A Consuming Passion

Essays on Hell and Immortality in Honor of Edward Fudge

Christopher M. Date, Ron Highfield, Christopher M. Date, Ron Highfield, Date, Highfield

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781498223058
  9781498223072
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498223065
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Église chrétienne

This diverse collection of essays in honor of Edward William Fudge explores the topics of hell and immortality, for which Fudge has been widely known through his magnum opus, The Fire That Consumes. Most Christians believe people will live and suffer in hell forever, but Fudge defends a view known historically as "conditional immortality." He and a growing minority of Christians believe God will grant immortality only to those who meet the condition of being united with Christ on the Last Day, while those who do not will perish forever. Although Christians sharing Fudge's view have defended it both before and after him, conditionalists today still point to The Fire That Consumes as the seminal treatment of the topic. In July 2014, Christians from around the world gathered at the inaugural Rethinking Hell conference, to celebrate Fudge's life and work and to discuss the nature of hell in an open and respectful forum. This volume contains most of the essays presented at that conference, and several others volunteered by conditionalists since then, as a gift to Fudge for the tremendous impact he has had on them, and for the continued work he does for God's kingdom.

Part 1

The Legacy of Edward Fudge

1

The Legacy of Edward Fudge

John G. Stackhouse Jr.

John G. Stackhouse Jr. was educated in history and religious studies at three of North America’s leading institutions: Queen’s University in Ontario (BA, First Class Honors), Wheaton College Graduate School in Illinois (MA, with Highest Honors), and The University of Chicago (PhD). Formerly the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., he was recently appointed the Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies and Dean of Faculty Development at Crandall University in New Brunswick. Stackhouse has authored eight books, edited four others, and written over 600 articles, book chapters, and reviews in academic publications, major newspapers, and magazines. And he represents conditionalism in an upcoming “Four Views” book by Zondervan.

John originally presented the following paper as a plenary speaker at the Rethinking Hell conference, 2014.

Normally, when one is asked to give the keynote address on the legacy of the guest of honor, one answers the question, “What is the legacy of Edward Fudge?” And I promise to do so . . . eventually.

Not being normal, however, I want to spend most of my allotted time answering a different question—namely, “Why isn’t the legacy of Edward Fudge simply this: that all right-thinking people, or at least all evangelical theologians and preachers, are now conditionalists?” Three decades after the publication of The Fire That Consumes, why hasn’t conditional immortality carried the field?1

Well, perhaps the solution is simple: it's just a bad book. So its lack of influence needs no further explanation. But it is not, in my view, a bad book. Quite the contrary. I believe instead The Fire That Consumes to be one of the most convincing cases ever offered in the history of controversial theology, to the degree that I find it unanswerable.

So why doesn’t everybody think so?

In what follows, I will begin by assessing The Fire that Consumes. I will demonstrate that it meets a number of high standards for theological argumentation. I will then point out, as academics always do when they honor each other, some of its deficiencies. I will conclude this section by indicating that the lack of commanding influence of this book nonetheless is not due to any putative deficiencies.

I will go on, then, to draw on the work of several disparate theorists—Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi, of a previous generation, and also feminist epistemologist Lorraine Code and sociologist Michèle Lamont, of our own—to indicate something of how paradigms shift, including paradigms in theology. I will apply several of their key contentions then to the career of the doctrine of conditional immortality, and to Edward Fudge’s book in particular, to help explain why it has not been more successful.

I will conclude my remarks by suggesting what now might to be done to further the cause of Edward Fudge: to hear the Bible properly and to teach it well.

What Edward Fudge Did Right

Perhaps the most important single thing to say about the style of this book is that it was written by a man who eventually became a successful lawyer. The book commendably presents an actual argument reasoned carefully and plainly from evidence. Such a phenomenon is not to be taken for granted in theology. Indeed, even some of the acknowledged greats in theology have been accused of eschewing argument for mere suggestion or implication or even rhetorical flourish.2 Theologians who express themselves in this mode generate shimmering tableaux of concepts and phrases that, if they appeal to the intuitions of the reader, give that reader a marvelous experience. If such words do not coincide with the prejudices or aspirations of the reader, however, they will tend to leave one coldly unmoved. Especially is this so in the case of a good lawyer. Eloquence is no substitute for argument in the courtroom.

Well, actually, eloquence quite frequently is a substitute for argument in the courtroom! But it is not supposed to be. Nor is it supposed to be in the theological seminar, either—or in the pulpit, for that matter. Edward Fudge takes considerable pains to argue, not merely to announce or assert.

I shall show later that this very strength of the book stands also as a rhetorical weakness. For now, though, let’s look at more of its several strengths.

The Fire That Consumes demonstrates a wide range of basic and essential hermeneutical principles. First and foremost, it argues from Scripture and insists that all counter-arguments rely on Scripture as well. Again, this is certainly not to be taken for granted in theological argument in our day, or in any previous day. Not only Protestants, but all Christians in all centuries and places, should similarly insist that theology be conducted fundamentally on the basis of scriptural revelation. So say Augustine and Aquinas, as well as Calvin and Wesley.

Literal interpretation, likewise, is championed rightly in this book, and in an appropriately qualified sense. Literal interpretation properly pays attention to literature: genres, and particularly figures of speech, are taken seriously as such. The history of debate over the doctrine of hell is, in fact, rife with proponents of one view or another pressing figurative details for literalistic descriptions while rendering what some would view to be straightforward, even univocal, words and phrases into esoterica that yield only to those with the proper gnōsis to understand them. For an example of the former problem, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man is frequently seen to refer to either the intermediate or the final state, while it may well refer to neither, but could instead be simply an illustration, like the story of the Good Samaritan. It might even be, as some have suggested, an instance in which Jesus used a stock set of characters (like St. Peter at the Pearly Gates or the Grim Reaper) to make his particular point on that occasion.

A common example of the latter problem is, as Edward Fudge shows repeatedly, the various words in both Testaments for “destroy,” “dead,” and the like that pretty plainly mean, at least in most instances, “destroy,” “dead,” and the like—and yet some interpreters assert instead that they mean “not really destroyed or dead, but kept alive for unending pain.”

Proof-texting, the habit of literal interpretation of a primitive sort, is rightly set aside by Edward Fudge for attention to the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Indeed, one of the key strengths of the book is its insistence that the Old Testament must constitute the primary, indeed, the governing background against which the New Testament is interpreted, rather than something else: inter-testamental literature, for example, or the reigning philosophy of this or that century of Christian thought. This last point, about taking the Old Testament seriously as the framework for New Testament interpretation, did not arise with N. T. Wright, as some youngsters in the audience might need to recognize, but arose at least as far back as the biblical theology movement of the mid-twentieth century. And it has been crucial to New Testament interpretation at least since then in the modern period.

This hermeneutical point, in fact, cannot be overstated in this discussion. Indeed, I contend that Fudge’s case cannot be gainsaid if one takes this principle of interpretation seriously. The cumulative weight of the Old Testament testimony regarding the destiny of the lost is overwhelming: extinction and disappearance. The only way one can plausibly argue, therefore, that the New Testament supports eternal torment, let alone universalism, is to argue deductively, not inductively: from first principles some of which could be derived from Scripture, to be sure, but that also require supplementing from metaphysical presuppositions (such as the immortality of the soul) and moral intuitions (such as the belief that God couldn’t possibly allow anyone to suffer in hell forever or even eventually vanish). Instead, however, if one subjects one’s metaphysics and morality to the Old and New Test...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: The Legacy of Edward Fudge
• Part Two: Theology and Philosophy
• Part Three: Biblical Exegesis
• Part Four: History and Polemics
• Part Five: The Road Ahead
• Bibliography