“Everyone believes that living things come from dead things. Christians believe that God fashioned Adam from the dust of the ground. Evolutionists believe that we emerged millions of years ago from the primordial goo. So both believe that animated life came from inanimate matter. Both believe that first there was no-life and then there was …
The Real Problem
“We demand to know how a loving God can send anyone to Hell, when the real problem is how a just God could send anyone anywhere else” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 59).
The Mechanics of Wrath
“In the first chapter of Romans, the apostle describes the mechanics of wrath in this way. The wrath of God is visited from Heaven on all the ungodliness of men, but he does not go on to describe lightning bolts and hail the size of cantaloupes. No, the wrath of God is described as God …
Why There Is a Hell
“So God does not lose all sense of proportion. He excludes from Heaven only those who refuse to let go of their own wild and disproportionate sinning. God doesn’t demonstrate a lack of proportion. He banishes it from His presence. That is why there is a Hell” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 58).
Judging the Last Judgment
“We don’t want the last judgment to stop every mouth. We don’t want the realities of the last judgment to stop our mouths. We are modern men and want the doctrine of the last judgment to give us an opportunity to run our mouths” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 57).
Nothing But Proportion
“We often talk as though Hell were nothing but a gigantic miscarriage of justice, the end result of God somehow losing all sense of proportion. We want to think of the Last Judgment as requiring an impressive explanation and defense because we think of it as that day at the end of the world when …
The Outer Hell
“Those who are spiraling downward in the final lostness are people who are in the process of losing the capacity for relationship. Scripture describes that kind of relationship as one which bites and devours, or which wants a relationship with others so that someone might be within striking distance. But eventually everyone moves out of …
Law is Relational
“Sin must be against someone. It is not primarily a matter of being against a rule—for a rule does not exist without a rule-giver, or the specified persons that the rule concerns . . . whenever the law is broken, that means that someone has been wronged, grieved, or hurt” (Mere Fundamentalism, pp. 52-53).
Sin Veers
“Sin is necessarily parasitic. Sin is bent righteousness. Sin cannot exist in its own name, it cannot stand on its own feet. Goodness, being an attribute of God, simply is. Evil is a knock-off, a corruption, a twisting, and a deviation” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 52).
The Direction of Glory
“A man seeking true glory has his eye fixed on God. A man in pursuit of vainglory is given to the sidelong glance” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 51).