Month: June 2019

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written in your hearts, known and read by everyone. (2 Cor. 3.1-2)

Here is the late Edward Fudge in a video from 2011. He argues effectively for the consuming of the wicked (after requisite punishment) at God’s judgment. Though I should have read his book by now, I’ve never. I hold to his position concerning the outcome of unredeemed sinners from my own studies and snippets from others’ positions whom I investigated using exegetical resources. The bible is my ultimate authority so I studied this concept to see if it was in the text.

My former pastor and seminary president was Richard V. Clearwaters who held the consuming position also. However, at that time I was smugly sitting in the pew proud that I was sort of “more orthodox” than my pastor since I held to the traditionalist eternal torment position. The motivations for my late and former pastor are not my own today. He voiced the reason for his conclusion largely as a result of the death of his unsaved brother for whom he felt responsible. Clearwaters often described the relief he felt  after realizing his brother would not suffer eternal torment. Indeed, who can comprehend eternal torment of humans?

My adherence flowed out of understanding the idea of immortality denied Adam and Eve in their fallen state. If humans are invested with native immortality, then expulsion from the tree of life was superfluous. So, for me, I reviewed the doctrine and the arguments which underpinned the traditional position and started to find assumptions which were philosophical and not biblical.

Here is a nice summary of the arguments from his book “The Fire that Consumes.”

It is widely acknowledged Einstein and Newton were some of the greatest thinkers in history. They didn’t start out as exceptional though. Einstein had a slow development as a child while Newton could only get through 2 or 3 pages a day in scientific reading when starting out. All this to say to not get discouraged by weighty philosophical writing.

Cornelius Van Til is the author of this article and he shows clearly the progression of thought from Plato and Aristotle through Aquinas then Kant as opposed to the revelation of God in scripture. In the end there are only two positions: autonomous man who by definition (self-rule) is his own god, and the truth of scripture. Van Til speaks of the Westminster Confession and Calvin but it should be nuanced to indicate the grammatical-historical reading (plain sense) of scripture. 

https://thirdmill.org/magazine/hof/ST12006/Nature%20And%20Scripture%20by%20Van%20Til.pdf