The little apocalypses of the Synoptics, St. Paul’s letters, and Revelation affirm that at the Second Coming of Christ the dead will rise and final universal judgment will commence. Believers should experience “bold confidence” (Eph. 3:12) regarding Christ’s Second Coming because he has already proleptically judged us righteous through the promise of the gospel present in Word and Sacrament. As the Son of Man, Jesus shared his verdict with his hearers ahead of time. Believers today, in the interim between the first and second coming, do not need to wonder what Christ’s final judgement on them will be. The presence of the risen Jesus in Word and Sacrament (Matt. 18:20) proleptically delivers his “forgiven and justified” verdict to the contemporary Church.
Are We Judged According to Works?
The clearest passages of Scripture interpret other passages. Therefore, sections of Scripture that speak of judgment according to works must be read in harmony with the clear passages affirming the unconditionality of justification. Thus, the good works upon which Christ judges believers provide evidence of genuine faith (Matt 25). As we have seen, true faith necessarily gives rise to the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-26). Paul very clearly teaches both that saving faith inevitably results in good works and the unconditional nature of the promise of the gospel (Rom. 3:28).
Although Luther sadly misinterpreted it, the Epistle of James makes precisely the same point. When St. James speaks of believers being “justified by works” in addition to faith (Jam. 2:24), he refers to the way works manifest saving faith. In a similar vein, in Romans 2, Paul speaks of the final judgment according to works (Rom. 2:6-11). However, he is speaking of a hypothetical situation apart from the intervening grace of Christ. In the next chapter, he is quick to affirm that no one can stand before God because of humans’ total lack of righteousness (Rom. 3:9-20).
Thus, Christ will not render his positive judgment at the Second Coming on the basis of one’s works. However, a tree is known by its fruit. Only those with saving faith can actually perform good works in God’s sight. These fruits will reveal otherwise hidden faith at the Last Judgement.
Degrees of Glory and Shame Based on Works
Moreover, Scripture, the Church Catholic, and the Lutheran tradition have always affirmed that there will be degrees of glory as well as degrees of damnation based on works. Jesus tells believers that “your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:12) based on their works. He does not say that their reward for works will be heaven itself. Similarly, in respect to those cities that rejected the apostles’ preaching, Jesus affirms: “Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Matt. 10:15).
In the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Philip Melanchthon1 writes that although humans cannot merit anything before God, nevertheless, out of pure grace, God does reward of good works in this life and the next. The Reformed tradition agrees with this assessment.2 Isaiah writes that “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment [literally menstrual rags]” (Isa. 64:6) and “rubbish [more literally feces or half eaten food].” Therefore, after we have done all we can to perform the works of the law we remain, as Jesus says, “unworthy servants” (Lk 17:10).
It follows then that there can be no genuine merit before God in the Roman Catholic sense of the term.3 Nevertheless, because God is gracious, he sometimes rewards our defective works in this life. More importantly, he promises to graciously reward our works with degrees of glory in the next life. The key is that such a reward is given based on pure benevolence and not on the basis of the intrinsic value of the work.
The Duration and Nature of Hell
The angels sound trumpets as Christ returns to judge the living and the dead
The outcome of Christ’s judgment will establish the eternal destinies of humanity. Some humans will go to eternal damnation and others to abundant life in the new heavens and the new earth (Dn. 12, Matt. 25, Rev. 20). Throughout Scripture, there is never a hint that either state will not be eternal. Daniel speaks of “shame and everlasting contempt” (Dn. 12:2). Jesus speaks of hell as the place where the “worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mk. 9:48). Paul speaks of “everlasting destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9). Finally, in Revelation, St. John writes about a lake of fire into which Satan and unbelievers will be thrown. This fiery lake is a place where “they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).
Beyond affirming the finality of the divine verdict of damnation, the above passages make it clear that the suffering of the damned will be eternal and conscious. Jesus could not warn sinners of the everlasting “worm and the flame” (Mk. 9:48) if they would no longer exist as suffering conscious subjects. The same can be said of the warning that those cast into the lake of fire will be “tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).
This language rules out the claim that Hell is merely a temporal purification, a possibility explored by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce.4 The language of eternal torment in the Bible also rules out the Millerite/Adventist belief5 that the damned will simply be annihilated and cease to exist. Nevertheless, annihilationism and similar beliefs have been gaining popularity in some Anglo-American Evangelical circles.6
Indeed, eternal damnation as everlasting conscious suffering is a terrifying doctrine. It is also admittedly difficult to reconcile with the unconditional love of God manifested in the cross. Nevertheless, confessional Lutherans concerned with the fullness of truth must not shy away from proclamation concerning hell. As early-modern Lutheran pastor Valerius Herberger put it:
Now for what purpose is this subject preached in our church? Our Savior states briefly and rightly in Matthew 10, “Far rather fear Him that is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” So do not willfully sin. Momentaneum quod delectat, aeternum quod cruciat: Pleasure is brief, pain eternal. And “think of the end of the ungodly, and thou shalt not sin” (Sir. 7).7
The Possibility of Universal Salvation
Beginning with Origen in the third century, many Christians have been deeply bothered by the thought of an eternal Hell. Rather than retain the fullness of God’s word, they attempted to work around biblical passages concerning hell. The result was a form of Christian Universalism.8 The most extreme version of this universalism was promoted by Origen himself. Shockingly, Origen affirmed not only salvation of all humans, but also of Satan and the demons!9
Theologians often refer to this teaching as apocatastasis, or the restoration of all things.10 This doctrine of universalism might well be emotionally satisfying and provide some false comfort. However, in accordance with the clear teaching of Scripture, the consensus of historic Christian orthodoxy, and the Augsburg Confession, confessional Lutherans must reject such a belief….
Moral scruples appear to fundamentally motivate prominent Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart11 and other universalists. They fear that the teaching that God eternally damns some and eternally saves others compromises the goodness of God. Worse, it makes the Lord into a cruel monster who inflicts infinite suffering on his helpless creatures. At certain points, Hart asserts that believing God damns some but saves others would make the Lord so immoral that the doctrine of hell alone would discredit Christianity as the true religion.
In some measure, we have dealt with this problem already in our discussion of the principle of divine hiddenness and the mystery of election. Outside of Christ, God appears to the fallen human subject as wrath, arbitrary destruction, and terrifying unpredictability. He appears utterly incongruous with the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ.
Since humans are sinful and utterly dependent on God’s grace for their mere existence, the problem of divine wrath and hiddenness is not a question of divine fairness since God owes us nothing. It is rather a matter of the congruity of God in Christ to God external to Christ. Nevertheless, the clash of the hidden and revealed God in the event of the cross resulted in Christ triumphantly walking out of the tomb on Easter Sunday. Therefore, God shows humanity his true heart in Christ. Ultimately, despite our perception, there is only one God with one will. And Christ perfectly reveals the one God to us.
Comfort and Confidence in the Revealed God
Christ manifests his love for all sinners in Word and sacrament. Here, God reveals his unilateral and unconditional grace and opens his life to us. We must admit that how God can damn some eternally is a terrifying mystery. However, in this lifetime, we can never overcome this mystery through speculation. If we want to encounter God in love and escape damnation, we should flee from the manifestations of God’s wrath and hiddenness in the kingdom of the world. Instead, we must run to his grace manifested in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the holy Church….
Attempts to explain away the reality of divine anger and hiddenness that humans experience every day will never solve the problem of wrath and damnation. The only things that drive away fear of the hidden God are Christ, the means of grace, and the proclamation of the gospel. When the gospel comes, it reveals God as present and gracious, not hidden and wrathful. The proclamation of Jesus, and not speculation (as in Hart), is the only way to ensure one stands in divine grace and escapes the fires of hell. As Herberger reminds us, Jesus is “the Pestilence of hell and the Poison of death, who for our good extinguished the fire of hell with the sprinkling of His blood, slew the worm that gnawed at our heart, and redeemed us from eternal shame…”12
The living Jesus descends into Hell to proclaim his victory over Satan, sin, and death. Also, I’m pretty sure he is about to slay the worm.
- Ap III.73-74; CT, 174. ↩︎
- Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics,708-711. ↩︎
- See discussion in: Johann Heinz, Justification and Merit: Luther vs. Catholicism (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 95-250, 331-406. ↩︎
- See: C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). ↩︎
- Land, “Conditional Immortality,” 77-78. ↩︎
- See example of Evangelical Annihilationism in: Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment (Cambridge, UK: The Lutterworth Press, 2012). ↩︎
- Valerius Herberger, The Heavenly Jerusalem, trans. Matthew Carver (Matthew Carver, 2023), 94. ↩︎
- Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018). ↩︎
- Origen, On First Principles, 1.5.1-3; ANF 4:256-258. Also see: Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58; C.A. Patrides, “Salvation of Satan,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967): 467-478. ↩︎
- Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 2013). ↩︎
- David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). ↩︎
- Herberger, The Heavenly Jerusalem, 95. ↩︎
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Cover image detail from Hans Memling, The Last Judgement, c. late 1460s, at “The Last Judgement (Memling) Wikipedia, accessed July 9, 2024, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Memling); other images: Paul Raabe quotation meme, Dennis E. McFadden, Facebook, www.facebook.com; Stefan Lochner, Last Judgement, c. 1435, at “Stefan Lochner,” Wikipedia, accessed July 9, 2024, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Lochner; and Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Christ in Limbo, c. 1575, at Ted Giese, “To Hell And Back,” Mount Olive Lutheran Church, May 17, 2020, accessed July 9, 2024, https://lutheran-church-regina.com/blogs/post/to-hell-and-back-1-peter-31322-pr-ted-a-giese-sunday-may-17th-2020-season-of-easter-mount-olive-lutheran-church.