Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Nate Wigfield

Last updated on: August 7, 2010 at 2:26 pm by Scot McKnight

Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Nate Wigfield 2010-08-07T14:26:42-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Nathan Wigfield. Review of Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment

(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). [This review was published at Nate Wigfield’s site originally.]

I have to say that I am appreciative to Sharon Baker for requesting that an advance copy of her book, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment, be sent to me for review. My hope is that, in reading this review, you might be compelled to get a copy for yourself.

As one might gather from the title, Razing Hell challenges Christians to rethink their traditional views of hell and/or eternal punishment and invites them to consider an alternative that is more consistent with the revelation of God in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Sharon Baker believes eternal hell – the belief that God would punish without end those who have rejected him in time – is one of the most disturbing notions in Christianity. Therefore, she asks us to join her on a quest for a new view of hell that permits us to affirm with Scripture that, while nothing impure will enter the gates of God’s holy kingdom (Rev. 21:27), there still will be a day when “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow… and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10-11; see also Rom. 14:11).”

Baker does not ignore parts of the Bible that depict God as a wrathful deity who endorses and even executes violence against his enemies. As most know, we have no problem finding passages that support this kind of view in the Old Testament. But Baker reminds us that the notion of redemptive divine violence has also been written into the central event of the New Testament – that is the passion of Christ.

Traditional theories of atonement – theories for how God became reconciled to the world through Christ – have most often painted God’s forgiveness as conditioned by an economic exchange at best and as a Father’s violent, punitive act upon his Son at worst. Either way, Baker insists that these theories have left us with a view that “God will not forgive unless God first receives some sort of compensation for sin (46).” This is nothing other than a retributive form of justice that we have projected onto God, Baker claims.

The concern for Baker is not only that these kinds of depictions of God’s justice have influenced our views of hell as eternal punishment. They have also served to perpetuate the myth of redemptive violence in the name of God. But is this the kind of justice displayed in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ? Baker answers with an emphatic “No!” As such, she explains, it is not the way of God. And therefore, it ought not be the way of Christians.

According to Baker, when we read the Bible, we must put on our “Jesus-colored glasses.” For those of us in the Christian tradition, we believe that “Jesus reveals God so that the way Jesus acts is the way God acts. What Jesus says is what God says (70).” We must then read the biblical story through the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Baker believes that, when we do this, we quickly find that “violence and retribution do not fit into the gospel message or into the ethics of God’s kingdom (79).” Thus, we must reconsider the nature of divine justice.

Baker’s alternative to the retributive justice we have often projected onto God is a “restorative or reconciling justice” – a justice that is served by “reconciling with the guilty and restoring the relationship (81).” Assuming a Jewish understanding of sin as giving us a picture of “shackles, something that binds us, that paralyzes us,” she suggests that, rather than requiring payment of some sort, that God forgives means God releases us and “breaks the shackles of sin, much like a crippled person is healed and released from illness (96).”

This kind of forgiveness does exactly the opposite of retribution. Instead of requiring compensation for the offense, God sacrifices and releases us from the need to balance the accounts, redefining the relationship by the hope of a restored future. In other words, in forgiving, God foregoes the need for retributive justice for the sake of a renewed relationship with all that God has created. Rather than requiring payment, God’s forgiveness is the free gift that liberates us from the past and “transforms the future from one of condemnation and retribution to an open future of redemption and reconciliation (98).”

How does this change our approach to hell? For Baker, it causes her to go deeper into the biblical narrative to find an alternative. On the premise that fire is often mentioned in the Bible as a symbol for God’s judgment, she interprets the fire imagery for hell in the New Testament to be no different. It is a metaphor for God’s judgment. The question is, What do we mean by judgment? Biblical passages that use the symbol of fire for judgment often speak of a fire that “burns up whatever is evil, wicked, or sinful,” but leaves behind “whatever is righteous and pure (113).” It seems that this metaphor of fire is a purifying fire of sorts, one that refines metal or precious stones so as to melt away their impurities. Instead of its destruction, it is a renewed object that passes through. Judgment then is nothing other than “part of the reconciling activity of God (122).” In other words, “The wrath of God, rather than anger, is love that burns away the sin, purifying the sinner so that true reconciliation and restoration can take place (122).”

While the metaphor of fire for God’s judgment is helpful, Baker treats Jesus’ words on hell in the New Testament primarily as a teaching device. This would not have been unusual in the day and age of Jesus, she says. It was not uncommon in the Middle Eastern world to use “the most explicitly vivid metaphorical language… to make an important point (136).” And the point was not that people were literally in danger of being thrown into a garbage dump in the southwest region of Jerusalem (Gehenna), but that people were at risk of missing the fresh movement of God among God’s people and in the entire world.

But what do we make of those passages that refer to hell as “eternal punishment,” one might ask. Does this not suggest that people who reject this movement of God will inevitably find themselves engulfed in the eternal flames of hell? No, says Baker. While the translation of the word eternal is inconsistent (sometimes translated as an age, other times as eternity), “the question of eternality as never ending only truly applies to God (138).” Thus, a reference to eternal fire refers not to something apart from God, but “to the fire that surrounds God (138).”

The question remains (and it is the question everyone wants to ask), If this fire that surrounds God is a purifying fire that melts away all that is impure and leaves behind that which is righteous and pure, and we all stand (believers and unbelievers alike) before God on the Day of Judgment to pass through that fire, does anyone perish? Does anyone suffer the torments of hell? While Baker says she is not a universalist, that she believes “God respects the freedom given to us to choose for ourselves whether or not we want a relationship with God,” she also questions whether there will be anyone at all, in the aftermath of God’s judgment, who will reject God (141). After all, “Only something impure could reject God (145).”

What I gather from Baker’s conclusions is that the purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross and announcement of God’s kingdom was not to satisfy the wrath of his Father and pay a penalty for sin or to sweep us off our feet so that we could one day go to heaven. Rather, at the cross Jesus put God’s forgiveness on display for the world to see, showing what God was willing to do to establish the earthly reign of his kingdom and invite all of us to be a part of it despite our sin. She says, “The very nature of our reconciliation with God through Jesus makes us God’s agents, God’s ministers of reconciliation – not so that we can work to keep people out of hell, but so we can transform the world through reconciliation (176).” In other words, salvation is now. Salvation is the invitation to enter the kingdom of God today and realize that God has forgiven us though we often do not know what we are doing.

Baker admits that she does not “know with absolute certainty what will happen at the end of time… how God will see that justice prevails or that every knee will bow or every tongue confess Jesus as Lord (180).” She does know, however, that retributive justice and redemptive violence continue to threaten our world. “As we go about our business,” she says, “the world seems to become more and more violent. Innocent multitudes of people suffer injustice and violence every second of every day (180).” Her answer is to give up the idea of retribution altogether, which includes our distorted notions of hell and God’s justice.

In my view, what drives Sharon Baker to reconsider traditional views of hell, God’s wrath, and judgment is the fruit that such views have born in the world. &nbs
p;If we believe we have been called to imitate a God who requires the violent punishment of his Son in order to forgive and torments countless others in the eternal flames of hell, this will most certainly influence our pursuit of peace and reconciliation here on earth. And it has. Instead of embracing the radical notion of forgiveness toward restoration, we continue to exact justice through violent means. While some will disagree with, and outright condemn, her conclusions based on their understanding of biblical revelation and/or Church tradition, I think the value of Baker’s work in this book is in her courage to call traditional theological foundations into question on the basis of the immense amount of violence and destruction such views have caused historically.

Do not get me wrong. Baker’s theological proposals have a biblical argument that demands consideration. I happen to think, however, that the strength of her argument is in the practical urgency for alternative views of God’s justice. It is a tragedy that, among those who uphold the banner of redemptive violence (especially at a global level), the voices of Christians are often the loudest. What Sharon Baker sets out to do in Razing Hell is remind those who follow Jesus that the way to peace is through restoration and reconciliation, not retribution. This is fundamental to the Good News of Jesus Christ. And yet, our traditional notions of hell contradict this very claim. If we are going to be agents of God’s kingdom of peace and justice here on earth, we best go deeper into Scripture and tradition for an interpretation of hell that more closely reflects the revelation of God in the life and teachings of Christ. Baker does just this. And, while volumes could be written on some of the topics she has chosen to address, she has accomplished the difficult task of writing a thoughtful book on hell that is accessible to the average Christian reader. I look forward to the conversations this book will most definitely spark!

Uncategorized

Previous Post

August 7, 2010

The Reformation of Catholicism?

Next Post

August 8, 2010 Prayer for the Week

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who does the Bible say is Lord of the Sabbath?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Satan Jesus Moses Man