Thank you for #70, Bruce. And yes, I would be happy to join such a thread. That P.S. was genuinely something I was wondering about, not a conclusion I had reached, and certainly not an attempt to put a label on anyone. I meant that faith may be lost far more often the way a sheep wanders off, gradually and for reasons and circumstances that are real and serious, than the way the younger son left home, as a deliberate choice.

And I don’t say that from any height. I’ve spent, and am still spending, a long time testing my own faith against the hardest objections I could find, and I know how thin the line can be. I would very much like to hear how you, and perhaps others, think about these things if you feel it is a topic worth exploring on its own.

Robert, thank you for getting back to me, and for making the changes in this thread I requested.

I acknowledge your point about the terminology, because I think we reached some common ground there. You were right that in the tradition you were trained in, hell was not used as an umbrella term including purgatory or annihilation, and I stopped using it that way. What I showed was only that some philosophical and theological reference works do classify sharply different views of final judgment under that heading. Neither of us needs the other’s usage to be wrong. And I agree with your further point that, when discussing Bart’s argument specifically, it matters to be clear when he is referring to the traditional model of eternal conscious punishment. That is also why, in post 46, I worked from Bart’s own usage and distinguished carefully between his rejection of eternal conscious torment (ECT) and the annihilation he still attributes to Jesus.

Everything you mention in your previous post really does matter. None of it is a diversion, and none of it is nonsense. I can see very well why you give this less weight than I do. Bart is openly an atheist. He is not trying to make anyone a universalist. The removal of eternal conscious torment can genuinely be reassuring. And annihilation can certainly be seen, especially compared with ECT, as much less terrible. I agree with all of that.

But I think it still leaves the thing I am actually worried about largely untouched. Once the historical case has established what Jesus probably did and did not teach, what follows from that case, and what requires a further evaluation?

Something in your own response actually helps to make this clearer. Bart calls the annihilation he attributes to Jesus “the worst outcome you can possibly imagine.” You wrote that, if you were still a Christian, you could look at that same outcome and describe it, at least compared with ECT, as God mercifully putting you out of your misery. I don’t think your response is illegitimate at all. It just shows that the historical reconstruction does not by itself tell us what we should make of that outcome. The same reconstructed outcome can then be evaluated as the worst imaginable outcome or as a merciful end. There is another step there, between reconstructing what Jesus taught and deciding what it means for us.

That is why the final slide matters to me. What Have We to Fear? is not a passing remark. It is the question of the concluding section, on its own slide: IN THE END: What Have We to Fear? The historical case can certainly give us a real reason for relief about ECT. My question is what takes us from that specific relief to the broader question on the slide.

I can see why Bart’s atheism matters as context, but I don’t think it settles my concern. He does not answer the final question by saying: there is no God, no judgment and no afterlife, so there is nothing to fear. That is not the argument he gives. He stays with the material he has presented about the Hebrew Bible, Jesus, judgment, annihilation and the development of Hell. And, to be fair to him, he does mark his own evaluations: “in my view,” “to me,” “I think that God is in the end merciful.” So my concern is not that he hides the fact that he is giving his own view. He doesn’t. My question is how the historical findings and the reassurance that follows are connected.

When Bart says that “it really doesn’t make sense” and “it almost certainly is not true,” he means ECT. I am not disputing that either. What I am asking is what the listener hears while the much broader question IN THE END: What Have We to Fear? is on the screen. Bart does not then return to the things that remain in his own reconstruction of Jesus: judgment, exclusion, irreversible destruction, “a horrible death in fire,” and what he himself had called “the worst outcome you can possibly imagine.” The conclusion moves toward reassurance.

Something else you said earlier has stayed with me too. When I was still arguing that the transition itself had not been marked, you thought the kind of distinction I was asking for would probably be “decidedly less successful.” I corrected that criticism afterwards: Bart did mark his own evaluations. But it left me wondering about the word successful itself. What exactly do you mean by it, and how should we measure it?

This course was publicly promoted on YouTube, and Bart also advertised it on his blog as a free course. His own invitation there was: “Anyone can come. There’s zero cost.” So this was clearly meant to reach beyond specialists or people who already knew his work well. I am not saying those people don’t know Bart is an atheist. I have no basis for saying that.

But if reaching a broad non-specialist audience is part of the success, shouldn’t what that audience actually comes away thinking has been established count as part of the success too? I mean that as a genuine question, Robert. Perhaps you mean something different by successful.

The listener I have in mind is not hypothetical. I watched this particular lecture with two other people. Afterwards I asked each of them separately what they thought the conclusion had been. Both answered: “Hell does not exist.” I then asked, “So what is there?” After a pause, both gave the same answer: “Heaven.” That may simply have been their own simplification. I cannot know. But was it completely arbitrary, or is it understandable given the final slide and the way the conclusion moves? Bart’s own reconstruction still contained judgment, exclusion and irreversible destruction. They are not the basis of my concern, any more than the Q&A was. They are simply one reason I don’t think the reception question is hypothetical.

The questions submitted during the course made me wonder about the same thing. One participant asked, “If there is no hell doesn’t that negate the significance of the cross? Also what happens to the need for salvation?” Another wrote, “If he is not saving me from hell, what am I missing?” Again, that does not prove Bart caused those inferences. But it does show that listeners were already taking the historical discussion into questions about the cross, salvation and their own faith.

This is not only about this lecture for me. The concern I raised in a blog comment about the word invented was not just fussing over language. It didn’t happen is not just my semantic irritation. And What Have We to Fear? is not just one slide that happened to bother me. They all raise the same question: what does a non-specialist come away thinking has actually been established, and how much of that is really carried by the historical argument?

That is why words and framing matter so much to me. I apply the same standard to my evangelical and apologetic friends. A conclusion may be true, or may seem very plausible, and still not follow from the argument being offered for it. I don’t think that standard should change depending on whether I like the conclusion. I am not asking Bart to protect anyone’s faith from evidence. If the evidence requires a Christian to give something up, then so be it.

And perhaps that is the best answer I can give to your word gravity. Some of the more personal conversations on this forum have made me think even more seriously about what can be at stake when an anchor someone has trusted for a long time comes loose. I don’t think an anchor should be protected from evidence. If the evidence really requires it to move, then it may have to move. But I have learned not to treat that lightly. I just do not want someone’s anchor loosened by a conclusion broader than the evidence has earned.

Robert, I have gone back over all of this once more, and I think I can now give you a much simpler answer than I have managed so far.

First, I think you are right about something important. I have probably placed too much analytical weight on the closing minutes of the course. I still would not call it merely a relatively informal video, because it was presented as a course on a subject that can matter enormously to people. But I take your larger point. No presentation can anticipate every inference every listener may draw, and I think at times I was asking the closing section to carry more precision than a spoken presentation can reasonably be expected to carry. I also need to give more weight to something Bart actually says in that closing section. He explicitly acknowledges that fear of not existing is “a real fear too,” but says that it is not the fear he is addressing there. He then distinguishes destruction from eternal torment. I heard those words, but I did not allow them enough weight in my interpretation of the conclusion. That was not brilliant.

On universalism, I don’t think we actually disagree. I have never thought Bart was trying to convert anyone to universalism, nor that he argued that because Jesus did not teach ECT, universalism therefore follows. He clearly marks those remarks as his own evaluation. And I have not objected to the reassurance itself. If Bart is right that Jesus did not teach eternal conscious torment, then that is genuinely good news for people who have lived in terror of it. I said that in my first post, but perhaps it became less visible as the discussion went on.

I think I can now see more clearly what remains of my concern, and yes, it is much more personal than the argument I was trying to make before. Bart tells us very clearly what annihilation means. In the Q&A he could hardly be clearer: the person is destroyed, annihilated, and no longer exists. What still catches me is that, on Bart’s own historical reconstruction, Jesus actually warned people of that fate. The ending of the lecture, however, lands strongly on relief: a healthy trend, mercy, universalism as a hopeful sign, and finally “What Have We to Fear?”

Some listeners plainly kept the distinction between ECT and annihilation perfectly well. Others moved toward much broader questions about whether there is hell at all, what salvation is for, and what remains of the significance of the cross. I now agree with you that those reactions cannot by themselves be turned into evidence that Bart communicated badly. People bring their own histories, beliefs and fears to a lecture, and different listeners will take different things away from it. So I think you are also right about the specifically Christian element in the gravity I attach to this. If I take seriously the possibility that Jesus really warned of judgment and irreversible loss, I find it difficult to treat that merely as one historical detail left standing after ECT has been removed. That is my Christian reaction to Bart’s reconstruction, not a conclusion his historical argument requires everyone else to share.

“I think that in the end God is merciful.”
Yes, I agree. That matters enormously. But if Jesus really warned people of irreversible destruction, as Bart’s own reconstruction says he did, and as I believe he did, God’s mercy does not make that warning something I can simply put aside.

And I should make one thing especially clear. I am not asking for fear preaching, although judgment is a real part of the New Testament. I have no wish to put back the terror that the historical argument against eternal conscious torment may rightly remove. For me the Christian answer to judgment is not more fear. The New Testament is good news. The Jesus who warns is also the Jesus who tells of a shepherd searching for the lost sheep, a woman searching until she finds what she has lost, and a father running toward his returning son.

Perhaps that is what I was really trying to protect throughout this discussion: not fear, but seriousness. I overstated the case when I turned that concern into an argument that Bart’s conclusion had not been sufficiently delimited. He did delimit it more clearly than I allowed. What remains is largely a difference in how much existential weight I, as a Christian listener, give to the warning that still remains in his reconstruction. I think that is probably where the two of us can leave this particular discussion?

Having said all that, I doubt I will lose my sensitivity to historical conclusions sliding into positions or assumptions that the historical argument itself does not establish. I suspect that will remain part of how I read and respond to things for as long as I am around here, and I will try to apply the same standard regardless of whose conclusions are involved. Thank you, Robert, for your patience, your honesty, and the brotherly way you have engaged with me throughout this.

Thanks, Robert. Yes, I think we do understand each other rather well now. I appreciate that, and I’m glad we were able to bring the discussion to this point.

I actually recognize quite a lot in what you say here. Hope without guarantee, seriousness without fear preaching, and taking God’s mercy seriously are not foreign to my own theology at all.