The Craig-Bradley Debate:
Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?

Dr. Craig's Questions

Thank you, Dr. Bradley. We will now move to the next segment of the debate. In this segment we will have a 20-minute discussion period. Again, each speaker will have 10 minutes to direct questions to the other speaker and receive responses. It's a bit of a free-wheeling time, but after 10 minutes we will switch. And to start things out, we will have Dr. Craig asking questions of Dr. Bradley. Dr. Craig.

Dr. Craig's Question:

Well, let me say that I think that you certainly grasped the nettle firmly, in the sense that you tried to do exactly what I asked you to do, namely, to furnish a positive proof that in fact God and hell are logically inconsistent. Let's start off with the beginning of your speech. You quoted the passage from the book of Revelation about someone's being tormented forever in the lake of fire. Who is it talking about that is going to be tormented in that way?

Bradley's Response:

In the immediate context it is all those who have the mark of the beast on their forehead. Take a look at a few verses back . . . a chapter or so back, you will find that all those whose names are not written in the Book of Life will have the mark of the beast imprinted on their forehead, and they are the ones who will be tormented in the lake of fire and brimstone.

Dr. Craig:

Could you give us the reference for that?--because I don't think that's accurate.

Dr Bradley:

Well, uh, . . . Revelation 14, but I think the chapter earlier is required . . . [audience member gives reference]. Pardon? [audience member repeats reference]

Dr. Craig:

I thought it was later.

Dr. Bradley:

Maybe, maybe; we'll look that up afterwards.

Dr. Craig:

I believe that . . . all right. Yeah, I think that the passage is talking about Satan. It says that Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and tormented in this way (Rev. 20.10). Isn't it true that the Bible uses a number of different images for the state of the damned?

Dr. Bradley:

Yes, it is. Let me quote you a different one, then. We can come back to Revelation as soon as I can find it or somebody else can. But let me quote from Jesus' own words from the gospel of Matthew. "The angels shall come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous and will cast them into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth " (Mt. 13.49-50).

Dr Craig:

What I was asking is, aren't there metaphors other than fire used in the Bible to characterize the state of the damned in hell?

Dr. Bradley:

Well, I find just in the Book of Revelation . . . Matthew 20 alone--I can put them up on the overhead if you wish--in which Jesus explicitly talks about eternal fire, eternal punishment in it, weeping and gnashing of teeth therein.

Dr. Craig:

But isn't it the case that the Scripture also uses metaphors such as outer darkness, separation from God, that this notion of fire is just one metaphorical image of hell among many others that are found in the New Testament?

Dr. Bradley:

Well, I've got two points to make about that. There may, indeed, be other paler metaphors, but it's this one, this fiery metaphor, which most people have seized upon and which most people have believed in and which is the most morally pernicious insofar as belief in it has led to such things as the following. Let me just quote . . .

Dr. Craig:

No, no, I don't want to hear about that. I want to concentrate on this. You admit, then, that this is a metaphor.

Dr. Bradley:

No. Why should I admit it is a metaphor any more than any other doctrine in the New Testament? For example, the doctrine of Christ's second coming. Is that a metaphor? Is the doctrine of his salvation a metaphor?

Dr. Craig:

Isn't the case that the majority of Christian New Testament scholars interpret these passages as metaphorical for the suffering and the anguish of those who are separated from God, but not necessarily to be taken as literal flames, such as we experience here in this world?

Dr. Bradley:

It is true that the majority of Christian scholars of the New Testament do take a charitable interpretation of it. But just let me remind you that as soon they start taking charitable interpretations of that metaphor, they start looking at the question of whether or not other claims, other doctrines, are purely metaphorical, too. And you get to the position where so many New Testament scholars today, other than those who are evangelicals, claim that the whole of the biblical story needs to be demythologized . . . .

Dr. Craig:

But that's a different issue than use of literary metaphor as a literary device. You're talking about historicity and so forth.

Let me go on to your question you asked about the condemnation of those who have never heard. You characterized my position as the condemnation of most people as a result of their not having heard. After listening to my first speech, wouldn't you like to retract that statement as inaccurate?

Dr. Bradley:

No, on the grounds of my having read your article in Faith and Philosophy entitled "No other Name."{1}

Dr. Craig:

And isn't it the case that in that article I argued that those who have never heard of the gospel will not be judged on the basis of their response to the gospel and that therefore their condemnation is not due to the fact that they have not heard? Their condemnation is due to the fact that they have not lived up to the light of nature and conscience which is available to all persons.

Dr. Bradley:

Let me quote page 186: "Perhaps some will be saved through such a response to general revelation." But, you say, "On the basis of Scripture"--and I agree with you totally--"we must say that such anonymous Christians are relatively rare."{2}

Dr. Craig:

Right; and then the next sentence says that "Those who are judged and condemned on the basis of their failure to respond to the light of general revelation . . ."{3} I'm not saying that they're condemned because they haven't heard.

Let me go on to the question about whether or not (1) and (2)--could you put those back up for us?--whether (1) and (2) are logically inconsistent. I think that your argument is incorrect when you say that (3) entails (4). That seems to me to be inaccurate. What I'm arguing is that there is no world which is feasible for God to create which is inhabited by creatures in which all persons freely receive Christ. But I am not at all arguing that there is no possible world in which this is true. It's just that this is a world that is not actualizable by God. But it is certainly a possible world.

Dr. Bradley:

For the purposes of this presentation I didn't use your own terminology, since I thought that most people wouldn't understand it. But you might like to define for them what you mean by a "feasible world." I take it that it is a subclass of the set of possible worlds, namely, that subclass in which people act of their own free will.

Dr. Craig:

No, no. It would be a proper subset of all the range of possible worlds which are such that God is capable of actualizing them. To give an illustration, suppose that if Peter were created in just a certain set of circumstances, he would freely deny Christ. Now it is logically possible for him to be in those circumstances and affirm Christ. But he just wouldn't. If he were in those circumstances, he would freely deny Christ. If that's the case, it's not within God's power to actualize a world in which Peter is in precisely those circumstances and yet he affirms Christ. So (3) doesn't entail (4). There is a possible world in which creatures have free will and freely receive Christ, but it's just that God is not capable of actualizing it.

Dr. Bradley:

But what's heaven? Isn't heaven a possible world?

Dr. Craig:

No, heaven isn't a possible world. A possible world, as philosophers use that term, as you know, is a maximal state of affairs--which includes not just the afterlife, but the pre-life on the way to heaven. And the point is here that it may not be possible for . . .

Dr. Bradley:

[tape unintelligible] Now by a possible world we simply mean a state of affairs which is describable by a maximally consistent set of propositions or what Plantinga calls a "book." And we get that, as Carnap and others have always pointed out, simply by taking a set of every elementary proposition and affirming or denying each of them. We get a possible world in that way which is heaven. Technically, heaven is a possible world. If it isn't, then it's not a possible world; it's an impossible world.

Dr. Craig:

No, heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.

Notes

{1} William Lane Craig, "'No Other Name': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ," Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 172-188.

{2} Ibid., p. 186.

{3} Ibid.

[ Previous | Table of Contents | Next ]

Copyright (C) William Lane Craig. All Rights Reserved.

Email this to a friend