough to send them where they want to go......I've heard many non-Christians say or imply "eternity apart from God sure sounds better than eternity with Him, so I'll take my chances"......and it doesn't matter to them how horrible the description of that eternity apart from God is, they don't care - it is truly more important to them to be in a place where God is not than to worry about how miserable that place might be....

...those are the people who end up in hell, not (IMO) the one's who wanted to know God and eternal life but never got the chance......I think Romans 2 is very clear that God will get the gospel to those who are looking for it....the sinner is loved so much by God that God does not force him/her to bend the knee.....I think that if God did somehow manipulate the sinner's response so that the sinner could avoid hell - that He would be LESS loving.

Even though I am not a Calvinist I think Jared is correct. It appears that his love is based in their election. In the Nehemiah ch i referred to God's love was based on the fact that they were his chosen people even though they were doing all sorts of sinful things. I kinda look at it as love on the basis of God's foreknowledge of who will come to Christ. Although we see things in a chronological way, God sees it as if it has already happened.

God's love is not separate from His justice. They are one. Justice is directed toward those who destroy. They will be themselves destroyed. That is what they have chosen, and it is an act of love toward the victims of destruction. This is a concept long lost in our morally relativistic society, but is harmonious with the Word.

If your concept of hell is one of everlasting torture you've got a problem. That is not compatible with love on any level, conditional or not. If your concept of hell is instead that, as in the language of Scripture, evil and sin are destroyed once and for all, there is no contradiction.

Quoted Earlier: "It may be feasible that hell is hell not from its own point of view, but from that of heaven. And it is also possible that the eternal fixity of the lost soul need not imply endless duration. Our Lord emphasises rather the finality of hell."

The word, "unconditional", is not used in Scripture but the concept is clear in Matthew where Jesus says that God's love falls on the just and unjust (unconditional is clearly implied), and then he tells us to do the same to each other "perfectly" as He does to us.

Awesome input.

nhe, I guess my immediate response to the C.S. Lewis take is that he avoids the problem I have by defining hell as "without God" ie no torture.

Looking a little more closely, he seems almost new age in a way (to me), in that going to hell (ie avoiding the Christian Heaven) is almost empowering for the true rebel. I guess to that end, I find myself at the brink of another contradiction in the whole God/salvation mystery which has to do with choice vs circumstance. Not the Calvanist vs Armenian (although that's a big one, obviously) but the most-people-in-history-never-heard-the-gospel thing. Innocent or send-em-to-the-fire?

But that's a whole 'nother topic.

Hobo, you should read C.S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" for a short, readable picture of his take on Hell. Whether you agree with it or not it will give you a lot of food for thought. I don't think you'll find the "empowerment" of those who choose Hell over Heaven very attractive or desirable as he paints it.

I think there are some good thoughts on this, I particularly like the C.S. Lewis explanation. But I'd like to comment on something Hobo said in his initial question:

... I don't think the same parent would feel their child should be tortured. For infinity. No matter the crime, can any being "lovingly" be the ultimate sadist? I don't see how love can fit in there. ...

I've read some things on the concept that Hell is not infinite. The gist of the theory, and I can't recall the scriptural backup, is that the one who stands apart from God is judged on his life and a punishment is given that matches the life lived. The basic "good guy" non-Christan will spend a short time in Hell, Hitler a lot longer. At the end to the length of time, the soul is destroyed.

Sounds morbid on the face of it, absolute destruction, but there's grace and love there too. For eternal, infinite as you said, punishment seems harsh, even for Hitler. The idea of the punishment matching the crime, and the mercy of termination, makes sense and meshes better with a God of love, for me anyway.

salguod:
I believe that the language of Scripture comes closest to supporting that. Words translated from the Greek regarding the "destruction" of the wicked always have an "aorist" or "finality" sense to them. Isaiah speaks of the destruction of Edom and the smoke rising for ever and ever; the same language that is used to describe hell in the New Testament, yet Edom is no more. Sodom and Gomorrah, likewise, were destroyed with "eternal fire," and they are so "gone" we can no longer determine their location precisely. Jonah is described as being in the belly of the fish "forever."

These things do not settle the debate, since they are still argued in the highest theological levels after hundreds of years. But while it is true that the depths of God's love are beyond our understanding, I don't personally believe that they defy our God-given sense of morality. The annihilation of evil in the end is absolutely consistent with a loving God. The Platonic idea of torment that continues through time everlasting to a soul that cannot die is so repugnant that it defies all rationality.