Epilogue By John Stott

Epilogue By John Stott

6 THE GOSPEL FOR THE WORLD

The Hope of the Kingdom

What is the Christian message to the world? Is it about saving the individual, or saving the society, or both? And what does it say about humanity's prospects?

Introducing the 1982 report of the International Evangelical leaders' consultation at Grand Rapids in the USA on Evangelism and Social Responsibility, Dr Stott looked back over a 'tension' between the emphasis on the individual and the emphasis on society - a tension which, he said, had at times amounted to a 'polarisation'. In May 1980 a conference was held in Melbourne by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. There 'the necessity of proclamation was clearly recognised, but the cries of the poor, the hungry and the opposed predominated.' The following month the Lausanne Committee chaired by Dr Stott sponsored a consultation at Pattaya in Thailand. 'At Pattaya also the cries of the needy were heard (one mini-consultation focused on refugees, and another on the urban poor), but the call to proclaim the gospel to the unevangelised predominated'. And there were also disagreements between Evangelicals about what the gospel implied - disagreements so sharp that Dr Stott confessed that he went to the 1982 consultation 'with a considerable degree of apprehension'.

The report shows that some of these tensions and disagreements were overcome. To Dr Stott,

it was another and dramatic demonstration of the value of international conferences. When we remain apart from one another, and our only contact with one another is the lobbing of hand grenades across a demilitarised zone, our attitudes inevitably harden and our mental images of each other become stereotyped. But when we meet face to face (or, as our American friends vividly express it, 'eyeball to eyeball'), and listen not only to each other's arguments but to the cherished convictions which lie behind the arguments, then we develop towards one another a new understanding, respect and love.

So it proved possible to agree on much and, for the rest, to disagree with charity. The 1982 meeting put first the people in the world 'still unevangelised' and reckoned that there were some three thousand million of them. But Christ's great commission to evangelise, and God's own mission 'in his love for his lost world', were seen to involve social responsibility, particularly in service and political action to help the poorest. 'We are appalled to know that about 800 million people, or one fifth of the human race, are destitute, lacking the basic necessities for survival, and that thousands of them die of starvation every day.' 'We are all agreed that salvation is a broad term, in the sense that it embraces the totality of God's redemptive purpose for such a world.' It includes new life for individuals, the new community of Christians, and 'the new world which God will one day make'. Yet 'at present only a tiny fraction of our total Christian resources is being applied to any kind of mission, evangelistic or social'. So the leaders gathered at Grand Rapids in 1982 called for a 'more costly commitment to the lost, the needy and the oppressed, for the greater glory of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit'.

This emphasis both on evangelism and on social responsibility seems to me entirely right. Nothing less is our obligation. With shame I acknowledge that it ought to supply the motivation not only for my life but for the lives of all who call themselves Christians. But many Christians and others who would have much to contribute to this mission to the world do not think that the problems have been dealt with satisfactorily by conservative Evangelicals. Many therefore hesitate to join in tasks which are crying out to be done. And because many Evangelicals suspect that the purpose of mentioning these problems is to destroy Christianity or at least to compromise over a gospel which is for Christians 'non-negotiable', conservative Evangelicals often refuse to join with others. The Christian movement is therefore grievously divided in its mission to humanity. It is a striking feature of much Evangelical literature that it maintains a conspiracy of silence about non-Evangelical Christians who in fact greatly outnumber Evangelicals. In particular there is a tendency to ignore the Roman Catholic Church, which includes perhaps half, perhaps more than half, of the world's Christians. Seeking greater unity rather than controversy, I want to ask what, more precisely, is the gospel for society inspiring a new sense of responsibility -in other words, what is the Christian message about the kingdom of God.

The 1982 consultation devoted some study to

history and eschatology, that is, to the relationship between the one hand what we do now in the historical process and what God is doing since the last days began when the kingdom was inaugurated, and on the other about what God is going to do on the Last Day when he ushers in the fulness of the kingdom.

'We all agreed', the report said, 'that our Christian hope focuses on the personal, visible and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the resurrection from the dead, and on the perfected kingdom which his appearance will bring.' But this agreement does not seem to me to meet the problems adequately. And then I want to ask what, more-precisely, is the Christian message about the prospects of non-Christians. The 1982 consultation agreed that 'though created by God like God and for God, they are now living without God'. They also agreed that 'human beings without Christ are lost or "perishing", and our earnest desire in love is to reach them with the gospel before it is too late'. But this statement seems to me to deserve rejection by Christians. An evangelism which says that the bulk of humanity is going to hell deserves, I think, its customary rejection by the bulk of humanity.

'Eschatology' is the consideration of death and other 'last things' and I find it curious that when studying the 'connection between our eschatological outlook and the attitude we adopt towards evangelism and social responsibility', these Evangelical leaders turned first to the question of the millennium. 'To begin with,' they say, 'we thought about the millennium and about its influence on Christian behaviour at different points in history.' And they considered differing millenarian views without resolving their differences. Such a sense of priorities seems strange because the only reference to the millennium in the Bible comes in Revelation 20:1-6.

This passage is clearly poetic. It tells of 'an angel coming down out of heaven' armed with a great chain and a key. He throws the dragon, who is Satan, into the Abyss and locks him in for a thousand years. It tells also of thrones 'on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge' and of the Christian martyrs who 'came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years'. It declares that 'the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended'. It is not surprising that the consultation could only register its differences in the attempt to interpret this passage, since its membership represented 'the three traditional varieties of millenarianism'. And it is inevitable that people who are not committed to any of these views ask awkward questions, believing that no amount of theological disputation is going to reach agreement about what the poetry means as a prediction of the future. The very fact that equally devout 'Bible believers' - that is, equally devout Christians who all take the poetry as detailed predictions of what is going to happen - cannot agree about what to expect shows that the poetry does not supply evidence to settle the questions which can be asked by people who do not recognise that it is poetry. I shall mention some of the questions.

The New Testament offers many assurances that the power of evil has already been defeated by the work of Christ. The Colossians are assured that they have been 'rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the son he loves' (1:13) and the Ephesians that God has 'placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church' (1:22). Here salvation is an accomplished fact. How, then, can it also be said that deliverance from evil will be postponed until Satan has been imprisoned? The 1982 consultation gave the answer 'that over his redeemed people Jesus is king while it is only de jure that he is presently king over the world, his right still challenged by the usurper', Satan. But that is to contradict the conclusion of Matthew's gospel, that 'all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me' (28:18). This is not much of an authority if it is not a fact outside the Church. And how is evil or Satan to be overthrown? In earlier parts of this tumultuously eloquent book of Revelation different images have been used before the much scrutinised and debated passage about the millennium. But talk about an angel carrying a chain and a key in order to imprison Satan is obviously mythological. Talk about 'thrones' in the plural, with saints seated on them as judges, seems to be incompatible with later talk about 'a great white throne and him who was seated on it' (20:11). Talk about the martyrs (only) coming to life seems to contradict the promises of 'Paradise' or 'eternal life' to many others, for example Christ's own promise on the cross to the dying criminal (Luke 23:43 says 'today'). Talk about Christ's reign on earth 'for a thousand years' seems to imply that he and the martyrs are still in space and time before 'earth and sky⁷ flee from Christ, yet the processes of space and time must be halted if they are all to live for that period. Those over whom Christ and the martyrs reign are already 'like the sand on the seashore' in number before they are joined by 'all the dead, great and small'. These all now stand before the one throne, but how Christ is to be visible to 'all' (particularly if the earth that exists before 'a new heaven and a new earth' are created is round) is left mysterious. How all that vast number is to stand before a single throne is also not explained - and cannot be. It seems obvious that the reality of the Christian hope for the world cannot depend on these poetic images being capable of a literal harmonisation and explanation. And if that is the case, it seems to follow that no one detail such as the mention of a reign of a thousand years (or the mention in 7:4-8 of only 144,000 Jews being saved) should be pressed as authoritative.

The Revelation of John cannot be an accurate prediction of coming events, whatever is claimed for that book within it or elsewhere, partly because its details cannot be fitted together. It is a tremendous work of the imagination - the work of a prisoner of the Roman Empire inspired by his faith that, despite all, Christ is the conqueror. It uses imagery largely derived from the Hebrew Scriptures in order to encourage and warn the churches of Asia being addressed. Like other apocalyptic literature, what on the surface appears to be a collection of predictions is in reality a proclamation about what is going on in the present. The poetry should not be taken literally any more than we should take literally the description of Christ as carrying seven stars in his right hand (but he is still able to place that hand on the prophet's head), with a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth (but he is still able to speak). And because this is poetry, there is no way in which the study of Revelation can decide the disputes which have marked the long history of millenarianism. Are we to be premillennial-ists or adventists (who expect the kingdom of Christ and the martyrs to be inaugurated on earth by a cataclysmic miracle usually said to occur after an earlier miracle which by a 'rapture' has delivered the Church from the previous 'dispensation' of 'tribulation' on earth)? Or are we to be postmillennialists (who expect a gradual transition to a new age on earth as more people are converted to Christ, his Church grows and society is ruled by his teaching) - or amillennialists (who expect the kingdom to come only in heaven)? These disputes can be of considerable significance to those engaged in them. The 1984 Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, discussing belief in 'the Rapture of the Church', reminds us that 'those who hold this view have a narrow outlook toward the church and its mission, culture and education, and current events. Their version of Christ against culture has imparted to twentieth century evangelicals a spirit of withdrawal and of suspicion toward others'. But such convictions cannot be asserted or contradicted solely on the basis of the biblical picture of the millennium. Those who teach 'what the Bible says' with such simplicity ought to ponder a really scholarly study such as G. B. Caird's The Language and Imagery of the Bible (1980).

One real problem about the Christian hope for the world is that in the New Testament it appears to be bound up with the expectation that the present 'age' of the world is going to end cataclysmically and imminently. And one reason why I stress this is because it is further proof that the New Testament does not provide a history of the future. At its climax the Revelation of John voices this passionate expectation. The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" ... He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus' (22:17,20). At the end of his first letter to Corinth, Paul offers the same prayer - not in Greek but in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the very first Christians: ‘Marana tha. Come, O Lord!' (16:22). Yet Jesus did not return soon. He has not yet returned. Since there has already been this immense delay, nowadays many Christians do not seriously expect him to 'return' physically during the two thousand million years that scientists say are possible for the further survival of human life on this planet. So what is left of the Christian hope?

Neither in the 1982 report nor in any of Dr Stott's own books is the problem faced squarely, so far as I can see. In Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount he mentions the view 'that Jesus was expecting the end of history to arrive almost immediately' and so 'was giving his disciples an "interim ethic", which required them to make total sacrifices like leaving their possessions and loving their enemies - sacrifices appropriate only for that moment of crisis'. But he does not pause to argue against that view (CCC, p. 27). His bestseller, Basic Christianity, contains no specific discussion of the idea of the kingdom of God. But the New Testament makes it quite clear that if we are Christians looking for 'the heart of the gospel', we shall find it in the proclamation of the kingdom, for that is absolutely basic in the teaching of Jesus. The rest is commentary. So the key questions are what 'the kingdom' meant then - and what it should mean in our time.

In the earliest documents of Christianity to have survived, the hope that the kingdom of God would come soon is vivid and urgent. In or around ad 51 Paul wrote in his first letter to the Thessalonians:

According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coining of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven . . . with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. (4:15-17)

This passage shows clearly that the coming (parousia) of Christ in glory was expected within Paul's lifetime. The second letter to the Thessalonians explicitly denies that 'the day of the Lord has already come' and suggests that some, believing that it is imminent, have given up work (2:2; 3:6-15). Paul urged Christians to support themselves by their labours but to do so in a detached spirit:

What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of this world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7:29-31)

Among all the letters attributed to Paul, only the letter to the Ephesians fails to refer to his hope that his Lord was about to return to earth, to consummate the new age which had already begun. Paul is our chief and sufficient witness that the early Christians regarded themselves as a people living during the End.

The earliest of the gospels sums up the message of Jesus: 'The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!' (Mark 1:15). When Jesus has predicted his own death, according to this gospel he is still emphatic that some of his contemporaries will live to see his promise fulfilled: Ί tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power' (9:1). The gospels of Matthew (16:28) and Luke (9:27) have parallel passages, slightly changed in order to fit into their own editorial tendencies. Mark attaches the promise that the words of Jesus 'will never pass away' to these words: Ί tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened' - things which include the coming of the 'Son of Man in clouds with great power and glory' (13:30,26). The instructions to the Twelve for their first mission continue the note of urgency which makes Mark's swift gospel so electric: they are not to take food or money (6:8). In a fuller version of these instructions, Matthew's gospel promises: 'You will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes' (10:23). To many scholars this suggests that Jesus then hoped for his glorification as the 'Son of Man' within a few weeks, although it does not say exactly that. (Possibly although not probably it may record a tradition that a 'Son of Man' other than Jesus was expected - or that the mission to the whole of Israel, which would be quite an undertaking, would still be incomplete when the 'Son of Man' did come at an unspecified date.) And whatever may be the right exegesis of this or that passage, there is widespread agreement among scholars that Jesus announced the dawn of the kingdom of God and hoped for high noon within the lifetime of his hearers. He was in his own eyes that kingdom's last envoy. The urgency of that message echoes in the cry: 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead' (Matthew 8:21-22).

Luke's gospel has often been interpreted so as to support the idea that the kingdom of God is a spiritual matter, the rule of God in the heart (which may be extended to the whole of society by the influence of individuals). That was the favourite theme of Liberal Protestantism, associated in the history of theology with the great names of Ritschl and Hamack. The key passage is Luke 17:20-21 - 'Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is' or 'there it is,' because the kingdom of God is . . ."' The New International Version prefers as the translation of entos humon 'within you', but gives as an alternative 'among you' which the New English Bible prefers. The NEB adds two other possible translations: 'the kingdom of God is within your grasp' and 'suddenly the kingdom of God will be among you'. The last suggestion seems to be the one most in keeping with the passage as a whole and with the rest of the gospel (supplemented by Acts). For this saying of Jesus is addressed not to the disciples but to the Pharisees. It talks about the future ('the timeiscoming . . .') and it declares that what is to come will be visible to all, 'like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other'. And at his last supper with his disciples Jesus says that he will not share the Passover feast with them again 'until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God' (Luke 22:16,18).

Promises and warnings about God's kingdom are the most frequent theme of the parables of Jesus. Obviously his teaching challenges his hearers to reach a spiritual decision in response to this news, and to enter a new level of spiritual life when they have made that dedsion; but the news is of a future (near or delayed) consummation of God's royal activity which breaks into human history. That is the most common meaning of the idea of the kingdom of God in the surviving Jewish literature of this age and it is certainly how the hearers of Jesus would have immediately understood the phrase. The Lord's Prayer itself enshrines the fact that the kingdom has not yet 'come'. All this was placed unforgettably before students of theology by Albert Schweitzer's survey of German scholarship translated into English as The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910). That is an imperfect and now dated book, but a good example of the continuing conviction of most scholars that the proclamation of Jesus was thoroughly eschatological is B. F. Meyer's The Aims of Jesus (1979), with its translation (on p. 208) of Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer (11:2-4):

Father!

Let your name be hallowed! 

Let your reign come!

The bread of tomorrow give us today,

and forgive us our debts as we now forgive our debtors,

and do not let us fall victim to the ordeal!

However, modem scholars usually, and in my view rightly, agree that Schweitzer exaggerated the extent to which the message of Jesus and the first Christians depended for its whole force on the hope that the kingdom of God would come in its fullness swiftly. There is no evidence of a profound and widespread breakdown of faith when the first generation of Christians realised that it would probably not be the last generation on earth. Even the initial enthusiasm did not absolutely fix the date of the End: 'about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night' (1 Thessalonians 5:1-2). Writing to the Philippians about five years later, Paul expects and longs to die but his final promise is that 'my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus' (4:19). And God meets the ultimate need of a life stronger than death, for 'we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands' (2 Corinthians 5:1). The gospel of John has almost entirely translated the idea of the future kingdom of God into the idea of eternal life through a spiritual communion with Christ. Its central emphasis is on the glory revealed, and the life given, in the crucifixion and resurrection and in the coming of the Holy Spirit. The latest document to be included in the New Testament admits that scoffers will say, 'Where is this "coming" he promised?' But it shows a tranquil confidence like that of Paul and John: 'With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day' (2 Peter 3:4,8). And the gospels themselves contain an element of agnosticism about the future within a faith in the fulfilment of God's purposes. Thus Mark includes a saying of Jesus which, being agnostic, is unlikely to have been invented by the Christians: 'no-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father' (13:32). Matthew's version of the instructions for the first mission of the Twelve includes not only the verse on which Schweitzer relied (suggesting that the Son of Man was expected to come in glory during that mission) but also material which points to a long mission. They are to expect to be handed over to the local councils, flogged in the synagogues and tried before 'governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles' (10:17-18). Later in the same gospel we read predictions of wars and rumours of wars, famines and earthquakes, the lapse of many from the faith and the hatred of 'all nations' for those who are left, and the preaching the gospel 'in the whole world', before the End comes (24:3-14). All these will be 'signs' of the coming kingdom and the idea that the kingdom will be announced by such signs is also prominent in Mark's gospel. Yet elsewhere the idea that the kingdom will come suddenly, while people are going about their ordinary business, is no less prominent.

Scholars assess the connection between these various expectations and the main thrust of the actual teaching of Jesus variously. It seems probable that the material incorporates teachings given after his death, so that we cannot know exactly what the historical Jesus thought. But it seems certain that the only surviving evidence about the beliefs of Jesus and the first Christians contains both the hope that the End which had already begun would come fully soon and the faith that if it did not God could still be trusted to consummate his royal activity in a final triumph. They humbly believed that 'it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority' (Acts 1:7). They consoled themselves for any delay with the great thought that the End had already dawned. Matthew's gospel itself includes the saying of Jesus: 'If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you' (12:28).

From the New Testament as a whole I draw the conclusion that the connection between our eschatological outlook and the attitude we adopt towards evangelism and social responsibility, which Evangelical leaders seek, ought not to depend on taking any one picture of the End either literally or by itself. I may be forgiven for repeating or summarising some words which I wrote in Jesus for Modern Man (1975), agreeing with scholars who have found a central idea of permanent validity expressed symbolically in the hopes of the first Christian century. (I am specially indebted to Norman Perrin, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, 1963, and Jesus and the language of the Kingdom, 1976.)

Taken together, the gallery of pictures of the End which we find in the New Testament suggests a vision of life as a whole, disturbing, haunting, and dominated by the reality of God. Here is a vision of life as aionios, the New Testament word which refers to the life of the 'age to come', whether in time or out of it. In response we must be spiritually detached from the familiar things of this world - from the happiness as well as from the misery that this world offers -because we now realise that we do not depend on these things in the long run. As individuals we must depend entirely on the eternal God for any hope of a joy greater than the power of death and the power of the evil in the world and in our hearts. But since every individual is to a large extent shaped and corrupted by the surrounding society, we must long for the liberation of society as a whole, so that the will of God is done on earth as in heaven (the definition of the kingdom of God given by Jesus himself). The faith that God is already active in the affairs of the world, leading to the hope that he will one day take over the government of it, provides the only final remedy for the innumerable and inescapable disillusionments of politics and of personal life. This belief that God's victory will ultimately not be frustrated by our defeats gives the only really effective consolation for our many corporate and individual blunders.

Many modem people ask why it was within the purpose of God that Jesus of Nazareth should hope for the quick coming of the kingdom. Why was his vision so intense that his Father's will would soon be done in the towns and villages of Galilee and Judea as in heaven? Why did he teach his followers to hope with a similar passion, even if it meant being punished by a disappointment as bitter as his own when he wept over Jerusalem? To glimpse an answer is to see also why so many Christians have ardently expected the 'second coming' of their beloved Lord to come soon. They have interpreted the events of their own age as signs of that coming, comparing them with the signs which seem to be predicted in the poetry of the gospels and the Revelation of John. They have hoped - and they have been disappointed. Yet the faith which gave rise to those hopes had deeper foundations which (as the continuation of Christianity witnesses) have never crumbled. As Bruce Chilton summed up the long scholarly discussion in The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (1984, p. 23), Jesus 'was impelled to preach by his certainty that God would reveal himself powerfully; the kingdom announcement affirmed vividly but simply that God would act in strength on behalf of his people'.

In order to be human Jesus had to belong to some group whose world-view he would accept in part and reject in part, according to his education and experience - and the group in which he lived was the Jewish, and in particular the Galilean, people at a time when hopes of the coming kingdom were many and varied. And we may guess that, even had he been bom into a less expectant community, a man with such a vision of God would always experience in the depths of his soul the hope that in his time this loving Father would triumph. To him, belief in God would be no comfortable convention but a light in darkness. He would always hope that the light would soon shine fully on him and on all. Because the earth, made so lovely by God, had been so thoroughly polluted by the crimes and follies of mankind, he would always wish to set it on fire (Luke 12:49).

Hell

Must the message of Christians include hell fire if it is to be faithful to the message of Jesus? The Lausanne Covenant of 1974 is the most authoritative statement of Evangelical belief in recent years. While it avoids the crudity of taking the pictures of hell fire literally, I am going to suggest that it gives an answer to this question which falls short of what the Bible taken as a whole affirms and what the Christian conscience can now accept. It certainly deserves quotation and reflection.

'We affirm that there is only one Savior and only one Gospel,' the Covenant says, 'although there is a wide diversity of evangelistic approaches'. It continues:

We recognize that all men have some knowledge of God through his general revelation in nature. But we deny that this can save, for men suppress the truth by their unrighteousness. We also reject as derogatory to Christ and the Gospel every kind of syncretism and dialogue which implies that Christ speaks equally through all religions and ideologies. Jesus Christ, being himself the only God-man, who gave himself as the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and man. There is no other name by which we must be saved. All men are perishing because of sin, but God loves all men, not wishing that any should perish but that all should repent. Yet those who reject Christ repudiate the joy of salvation and condemn themselves to eternal separation from God. To proclaim Jesus as 'the Savior of the world' is not to affirm that all men are either automatically or ultimately saved, still less to affirm that all religions offer salvation in Christ. Rather it is to proclaim God's love for a world of sinners and to invite all men to respond to him as Savior and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of repentance and faith. Jesus Christ has been exalted above every other name; we long for the day when every knee shall bow to him and every tongue shall confess him Lord. (ELC, p. 9)

Dr Stott has written an approving commentary on that tightly packed paragraph and I have considered it carefully. My own main comment has to be deep regret that the Covenant seems to support (without clearly stating) the old belief that all those who do not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour before they die are 'lost' or 'perishing' because doomed to hell.

Dr Stott comments that the natural knowledge which men have of God 'actually condemns them' because 'their rejection of the truth which they know then leads them to idolatry, to immorality and to the judgement of God'. For him, 'it is false to suppose that sinners can be saved through other systems' apart from the Christian gospel. He bases this comment on the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. But I have to ask whether it is a comprehensively just verdict on all non-Christian religion, a subject on which the Bible offers many more generous views. And I have to answer that it is an insulting travesty of much sincere seeking, devotion and holiness to be found among Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other non-Christians. To say that such religious systems produce only idolatry and immorality is to indulge in the kind of prejudice which Christians always resent when it is directed against their own religion. And to deny that God can save those countless millions through their response to the religious traditions into which they have been bom is, I think, to deny either God's power or his love. I much prefer the more informed and thoughtful treatment in a book such as Hans Kiing's Christianity and the World Religions (in English, 1987). It is to me highly significant that the Lausanne Covenant contained no reference to the position of the Jews (an omission for which Dr Stott handsomely apologised in his commentary). For the Jews are the people who have always reminded the Christians that God does not deal savingly only with the Church or only with those who have accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour. They are the perpetual stimulus to deepen thought about 'non-Christians'. A passionate longing for their salvation, and a final conviction that it would come, were what made Paul write some of his most profound passages to the Romans.

Those who drafted this paragraph of the Lausanne Covenant curiously failed to understand what is almost always intended when Christians engage in serious religious dialogue with the adherents of other religions. 'Dialogue' is praised and practised by Dr Stott himself, as in this book. It is not the same as 'syncretism', defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'the attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, especially in philosophy or religion'. 'Dialogue' can be entered by people who know that many of their own beliefs are 'diverse or opposite' but who still hope to leam from each other about the one God who is greater than all religious systems. In particular it can be entered by Christians or non-Christians who fully recognise how nonsensical it would be to say that Christ 'speaks equally' through Christianity as through, say, Buddhism. Indeed, Evangelicals know this. The very next paragraph of the Lausanne Covenant says that the kind of dialogue 'whose purpose is to listen sensitively' is 'indispensable to evangelism' and Dr Stott has himself offered a discussion of 'dialogue' which is, up to a point, positive:

Dialogue is a token of genuine Christian love, because it indicates our steadfast resolve to rid our minds of prejudices and caricatures which we may entertain about other people; to struggle to listen through their ears and look through their eyes so as to grasp what prevents them from hearing the gospel and seeing Christ; to sympathise with them in all their doubts, fears and 'hang-ups'. (CMMW, p. 80)

The international consultation on 'Gospel and Culture' which Dr Stott chaired in 1978 recommended 'missionary humility'. Since 'different cultures have strongly influenced the biblical revelation, ourselves and the people to whom we go', Christian evangelists need 'the humility to begin our communication where people are not where we would like them to be' (WR, p. 16). My only criticism of these more positive statements is that they do not admit that Christians have much to learn from the rest of humanity. I have argued in The Futures of Christianity (1987) that the glad acceptance of Christ as Saviour and Lord, as the One who is able to bring us to the Father as no other teacher can, is entirely compatible with a willingness to learn from other teachers. In the past Christians gladly learned from Greek philosophers and Roman poets. In our time Christians can be taught about community life under God by Jews, about devotion to God by Muslims or Hindus, about detachment from the passions by Buddhists, about the sacredness of nature by animists, and about goodness by atheists. Having learned these and many other truths from traditions outside the Church, we can find that they are already taught in the Bible - but evidently the Bible was not able to teach us perfectly. Having found that these truths fit into the truth taught by Christ, we can say that Christ - or, using Greek, the Logos - is in the other religions and philosophies; but I agree that there is a danger that this way of talking may empty the word 'Christ' of all connection with the historical, biblical Christ, causing intellectual confusion as well as spiritual damage.

It is not a hopeful beginning to any dialogue to think that 'it is our solemn duty to affirm that those to whom we announce the gospel and address our appeal are “perishing"' (CMMW, p. 111). This is likely to be heard as an announcement that the living non-Christians and the ancestors are all doomed to hell unless they consciously believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour before dying. And that is, of course, what many evangelists and missionaries have said very clearly and loudly. But in common with many other Christians nowadays I accept the teaching of the Second Vatican Council where the bishops, after an eloquent emphasis on the missionary task of the Church as the 'People of God', declared:

Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of consdence. Nor does divine Providence deny the help necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explidt knowledge of God, but who strive to live a good life thanks to his grace. Whatever goodness or truth is found among them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the gospel. She regards such qualities as given by him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life. (Lumen Gentium II. 16)

I notice with grateful joy that the Lausanne Covenant repudiates the Calvinist but unbiblical notion that it is the will of God that some or many are predestined to everlasting punishment in hell. It is true that Paul speculated that there might be 'objects of [God's] wrath - prepared for destruction' (Romans 9:22). But that speculation was brief, undeveloped and in its effects tragic. It is far less significant in the Bible than the insight, which seems to me luminously true, that 'God our Saviour . . . wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth' since he is 'the Saviour of all men, and espedally of those who believe' (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 4:10).

I also rejoice that Lausanne spoke about 'eternal separation from God' rather than about 'everlasting punishment'. The latter idea may conjure up the unchristian picture of God as the Eternal Torturer - as in the notorious sermon on 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' preached by Jonathan Edwards in 1741. The idea (without the lurid details) was still taught in, for example, the 1984 Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 'It is not always realized', Leon Morris wrote there,

that Jesus spoke of hell more often than did anyone else in the New Testament. And nowhere is there a hint of any possible reversal of judgement. . .

And against the strong body of NT teaching that there is a continuing punishment of sin we cannot put one saying which speaks plainly of an end to the punishment of the finally impenitent. Those who look for a different teaching in the NT must point to possible inferences and alternative explanations, (pp. 369-70)

The phrase which Lausanne bravely preferred to 'everlasting punishment' is connected with Dr Stott's consistent preference for 'perish' to refer to the end of those who reject God. So far as I know, he has never made it clear whether or not this means that he holds the belief that the wicked are ultimately annihilated - the doctrine known as 'conditional immortality'. But this doctrine certainly seems to be implied in the idea that some may be 'separated eternally' from the Creator who is the only Source of life. It also seems to be implied in the very word 'perish', for it is indeed difficult to imagine a perpetually inconclusive process of perishing. And annihilation seems to me (as to many others) the only alternative to heaven which is compatible with the faith that God is love.

The prospect of 'eternal separation' is restricted by the Lausanne Covenant to those who condemn themselves because they 'reject Christ'. That avoids the teaching that one 'mortal' sin earns the same punishment as a lifetime of total wickedness. By this teaching God was alleged to condemn the guilty to hell without adhering to the elementary principle of justice that the gravity of the punishment must fit the gravity of the crime. And it avoids any suggestion that people may be 'sent to hell' against their wills. Since Christ has been unknown to most of the human race, and since when known he has seldom been presented worthily by Christians, Lausanne may have intended to say that anyone 'eternally separated' from God would be a person who after death consciously, deliberately, systematically, totally and permanently rejects a fully worthy presentation of Christ that has been completely understood. If so, it may be hoped that the category which Leon Morris called the 'finally impenitent' will be unpopulated.

I ask whether this interpretation would be endorsed by Dr Stott. He says alarmingly that the doctrine of God as a universal Father was not taught by Christ nor by his apostles. God is indeed the universal Creator, having brought all things into existence, and the universal King, ruling and sustaining all that he has made. But he is the Father only of our Lord Jesus Christ and of those whom he adopts into his family through Christ. (OOW, p. 99)

This God whose attitude to non-Christians is said to be not fatherly (for I have to ask: what else can Dr Stott's denial mean?) is said to dismiss all human efforts to obey him outside the gospel of his grace in Christ. 'Whenever teachers start exalting man, implying that he can contribute anything to his salvation by his own morality, religion, philosophy or respectability, the Gospel of grace is being corrupted' (OOW, p.27). Outside Christ man is dead because of trespasses and sins, enslaved by the world, the flesh and the devil, and condemned under the wrath of God', for Dr Stott maintains that 'it is not universal reconciliation that Christ achieved or that Paul proclaimed; it is rather a nearness to God and to each other gratefully experienced by those who are near Christ, indeed "in" him in a vital, personal union' (GNS, pp. 79,98).

Elsewhere I find him more persuasive. For example he considers Luke's report of the answer of Jesus to the question, 'Are only a few people going to be saved?' The answer was: 'Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to' (13:23-24). This saying is linked with Matthew 7:13-14: 'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' But it is also linked with the final vision of the Bible that the redeemed before God's throne will be not 'only a few' but 'a great multitude that no-one could coimt' (Revelation 7:9). Dr Stott comments disarmingly:

How to reconcile these two concepts I do not know. Nor am I clear how this passage relates to the perplexing problem of those who never hear the gospel. . . The whole picture seems to relate only to those who have had the opportunity of decision for or against Christ; it simply leaves out of view those who have never heard. We shall be wise, therefore, not to occupy our minds with such speculative questions . . . (CCC, p. 196)

I greatly respect the humility shown by Dr Stott here. But even here I have to ask questions on behalf of the vast majority of humankind. Was it the teaching of Jesus, when that teaching is studied as a whole, that the majority of those who try to enter the door into eternal life will never be able to do so? Did he claim certainty that some will never be able to enter? And did he say nothing at all about those who have never really heard his message? These are not merely 'speculative questions'. These are questions about whether the gospel about Jesus is in any sense good news for the mass of humanity.

I do not wish to affirm that all are 'automatically' saved, which is what the doctrine of 'universalism' has often been understood as affirming. I of course respect some of the theologians who have taught universalism in various shapes (from Origen to Barth), but their doctrine appears to deny human free will. The Bible emphatically affirms that because he desires their free response to his love God has given people the freedom to reject him. No other belief seems possible if one believes in the God who discloses his love in the Bible, although as Dr Stott movingly writes in his commentary on the Lausanne Covenant that 'the prospect is almost too dreadful to contemplate; we should be able to speak of hell only with tears'. What I do wish to affirm is not a prediction of something that is bound to happen but a hope. It is the hope that all will be saved ultimately. I disagree passionately with Dr Stott's opinion, in his commentary on Lausanne, that 'some refuse to repent and believe . . . and so will condemn themselves to eternal separation from God' - and with his belief that 'those who are lost will accept all the blame themselves' (the italics are mine). For according to Christianity God is both all-powerful (or sovereign) and all-loving. If he is all-powerful, will he not exert his infinite power to the utmost to save all the perishing? If he is all-loving, will he not save any soul with a glimmer of a belief that the rejection of Christ would deserve blame? I would rather be an atheist than believe in a God who accepts it as inevitable that hell (however conceived) is the inescapable destiny of many, or of any of his children, even when they are prepared to accept 'all the blame'.

But I need not be an atheist, for I am sure that Stephen Travis was right to conclude his examination of the biblical evidence: 'None of this literature exhibits a speculative interest in the process of judgment or in the nature of existence beyond final judgment' (Christ and the Judgment of God, 1986, p. 167). And as I read the Bible I see a picture of the real God - the God whose love for all is like a patient parent's (only infinitely more loving and more patient). I recognise of course that the Bible offers many warnings which could not be more solemn. As Stephen Travis observed, '''punishment" language affirms that God's treatment of human sin is not arbitrary or capricious' just as 'references to reward underline particularly the reliability of God to keep his promises to his servants' (p. 168). And I recognise that these warnings about punishment apply to my own sins and to the sins of the world (which seem to have been specially abundant during the twentieth century). But the Bible gives us also the picture of the God who hopes even on Calvary, as he sees into the hearts of the executioners and knows that they do not know what they are doing. As I read the New Testament, it is the story of the growing insight given by the eye-opening Holy Spirit. When Jesus saw how a Pharisee 'despised' a woman who had 'lived a sinful life in that town', he challenged him: 'Do you see this woman?' (Luke 7:44). Jesus gave an example by seeing the faith of several Gentiles who asked him for healing - and Peter saw in a dream that the strange cargoes in the harbour at Joppa belonged to a Gentile world which was clean (Acts 10:9-23). When some Gentiles had become Christians, and despised Jews because it was the strict keeping of the Law of Moses that now seemed contemptible, Paul eventually saw that Israel remained God's beloved people. Now in the twentieth Christian century we are, I believe, challenged to see the non-Christian world: to see the African, the Indian, the Chinese, the Japanese, the secularised. . . with the eyes of the Father.

The second letter to the Thessalonians contains some of the most terrible warnings:

When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels, he will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed. (1:7-10)

In another letter which is early (and which unlike 2 Thessalonians is indisputably the work of Paul himself), the apostle is ready to threaten with hell those who offer the Galatians 'a different gospel' - 'let him be eternally condemned!' (1:6-9). But in his first letter to the Corinthians Paul's imagery points to the total triumph of the God displayed on the cross of Christ. The cross is 'foolishness to those who are perishing' (1:18) but it seems to be highly significant that Paul does not say that they are already perished or as good as lost. 'As in Adam all die,' he writes,

so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put. . .everything under his feet. . . so that God may be all in all. (15:22-28)

Paul proceeds to refer, apparently with approval, to the practice of being baptised for the dead' - that is, giving sacramental expression to the belief that the non-Christian dead can share the salvation which Christians have experienced. When a notorious sinner has been excommunicated for incest ('hand this man over to Satan'), Paul still hopes for his salvation (5:5).

In his letter to the Romans, after his supremely powerful reminder that the wrath of God condemns the sins of the pagan world, for 'God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts' (1:24), Paul declares about the death of Christ: 'the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men' (5:18). In chapter 11 he urges those who have tasted it to 'continue in God's kindness' lest they be 'cut off but he holds out the hope that those who have experienced God's sternness, 'if they do not persist in unbelief, will be 'grafted in'. Finally the hope kindles into a vision that 'the full number of the Gentiles' and 'all Israel' will be saved, 'For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all' (11:32).

The later letter to the Ephesians begins with the announcement of God's 'good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfilment - to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ', who 'fills everything in every way' (1:9-10,23). And the letter to the Colossians proclaims God's intention 'to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven' (1:20). I have studied Dr Stott's exegesis of these passages, arguing that they refer not to 'all things' in this present universe but to a future universe which will be created around such people as are finally saved. However, I am not persuaded that this nervousness about a tendency to universalism is necessary.

A text that is constantly quoted by those who deny that non-Christians can be saved is John 14:6: Ί am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.' But the context shows that the fourth gospel is here concerned with the intimacy of trust in God as Father, for life or death, which is the special privilege of the disciples. It is possible to treasure this text and the experienced reality which lies behind it - as I most emphatically do - without using it to write off most of the spiritual quest of humanity.

Another text often cited comes from Acts (4:10,12): 'It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed . . . Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.' This one text, which arises out of a story of the healing of a crippled beggar, is sometimes thought to settle the eternal destiny of all but a fraction of mankind. I am one of those who believe (with the Second Vatican Council) that it does no such thing. It seems ludicrous to suggest that the problem of the non-Christians is settled by these few words, found in an account of a speech said to have been delivered by Peter to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem with only one other Christian (John) present about half a century before the Acts of the Apostles was written. For the problem is about centuries and continents about which Luke and Peter knew nothing or next to nothing. It would be equally ridiculous to use later texts in Acts as solving the problem although they show slightly more awareness of it. When Peter has ordered the baptism of Cornelius and other Gentiles, he declares that Christ is 'the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead' and that 'everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name'. But he also says: Ί now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right' (Acts 10:34-48). And Paul in Athens says that God has dealt with every nation 'so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us' (Acts 17:24-28). I do not find Dr Stott's comment on these passages adequate. 'It is clear/ he writes, 'that although in some sense "acceptable" to God, Cornelius before his conversion had neither "salvation" nor "life"' and he adds that the Athenians' search for God was futile, since 'what these truths and the Athenians' knowledge of them did was not to enable them to find God but rather to make their idolatry inexcusable' (CMMW, p. 67). These ungenerous suggestions do not seem to do justice to the tension in the mind of the author of Luke's gospel and the Acts of the Apostles - the tension between two loves, for the sinners and for the Saviour.

In one form or another this tension is often found in Christian thought. An example is provided by the first letter of John. There it is written that 'everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world' (2:16). 'He who has the Son has life; but who does not have the Son of God does not have life' (5:12). But it is also written that 'everyone who loves has been bom of God and knows God. . . No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us' (4:7,12). It is true that, as Dr Stott insists in his commentary (EJ, p. 164), John concentrates on 'reciprocal Christian love'. But he does not explicitly confine the love he writes about to love between Christians, perhaps recalling that he who 'has the Son' has the teaching of Jesus about the good Samaritan. I have to add that Dr Stott's own views do not seem to reckon fully with the teaching of Jesus. In his parables (for example) Jesus repeatedly compared the characters and actions of non-Christians (his Jewish hearers) with the nature and activity of the Father. He was sharply observant, discriminating and realistic, but also generous, in his estimate of the spiritual condition of the people among whom he lived, prayed and suffered. He saw into people's hearts. And he did not leave the impression that the end of the road for the good Samaritan would be hell.

Dr Stott rightly says that 'perishing is a terrible word, but Jesus himself used it' (ELC, p. 10). In this connection he quotes Matthew 18:14 and Luke 13:3,5. He invites us to consider also John 3:14-16: 'The Son of Man must be lifted up, . . . that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world . . . that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' So let us give our profoundly serious attention to the evidence about Jesus.

He is said to have warned his hearers that 'unless you repent, you too will all perish' like the Galileans massacred by Pilate or those killed by the fall of a tower in Siloam (Luke 13:1-5). This cannot mean that literally all impenitent sinners will be either massacred or crushed by falling masonry. Jesus appears to be teaching that although the victims of these disasters were not worse sinners than all the others, their deaths should be taken as a general warning to all the others. Such warnings are often found in the gospels, where Jesus divides people into two groups - the sons of the kingdom and of the evil one; the sons of light and the sons of this world; the wise and the foolish; the sheep and the goats; those who 'enter life' and those who are in danger of hell. Obviously such warnings should not be dismissed. But the gospels do not leave the impression that Jesus was so certain that most (or any) of his hearers would end up in hell that he spent his whole time warning them about it. On the contrary, one of the most eloquent parts of his recorded teaching is his total silence on the subject of hell when his enemies are about to commit the supreme sin of crucifying him. He did not warn them that they were separating themselves eternally from the life and mercy of the Father. On the brink of eternity he was not a hell-fire preacher. On Calvary the whole emphasis is that 'God so loved the world'.

The references to hell are most numerous in Matthew's gospel. The first two are plainly hyperbole, for the Jesus whose character is presented to us by the gospel as a whole cannot have meant that his Father would throw into hell anyone who once used the expression 'you fool!' or who looked at a woman lustfully (5:22,21-30). 'Be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell' (10:28) probably is the authentic teaching of the One who taught that sins needed to be forgiven. But according to Matthew Jesus was not concerned to teach in detail about hell. He warned whole cities that they would be judged corporately (11:20-24) but also that an individual would be acquitted because of his good words (12:37). How a good person living in a bad city was to escape was not explained; nor how the punishment of Korazin and Bethsaida is to be greater than the punishment of Tyre and Sidon, and Capernaum's fate worse than Sodom's. His main warnings about the possible end of the wicked came in parables. Naturally they used different imagery. The wicked in these stories might be burned (13:30; 25:46), tortured (18:34), cut in pieces (24:51) or thrown into darkness (8:12; 22:13; 25:30). These images are taken in the Lausanne Covenant to mean 'eternal separation from God'. They lose none of their terrible solemnity if they are so interpreted.

Jesus as we meet him in the gospels offers his hearers the most fateful of all choices. His horror at the thought that anyone may make the wrong choice is a profound emotion which repeatedly breaks forth into grim eloquence - and, as he sees Jerusalem, into tears. He whose longing to see the reign of the Father complete 'on earth as in heaven' leads to hopes that the End is imminent is so moved by the possibility of the rejection of the Father and his kingdom that burning images of hell are set alight in urgent warnings. These are, like the pictures of the imminent kingdom, pictures - but not 'only pictures'! Their imagery clothes the fear of an end about which it can be said: 'it would be better for him if he had not been born' (Matthew 26:24).

The image that has burned itself into the horrified imagination of many centuries is 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched' (Mark 9:48). This is a quotation from Isaiah 66:24. It is derived from the rubbish dump in the valley of Hinnom outside the city wall of Jerusalem - ge Hinnom or 'Gehenna', the word translated as 'hell'. And it is significant that the prophet who saw in the bonfire and the maggots the destiny of the wicked (remembering that the valley had been polluted by human sacrifices) was himself not clear about who would end up in Gehenna. Some would survive to 'look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled' - and these would not be few, as the prophet hoped 'all mankind will come and bow down' before God.

At one point the Lausanne Covenant seems to share that hope of a universal salvation. 'We long for the day when every knee shall bow to him and every tongue shall confess him Lord'. This quotation of Philippians 2:10-11 is in keeping with the vision that praise will be sung 'to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb' from 'every creature in heaven or on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them' (Revelation 5:13). To hold to such hopes for all humanity is, I believe, thoroughly in keeping with the Christian's other duty, which is to take the warnings with a complete seriousness. But if so - if this blend of hope and fear is what the New Testament taken as a whole affirms - it seems necessary to believe that an opportunity will be given after death, in the condition pictured in the Bible as Sheol or Hades. This so-called 'Hades Gospel' has usually been rejected by Evangelicals, often because of abuses in the medieval Church (surviving despite some reforms into Roman Catholicism in our own time). The Chinch was believed to be authorised to dispense from a 'treasury of merits'. The merits of Christ and the saints could be drawn on in order to shorten the days spent by souls in punishment in 'Purgatory' - in exchange for a specified number of payments to the clergy for Requiem Masses, the building of St Peter's, Rome, and so forth. Protestants have, I believe, been completely right to protest against that clerical racket. But it does not follow that the whole of the 'Hades Gospel' should be rejected. We may take another look at the Revelation of John. Although magicians, the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters and 'everyone who practises falsehood' are excluded from the ultimate City of God, there are also images of inclusion. Inside that city is 'the river of the water of life' running with its cleansing power 'down the middle of the great street of the city'. The tree of life grows by that river 'and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations'. 'The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it' (21:24-22:15). That was written at a time when no nation and no king was even nominally Christian.

Is this 'Hades Gospel' found in the teaching of Jesus? It may reasonably be held to be implied in the exultant cry of the Jesus of the fourth gospel - Ί, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself (John 12:32) - but the authenticity of that saying from a historical point of view must be questionable along with the rest of the gospel. Our question is complicated by the evidence that the historical Jesus concentrated on the proclamation of the kingdom of God 'on earth as in heaven', not on teaching about heaven. But specially since the full coming of that kingdom has been delayed for considerably longer than Jesus and the early Christians hoped for, we may find a pointer to the ultimate population of heaven in the prominent tradition that Jesus and his disciples practised table-fellowship with tax-collectors, prostitutes and other Jewish 'sinners'. There is also the prophecy about the Gentiles: 'many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 8:11, paralleled in Luke).

That prophecy retains the warning image of the darkness. 'There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth' not for the wicked as classified by conventional morality and piety but for those orthodox Jews or 'subjects of the kingdom' who have in practice rebelled against God the King. It is a terrible warning for orthodox Christians as well. But there is prominently in the teaching of Jesus a parable which stands in contrast with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus where the conventional Jewish imagery about life after death is used ('Abraham's side', literally 'bosom', is eternally separate from hell, where the bad man is 'in agony in this fire' and 'a great chasm has been fixed' between him and the ex-beggar in Luke 16:19-31). In contrast, in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) Jesus is surprising. He does much more than praise the faith of those who have accepted him before death as Lord and Saviour and have shown it by good works of love. He does, it is true, teach that 'it will be necessary for public evidence to be produced, namely the outworking of our faith in compassionate action', as Dr Stott notes (FC, p. 115). In this parable, however, Jesus teaches also that he will at last be recognised by many who never thought that they knew him before they met him as judge after death. This is a parable told not about the disciples but about 'all the nations' (Matthew 25:32). So it offers the world a great hope. It contains a warning that the unloving will have to 'depart from me . . . into the eternal fire' for 'eternal punishment' - but it says that this fire has been 'prepared for the devil and his angels', not for human beings (25:41). And it promises 'eternal life' to all the 'righteous' who feed the hungry, answer the needs of the thirsty and the strangers, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit the prisoners. So it seems that after death anyone who has helped Lazarus can, after all, take the road to eternal life. Here is another image of inclusion and it comes in Matthew's gospel as the finale of the teaching of Jesus before he goes to his death.

The Gospel for Humanity

What, then, is essential for Evangelicals in evangelism? 'To evangelise,' says the Lausanne Covenant, 'is to spread the good news that Jesus died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures, and that as the reigning Lord he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all who repent and believe/ Together with many others who do not call themselves conservative Evangelicals, I believe that gospel with all my heart. But negatively I plead that Evangelicals should not insist on some interpretations of that gospel which seem to them to be both biblical and true, but which do not thus persuade their fellow-Christians. So I plead with deep respect that Evangelicals should not insist on the doctrines which I have criticised - that the Bible is infallible or inerrant; that the cross propitiates God's wrath because Jesus is our substitute under God's punishment; that all the miracle stories in the Bible have to be accepted literally; that the Bible has to be treated as legislation about morality and information about the future; that some (not could) perish eternally and that masses of, or all, non-Christians will be among them. And positively I ask that Evangelicals should say something good about humanity's future in the hands of the Creator who is also revealed as the Father.

The message of Jesus is good news for all, demanding to be shared because it is such happy news. As Luke's gospel expresses it, this is a salvation 'prepared in the sight of all people' (2:31). Here is good news for the poor, for the sick, for women and for others who are oppressed. It is good news for sinners. It announces that people who love their enemies are 'sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked' (6:35). 'Forgive, and you will be forgiven' (6:37). If the loving God who deserves love is loved, and if the merciful Samaritan is imitated, that is the Law. God's government is like the small seed which becomes a plant and like a pinch of yeast that makes a loaf. For God never gives up. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, the lost criminal is found. And those who hear this good news have great joy, praising God.

JOHN STOTT'S RESPONSE TO CHAPTER 6

My dear David,

What draws me to you is your passion, exhibited in the fearlessness of your thinking and the depth of your feeling. As you know, many times I do not agree with you (nor do you with me). But you think. You ask the questions which many of us prefer to sweep under the carpet. And you feel. Your heart goes out to human beings in all their need and pain. I wish the same could be said of all of us Evangelicals. Some of us neither think nor feel. We go on defending our pet convictions (shibboleths?), without either facing or feeling their implications. Our mouth is larger than our head or our heart. Even though, in this chapter as in the previous five, there remain some wide differences between us, you have challenged me to keener thought and deeper feeling, in other words, to be a more authentic human being and Christian. For this I thank you.

Eschatology and the Kingdom

The 'last things' (death, the parousia, the resurrection, the last judgement and the final destinies of heaven or hell), which are together the focus of eschatology, have always fascinated Christian minds. Yet you are right to reproach Evangelicals for developing at times an unhealthy preoccupation with them. We have tended both to be too literalistic in our interpretations, and to forget that New Testament teaching in this area is not given to satisfy our curiosity but rather to stimulate our holiness, service, witness and hope.

Let me first take up your criticism of our excessive literalism (which is sometimes an over-reaction to the excessive scepticism of other schools of thought!), and of the dogmatism which often accompanies it. Actually, I think you indulge in a little hyperbole as you poke fun at us. Your chiding becomes chaffing. And ridicule is a dangerous weapon, not altogether conducive to dialogue! I myself regret that some Evangelical societies and institutions include in their basis of faith a particular eschatological viewpoint, and so make it a test of orthodoxy. For I believe that both the interpretation of prophecy and the nature of the millennium belong to the adiaphora, in which we should accord one another liberty of opinion.

Not all Evangelicals are nincompoops, however, who 'take the poetry as detailed predictions of what is going to happen'. Most of us recognise that the Book of Revelation is full of symbolism (including its numerology, like multiples of twelve symbolising the Church, e.g. the twenty-four elders and the 144,000), and that some of its imagery could be called 'mythological' (lambs and dragons, for example). The popular interpretations of the book (the 'preterist', 'futurist' and 'historicist') all understand it as containing references to particular historical events which belong respectively to the past (the first century), the future (the end of the age) and the span of church history in between. A fourth school of interpretation, which has been gaining ground among Evangelicals during this century, avoids this historical particularity and preserves the best of all three other schools. It is clumsily called the 'successivo-parallelist', was expounded by William Hendriksen in his More Than Conquerors (1962) and popularised in this country by Michael Wilcock's I Saw Heaven Opened: The Message of Revelation (1975). It sees the book as a series of highly dramatic visions, each of which recapitulates the story of the 'interadventual period' (the whole era stretching between Christ's two comings), and culminates in the End.

According to this view, the essence of the message of Revelation concerns the age-long conflict between the lamb and the dragon, the Church and the world, Jerusalem the holy city and Babylon the great city (a conflict which has had many historical manifestations and will have yet more), together with the assurance of Christ's victory. As Η. B. Swete wrote years ago, 'the whole book is a Sursum Corda', exhorting us to rejoice that Christ is both reigning now and coming soon.

As for the millennium, since you give a wholly inadequate account of the 'amillennial' position, allow me to remedy this defect! Amillennialists do not just 'expect the kingdom to come only in heaven'. We notice that in Revelation 20 the one-thousand-year period (symbolic of a long but unspecified time) has three main characteristics. First, Christ is reigning (incidentally not 'on earth', the locale of his rule being nowhere mentioned). Secondly, certain people (including witnesses, martyrs and those 'given authority to judge') come to life, reign with Christ and serve as 'priests' (verses 4,6). Thirdly, the dragon (Satan) is bound and locked up 'to keep him from deceiving the nations any more' (verse 3). What strikes us is that in the rest of the New Testament these three activities characterise the present age, that is, the whole interadventual period. First, having been exalted by the Father, Jesus Christ is seated and reigning at his right hand now, all authority having been given him. Secondly, his people have been raised and exalted with him, are seated with him, sharing his reign (e.g. Ephesians 2:6; Colossians 3:1-3), and are called 'kings and priests' (1 Peter 2:5-9; Revelation 1:6, 5:10). 'This is the first resurrection,' John comments, because it refers to our being raised with Christ now, and not to the resurrection of the body, which will take place only at the end of history (verse 5). Thirdly, Satan is bound, having been overthrown by Christ at his first coming. He likened Satan to 'a strong man, fully armed', and himself to 'someone stronger', who overpowers him, binds him and then robs his house (Luke 11:21-22). If it be objected that Satan does not appear to be bound, we answer that this is a problem of the whole New Testament, and not just of Revelation 20. For the New Testament plainly affirms that Jesus has defeated, dethroned and disarmed the devil, with all the evil principalities and powers (e.g. Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14). Probably the best way to understand the binding of Satan in Revelation 20 is to note its purpose, which is 'to keep him from deceiving the nations'. Both postmillennialists and amillennialists explain this as referring to the missionary advance of the Church following the resurrection, as a result of which people of all nations are being delivered from their deceptions and gathered into Christ's Church (Matthew 28:18-20). Isn't this kind of reconstruction reasonable? And does it not escape your strictures on literalism and on turning the Revelation into 'information about the future'?

You then move on to a discussion of the kingdom, its nature and its coming. We are agreed, I think, that it came with Jesus. He said 'the time has come [been fulfilled]' (Mark 1:15) and 'the kingdom of God has come upon you' (Matthew 12:28), and he challenged people to 'receive' or 'enter' it then and there (e.g. Mark 10:14-15). At the same time he taught that its full manifestation lay in the future, as is clear from the petition 'may your kingdom come' and from several of his parables. By both apocalyptic imagery ('coming in the clouds of heaven') and simile ('like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other', Luke 17:24) he indicated his belief that his coming would be a global, divine and cataclysmic climax to history, and he warned people against trying to localise it ('Lo here! Lo there!').

Is it certain, however, that (leaving aside what his personal hope or expectation may have been) he definitely predicted that the end was on the threshold and would come very soon? This was basic to Schweitzer's thesis, of course, and is probably held by a majority of commentators. You yourself seem to contemplate with equanimity the idea that Jesus was mistaken in this matter, and even that 'in order to be human' he was obliged to adopt a world-view which would inevitably include error. You seem reluctant to consider the alternative, that it may be the scholars who are wrong and not Jesus. My presupposition is that Jesus was not mistaken, and there are many conservatives who share this confidence. Indeed, the evidence that he erred is far from compelling. To begin with, he confessed that he himself did not know 'that day or hour' (Mark 13:32); it is therefore antecedently unlikely that he would teach what he did not know. To be sure, ignorance can lead to error. What is significant, however, is that he was not ignorant of his ignorance. He knew the limits of his knowledge. So the reason why his teaching was inerrant is that, however great his ignorance in certain areas may have been, he remained within the sphere of his knowledge and spoke only what his Father gave him to speak (e.g. John 7:16; 8:28; 12:49; 14:10).

Returning to the question of his coming, the three texts which you and others have quoted as evidence of his mistake are all capable of satisfactory alternative explanations. The synoptists certainly understood his 'some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power' (Mark 9:1 and parallels) as referring to the transfiguration (the 'some' being Peter, James and John), since they proceed immediately to the story of this manifestation of his glory. His statement in the mission charge to the Twelve that 'you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of man comes' (Matthew 10:23) could quite naturally mean that he would catch them up or overtake them before their mission was accomplished, for it seems probable that, like the Seventy (or Seventy-two) whom he commissioned later, he 'sent them . . . ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go' (Luke 10:1).

The most difficult text is the third, namely his statement in the apocalyptic discourse that 'this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened' (Mark 13:30). The critical question is to what events he was alluding by 'all these things'. The exegetical problem of Mark 13 and its parallels is of course that he was answering the disciples' two questions 'when will these things happen?' (which referred to the destruction of the temple, verses 2-4) and 'what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?' (which could refer to the signs preceding the End, for so Matthew interpreted it, 24:3). At all events these two strands, relating to both immediate and ultimate events, are interwoven in the discourse, and because of the customary foreshortening of prophetic vision they are sometimes telescoped into each other.

My own belief is that Jesus was deliberately contrasting 'all these things' which would happen within the lifetime of that generation (namely the events leading up to ad 70, verse 30) with 'that day and hour' which only the Father knew (namely the day of his coming, verse 32). The other point which needs to be made is that Jesus' emphasis (even in spite of the heralding signs, including the evangelisation of the nations, which would have taken some time) was on the unexpected and surprise nature of his return (like a burglar, Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39), on account of which they must watch and be ready: 'Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come' (Mark 13:33). Indeed this is the 'element of agnosticism about the future' which you yourself concede.

If Jesus did not teach that he would return within their lifetime, did the apostles teach it? Certainly some of their hearers thought they did, like the ataktoi in Thessalonica who were playing truant from work in expectation of his imminent return (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12; 5:14; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-7). And the references to 'times and dates' (Acts 1:7; 1 Thessalonians 5:1) suggest that there was debate about the matter in the early Church, just as 2 Peter 3 shows that there was need later to explain the supposed delay. But what about the repeated cry, 'Behold, I am coming soon!' (Revelation 3:11; 22:7,12,20), and the excited response 'Amen. Come, Lord Jesus' or ‘Marana tha. Come, O Lord' (Revelation 22:20; 1 Corinthians 16:22), and Paul's 'we who are still alive', 'we will not all sleep' and 'the time is short' (1 Thessalonians 4:15; 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Corinthians 7:29)? Well, of course, it is possible for you to press these (as others do) into being Paul's definite (and mistaken) teaching that the parousia would take place in his lifetime. But would you not then be guilty of the very literalism of which you keep accusing me? If I am right that Jesus did not teach it, it seems to me unlikely that the apostles did. If I am also right that Jesus' emphasis was on the unexpectedness of his return and on the consequent need for watchfulness, then it seems to me likely that this was the apostles' emphasis too. I believe God's purpose is for every generation of Christians to live in eager anticipation of the parousia; the promise Ί am coming soon' well expresses and secures this expectation. It is an aspect of the Christian 'hope' which has always been precious to Evangelicals.

Judgement and Hell

It is with great reluctance and with a heavy heart that I now approach this subject. You quote the Grand Rapids report which describes the unevangelised millions as human beings who, 'though created by God like God and for God . . . are now living without God'. This is a phrase which I have myself often used, because it seems to me to sum up the poignant tragedy of human lostness. And when it is extended to the possibility that some who live without God now may also spend eternity without him, the thought becomes almost unbearable.

I want to repudiate with all the vehemence of which I am capable the glibness, what almost appears to be the glee, the Schadenfreude, with which some Evangelicals speak about hell. It is a horrible sickness of mind or spirit. Instead, since on the day of judgement, when some will be condemned, there is going to be 'weeping and gnashing of teeth' (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28), should we not already begin to weep at the very prospect? I thank God for Jeremiah. Israelite patriot though he was, he was charged with the heartbrealdng mission of prophesying the destruction of his nation. Its ruin would only be temporary; it would not be eternal. Nevertheless, he could not restrain his tears. Oh that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people' (Jeremiah 9:1; cf. 13:17; 14:17).

It is within this prophetic tradition of tragedy, of sorrow over people's rejection of God's word and over the resultant inevitability of judgement, that Jesus wept over the impenitent city of Jerusalem. He cried out: 'If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace . . . !' (Luke 19:41-42; cf. Matthew 23:37-38). In this too Paul had the mind of Christ. He wrote of the 'great sorrow and unceasing anguish' he felt in his heart for his own race, the people of Israel. His 'heart's desire and prayer to God' was for their salvation. He was willing even, like Moses before him, to be himself 'cursed and cut off from Christ' if only thereby his people might be saved (Romans 9:1-4; 10:1; cf. Exodus 32:32). He had the same deep feelings for the Gentiles. For three whole years in Ephesus, as he reminded the church elders of that city, Ί never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears' (Acts 20:31; cf. 20:19; Philippians 3:18).

I long that we could in some small way stand in the tearful tradition of Jeremiah, Jesus and Paul. I want to see more tears among us. I think we need to repent of our nonchalance, our hard-heartedness.

(a) What is hell?

You raise two main questions in relation to hell. The first concerns what is meant by it, and the second who may be condemned to go there. We both agree that the imagery which Jesus and his apostles used (the lake of fire, the outer darkness, the second death) is not meant to be interpreted literally. In any case it could not be, since fire and darkness exclude each other. You comment positively on the Lausanne Covenant's expression 'eternal separation from God'; it is a conscious echo both of Jesus' words 'depart from me' (Matthew 7:23; 25:41) and of Paul's 'shut out from the presence of the Lord' (2 Thessalonians 1:9). We surely have to say that this banishment from God will be real, terrible (so that 'it would be better for him if he had not been bom', Mark 14:21) and eternal. The New Testament contains no hint of the possibility of a later reprieve or amnesty. The biblical phraseology includes, in contrast to 'eternal life' and 'eternal salvation', 'eternal judgement⁷ (Hebrews 6:2 and possibly Mark 3:29), 'everlasting contempt' (Daniel 12:2), 'eternal punishment' (Matthew 25:46), 'everlasting destruction' (2 Thessalonians 1:9) and 'eternal fire' (Matthew 18:8; 25:41). And the imagery supporting this phraseology includes the pictures of the door being shut (Matthew 25:10-12) and the great chasm being fixed (Luke 16:26).

You press me, however, to go beyond this. You rightly say that I have never declared publicly whether I think hell, in addition to being real, terrible and eternal, will involve the experience of everlasting suffering. I am sorry that you use in reference to God the emotive expression 'the Eternal Torturer', because it implies a sadistic infliction of pain, and all Christian people would emphatically reject that. But will the final destiny of the impenitent be eternal conscious torment, 'for ever and ever', or will it be a total annihilation of their being? The former has to be described as traditional orthodoxy, for most of the church fathers, the medieval theologians and the Reformers held it. And probably most Evangelical leaders hold it today. Do I hold it, however? Well, emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterising their feelings or cracking under the strain. But our emotions are a fluctuating, unreliable guide to truth and must not be exalted to the place of supreme authority in determining it. As a committed Evangelical, my question must be - and is - not what does my heart tell me, but what does God's word say? And in order to answer this question, we need to survey the biblical material afresh and to open our minds (not just our hearts) to the possibility that Scripture points in the direction of annihilation, and that 'eternal conscious torment' is a tradition which has to yield to the supreme authority of Scripture. There are four arguments; they relate to language, imagery, justice and universalism.

First, language. The vocabulary of 'destruction' is often used in relation to the final state of perdition. The commonest Greek words are the verb apollumi (to destroy) and the noun apoleia (destruction). When the verb is active and transitive, 'destroy' means 'Idll', as when Herod wanted to murder the baby Jesus and the Jewish leaders later plotted to have him executed (Matthew 2:13; 12:14; 27:4). Then Jesus himself told us not to be afraid of those who kill the body and cannot kill the soul. 'Rather,' he continued, 'be afraid of the One [God] who can destroy both soul and body in hell' (Matthew 10:28; cf. James 4:12). If to kill is to deprive the body of life, hell would seem to be the deprivation of both physical and spiritual life, that is, an extinction of being. When the verb is in the middle, and intransitive, it means to be destroyed and so to 'perish', whether physically of hunger or snakebite (Luke 15:17; 1 Corinthians 10:9) or eternally in hell (e.g. John 3:16; 10:28; 17:12; Romans 2:12; 1 Corinthians 15:18; 2 Peter 3:9). If believers are hoi sdzomenoi (those who are being saved), unbelievers are hoi apollumenoi (those who are perishing). The phrase occurs in 1 Corinthians 1:18, 2 Corinthians 2:15; 4:3, and in 2 Thessalonians 2:10. Jesus is also recorded in the Sermon on the Mount as contrasting the 'narrow. . . road that leads to life' with the 'broad. . . road that leads to destruction' (Matthew 7:13; cf. also Romans 9:22; Philippians 1:28; 3:19; Hebrews 10:39; 2 Peter 3:7; Revelation 17:8,11; the word used in 1 Thessalonians 5:3 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is olethros, which also means 'ruin' or 'destruction'). It would seem strange, therefore, if people who are said to suffer destruction are in fact not destroyed; and, as you put it, it is 'difficult to imagine a perpetually inconclusive process of perishing'. It cannot, I think, be replied that it is impossible to destroy human beings because they are immortal, for the immortality - and therefore indestructibility - of the soul is a Greek not a biblical concept. According to Scripture only God possesses immortality in himself (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16); he reveals and gives it to us through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). And by the way, 'annihilation' is not quite the same as 'conditional immortality'. According to the latter, nobody survives death except those to whom God gives life (they are therefore immortal by grace, not by nature), whereas according to the former, everybody survives death and will even be resurrected, but the impenitent will finally be destroyed.

The second argument concerns the imagery used in Scripture to characterise hell, and in particular that of fire. Jesus spoke of 'the fire of hell' (Matthew 5:22; 18:9) and of 'eternal fire' (Matthew 18:8; 25:41), and in the Revelation we read about 'the lake of fire' (20:14-15). It is doubtless because we have all had experience of the acute pain of being btuned, that fire is associated in our minds with 'conscious torment'. But the main function of fire is not to cause pain, but to secure destruction, as all the world's incinerators bear witness. Hence the biblical expression 'a consuming fire' and John the Baptist's picture of the Judge 'burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire' (Matthew 3:12, cf. Luke 3:17). The fire itself is termed 'eternal' and 'unquenchable', but it would be very odd if what is thrown into it proves indestructible. Our expectation would be the opposite: it would be consumed for ever, not tormented for ever. Hence it is the smoke (evidence that the fire has done its work) which 'rises for ever and ever' (Revelation 14:11; cf. 19:3).

Four objections are raised to this understanding of 'the lake of fire'.

(1)    There is the vivid picture of hell as a place where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched' (Mark 9:48). It is a quotation from the last verse of Isaiah (66:24), where the dead bodies of God's enemies are consigned to the city's rubbish dump to be eaten by maggots and burned. It is not necessary to apply this as Judith did, however, namely that God would take vengeance on the hostile nations, 'to put fire and worms in their flesh' so that 'they shall weep and feel their pain for ever' (Judith 16:17). Jesus' use of Isaiah 66:24 does not mention everlasting pain. What he says is that the worm will not die and the fire will not be quenched. Nor will they - until presumably their work of destruction is done.

(2)    At the end of the so-called parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus contrasted 'eternal life' with 'eternal punishment' (Matthew 25:46). Does that not indicate that in hell people endure eternal conscious punishment? No, that is to read into the text what is not necessarily there. What Jesus said is that both the life and the punishment would be eternal, but he did not in that passage define the nature of either. Because he elsewhere spoke of eternal life as a conscious enjoyment of God (John 17:3), it does not follow that eternal punishment must be a conscious experience of pain at the hand of God. On the contrary, although declaring both to be eternal, Jesus is contrasting the two destinies: the more unlike they are, the better.

(3)    But did not Dives cry out because he was 'in agony in this fire' (Luke 16:23-24,28)? Yes, he did. But we must be cautious in interpreting a parable (if it was that) which speaks of 'Abraham's bosom' as well as hell fire. Moreover, these two states were experienced immediately after Dives and Lazarus died (verses 22-23). The natural interpretation would be that Jesus was referring to the so-called 'intermediate (or interim) state' between death and resurrection. I myself believe that this will be the time (if indeed we shall be aware of the passage of time) when the lost will come to the unimaginably painful realisation of their fate. This is not incompatible, however, with their final annihilation. Similarly, the 'torment' of Revelation 14:10, because it will be experienced 'in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb', seems to refer to the moment of judgement, not to the eternal state. It is not the torment itself but its 'smoke' (symbol of the completed burning) which will be 'for ever and ever'.

(4) But does the Book of Revelation not say that in the lake of fire 'they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever'? Yes, that sentence occurs, but only once (20:10), where it refers not only to the devil, but to 'the beast and the false prophet', just as the noun for 'torment' had been used of 'the harlot Babylon' (Revelation 18:7,10,15), though without the addition of the words 'for ever and ever'. The beast, the false prophet and the harlot, however, are not individual people but symbols of the world in its varied hostility to God. In the nature of the case they cannot experience pain. Nor can 'Death and Hades', which follow them into the lake of fire (20:13). In the vivid imagery of his vision John evidently saw the dragon, the monsters, the harlot, death and hades being thrown into the lake of fire. But the most natural way to understand the reality behind the imagery is that ultimately all enmity and resistance to God will be destroyed. So both the language of destruction and the imagery of fire seem to point to annihilation.

The third argument in favour of the concept of annihilation concerns the biblical vision of justice.  Fundamental to it is the belief that God will judge people 'according to what they [have] done' (e.g. Revelation 20:12), which implies that the penalty inflicted will be commensurate with the evil done. This principle had been applied in the Jewish law courts, in which penalties were limited to an exact retribution, 'life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot' (e.g. Exodus 21:23-25). Would there not, then, be a serious disproportion between sins consciously committed in time and torment consciously experienced throughout eternity? I do not minimise the gravity of sin as rebellion against God our Creator, and shall return to it shortly, but I question whether 'eternal conscious torment' is compatible with the biblical revelation of divine justice, unless perhaps (as has been argued) the impenitence of the lost also continues throughout eternity.

The fourth and last argument relates to those texts which have been used as the basis for universalism. I am not a universalist, and you tell me that you are not either. So there is no need for me to say more than that the hope of final salvation for everybody is a false hope, since it contradicts the recorded warnings of Jesus that the judgement will involve a separation into two opposite but equally eternal destinies. My point here, however, is that the eternal existence of the impenitent in hell would be hard to reconcile with the promises of God's final victory over evil, or with the apparently universalistic texts which speak of Christ drawing all men to himself (John 12:32), and of God uniting all things under Christ's headship (Ephesians 1:10), reconciling all things to himself through Christ (Colossians 1:20), and bringing every knee to bow to Christ and every tongue to confess his lordship (Philippians 2:10-11), so that in the end God will be 'all in all' or 'everything to everybody' (1 Corinthians 15:28).

These texts do not lead me to universalism, because of the many others which speak of the terrible and eternal reality of hell. But they do lead me to ask how God can in any meaningful sense be called 'everything to everybody' while an unspecified number of people still continue in rebellion against him and under his judgement. It would be easier to hold together the awful reality of hell and the universal reign of God if hell means destruction and the impenitent are no more.

I am hesitant to have written these things, partly because I have a great respect for longstanding tradition which claims to be a true interpretation of Scripture, and do not lightly set it aside, and partly because the unity of the world-wide Evangelical constituency has always meant much to me. But the issue is too important to suppress, and I am grateful to you for challenging me to declare my present mind. I do not dogmatise about the position to which I have come. I hold it tentatively. But I do plead for frank dialogue among Evangelicals on the basis of Scripture. I also believe that the ultimate annihilation of the wicked should at least be accepted as a legitimate, biblically founded alternative to their eternal conscious torment.

(b) Who will go to hell?

You now ask me a second equally difficult and delicate question. Whatever the nature of hell may be, who will go there? Do Evangelicals believe that hell will be the fate of 'the bulk of humanity', in which case the gospel does not appear to be 'good news for the mass of humanity'?

Again, you are right to put this searching question to Evangelicals. You then quote paragraph three of the Lausanne Covenant which is entitled 'The Uniqueness and Universality of Christ'. It contains the stark statement that 'those who reject Christ repudiate the joy of salvation and condemn themselves to eternal separation from God'. I stand by this, as I believe would the whole Evangelical community. It reminds me of a similar clause in the Congress Statement of Keele 1967: Ά persistent and deliberate rejection of Jesus Christ condemns men to hell' (1.11). Both assertions are clear and definite because they refer only to people who have heard of Christ but have rejected him, consciously, deliberately, persistently. Such people are not just condemned; they condemn themselves.

But neither the Lausanne Covenant, nor the Keele Statement which preceded it, said anything about the final destiny of those who had never heard of Christ, never received a 'worthy presentation of him' and so never had a reasonable opportunity to respond to him. What will be their fate? What does the New Testament authorise us to say about them? My answer includes four parts, of which the first three are (for Evangelicals at least) non-controversial, while the fourth leads us into the precarious area of wondering and speculating.

First, all human beings, apart from the intervention and mercy of God, are perishing. Yes, I deliberately used and use the present continuous tense, as Paul did when he referred to the apollumenoi. The word describes their present, not their future, state. They are, in Jesus' phrase, on the broad road that leads to destruction, but they have not reached that destination, and they need not. The door of opportunity is still open. They may yet hear and believe. Nevertheless, at the moment they are not saved and therefore must be described as 'perishing'. Is this too harsh? Those who think so I would want to direct to pages 89-110 of The Cross of Christ, in which I have written about both the gravity of sin and the majesty of God. All divine judgement seems and sounds unjust until we see God as he is and ourselves as we are, according to Scripture. As for God, Scripture uses the pictures of light and fire to set forth his perfect holiness.

He dwells in unapproachable light, dazzling, even blinding in its splendour, and is a consuming fire. Human beings who have only glimpsed his glory have been unable to bear the sight, and have turned away or run away or swooned. As for ourselves, I often want to say to my contemporaries what Anselm said to his, 'You have not yet considered the seriousness of sin'. True, Scripture recognises both our ignorance ('they do not know what they are doing') and our weakness ('he remembers that we are dust'), but it dignifies us by holding us accountable for our thoughts and actions. Think of God's endlessly repeated refrain in the Old Testament: Ί spoke to you, but you refused to listen'. Jeremiah kept calling it 'the stubbornness of your evil heart'. Think too of the words of Jesus: 'You refuse to come to me to have life' (John 5:40), and 'how often I have longed to gather your children together. . . but you were not willing' (Matthew 23:37). It was the wilful blindness and wilful disobedience of people that he condemned. And is not this the essence of Paul's argument in Romans 1-3? I accept your rebuke that to apply the end of Romans 1 (where God gives people up to idolatry and immorality) to earnest adherents of other faiths, when Paul applied it to the moral decadence of his own day, is 'an insulting travesty of much sincere seeking, devotion and holiness'. But I cannot surrender Paul's conclusion, which is that Jews and Gentiles, the religious and the irreligious, the morally educated and uneducated, because they have all failed (yes, wilfully) to live up to what they have known to be true and good, are all guilty before God and without excuse.

How then do we explain the phenomenon of religious and righteous people who belong to other faiths and ideologies? It is part, I think, of the paradoxical nature of our humanness, that is, that we are both breath of God and dust of earth, godlike and bestial, created and fallen, noble and ignoble. That seems to be why we both seek God (Acts 17:27) and run away from him, both practise righteousness and suppress the truth in our unrighteousness (Acts 10:22; Romans 1:18), both recognise the claims of the moral law upon us and refuse to submit to it (Romans 8:7), both erect altars in God's honour and need to repent of our ignorance and sin (Acts 17:23,30).

You are too inclined, I think, to praise the good you see in others, and I may be too inclined to blame the evil. But the reason in my case is that I believe I know myself. To be sure, I welcome and affirm all those noble gifts of God which are part of his image in me (rationality and curiosity, moral aspirations, the primacy of love, artistic creativity, the urge to worship), but it is this very glory which highlights the shame - the vanity, obstinacy, selfishness, envy, impatience, malice, and lack of self-control. My perceptions of God and of myself, however distorted, convince me that in myself I am completely unfit to spend eternity in his presence. I need to be 'made fif (niv, 'qualified') to share in the saints' inheritance in light (Colossians 1:12). Without those white robes made clean in the blood of the Lamb, I could never stand before God's throne (Revelation 7:9-10).

'Hell-deserving sinner' sounds an absurdly antiquated phrase, but I believe it is the sober truth. Without Christ I am 'perishing', and deserve to perish.

Secondly, human beings cannot save themselves by any religious or righteous acts. Christians cannot. Nor can non-Christians. Self-salvation is out. In this connection we need to think about Cornelius, because he is the person often chosen to exemplify the upright seeker whom God 'accepts' on account of his sincerity and decency. Certainly Luke describes him before his conversion as righteous, generous, pious, and widely respected in the local community. He prayed, attended synagogue and gave alms. Not yet, however, had he received salvation. The overriding lesson Peter learned from the story was that God has no racial favourites (10:34). He 'accepts' people from every nation 'who fear him and do what is right' (10:35), in the sense that, irrespective of Cornelius' Gentile status, God heard his prayer and made provision for him to hear the gospel (10:30-33). But only later did God 'accept' him in a saving sense when he gave him the Holy Spirit (15:8). It was then that he was 'saved' (11:14; 15:11), that he was granted 'repentance unto life' (11:18), and that God 'purified his heart by faith' (15:9). God honoured his reverent spirit, his prayers and his uprightness, and led a messenger of the gospel to him. But his salvation came through his penitent, believing response to the gospel, not through his previous religion and righteousness. I don't think this conclusion can be avoided. Principled exegesis requires it. We have to say that Cornelius did not win salvation by good works or religious observances; and if Cornelius could not, nor can anybody else.

Thirdly, Jesus Christ is the only Saviour. The uniqueness to which Christians bear witness does not refer to Christianity in any of its numerous empirical manifestations, but only to Christ. He has no peers, no rivals, no successors. And his uniqueness is most evident in relation to the incarnation, the atonement and the resurrection. He is the one and only God-man, who died for our sins and was then raised from the dead to authenticate his person and work. And it is this threefold, historical uniqueness which qualifies him to be the Saviour of the world, the only mediator between God and humankind (1 Timothy 2:5). No one else has these qualifications. I confess to being sad that in your chapter you tried to wriggle out of the plain, natural and obvious meaning of John 14:6 and Acts 4:12. As the way, the truth and the life, no one can come to the Father except through Jesus Christ's mediation. And 'salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven... by which we must be saved'. If there is only one Saviour, there can be only one way of salvation.

That brings me to the fourth point. Here we need to ask questions rather than make statements. If we grant that human beings left to themselves are perishing, and that they cannot save themselves, and that Jesus is the only qualified Saviour - which are the three truths which Evangelicals are at all costs determined to safeguard - what condition has to be fulfilled in order that they may be saved? How much knowledge of Jesus do people have to have before they can believe in him? And how much faith do they have to exercise? Those who genuinely hear the gospel must repent and believe, of course. But what about those who have not heard it? They cannot save themselves, as we have seen, and Christ is the only Saviour. Is there then any way in which God will have mercy on them, through Christ alone, and not through their own merit? A variety of answers have been given to these questions.

(1) There is the quotation you give from Vatican II's Lumen Gentium, on which I also have reflected. It seems to promise salvation to those who 'seek God', and who give evidence of the sincerity of their search by 'striving' to do his will and live a good life. At the same time, it includes a number of caveats, which seem to be designed to avoid the impression of salvation by good works. It emphasises that their ignorance of the gospel must be 'through no fault of their own' and 'without blame on their part'. It contains two references to God's grace and one to his providence. And it not only attributes people's goodness and truth to the Logos, but calls these things 'a preparation for the gospel'. Does that mean that like Cornelius they will be given the privilege of hearing it? And why does the Statement begin that such people only ' can [not do] attain to everlasting salvation who. . . sincerely seek God . . .'? In other words the statement has many ambiguities. A statement of John Paul Π at the beginning of his papal ministry is quite unambiguous, however. In his encyclical Redemptor Hominis (1979) he wrote: 'Man - every man without any exception whatever - has been redeemed by Christ, and. . . with man - with each man without any exception whatever -Christ is in a way united, even when man is unaware of it' (para. 14).

That kind of unconditional universalism must, however, be firmly rejected by those who look to Scripture for authoritative guidance.

(2)    Others turn to the sheep and goats passage in Matthew 25, as you do. They point out that Jesus refers to 'the nations' being judged and to the surprise of both groups when they find out that they are accepted or rejected, and why. We certainly must not interpret it as teaching salvation by works, or we would be turning the whole New Testament on its head. There is also a continuing debate over the identity of Jesus' 'brothers'. If it can be shown to mean human beings in general, with whom Jesus identifies himself, then we would have to insist that the nations are not accepted or rejected according to their works, but according to their attitude to Jesus which is revealed in their works. But in Matthew's gospel Jesus' 'brothers' are his disciples who do his Father's will (12:48-50). As he sends them out into the world to preach, people will either welcome or reject them, and in their attitude to Jesus' brothers their attitude to him will be made known (10:5-15).

(3)    A third approach is to say that God knows how people would have responded if they had heard the gospel, and will save or judge them accordingly. For Jesus said to the cities of Korazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum: 'If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes' (Matthew 11:21). What is true of cities, could also be true of individuals.

(4)    Others have speculated that God gives everybody a vision of Jesus, and therefore an opportunity to repent and believe, at the moment of their dying. But no evidence is available to support this, either from Scripture or from death-bed experiences.

(5)    A more common suggestion is that God will give everybody an opportunity in the next life to respond to Jesus. I think this possibility appeals to you. You refer to it as the 'Hades Gospel'. Some have tried to base it on Peter's statement that Jesus 'went and preached to the spirits in prison' (1 Peter 3:19). But 'the spirits' were almost certainly (see E. G. Selwyn's famous commentary) demonic, not human, and Jesus' preaching was an 'announcement' of his victory, not a proclamation of the gospel with an invitation to respond. You, however, seem to suggest that the Corinthian practice of being 'baptised for the dead' (1 Corinthians 15:29) supplies some hope that after death people will be able to share in Christ's salvation. But was Paul not using an argumentum ad hominem here? One cannot say with any confidence that he approved of the practice. Besides, as I'm sure you know, Robertson and Plummer in their old ICC commentary on 1 Corinthians (1911) mention that thirty-six explanations of the practice have been collected! Although the guess that people will be given in the next world an opportunity to believe is an attractive one, it remains a guess and lacks biblical warrant.

(6)    Sir Norman Anderson, in speech and writing, has often suggested that some people who have never heard of Christ may be brought, by a sense of their sin, guilt and inability to save themselves, to cry for mercy to the God they but dimly perceive; that God does have mercy on them; and that he saves them on the basis of Christ's atoning work, through faith, even though they have not heard of him. This proposal has two particular merits. First, it preserves the three safeguards outlined above, especially that we cannot save ourselves and that Christ is the only Saviour. Secondly, it can claim some biblical warrant, since Old Testament believers were saved by God's grace through faith, even though they knew little if anything about the coming Christ. Norman Anderson writes: 'The believing Jew was accepted and blessed not because of the prescribed animal sacrifices he offered, nor even his repentance and abandonment of himself to God's mercy, but because of what God himself was going to do in his only Son at the cross of Calvary' (Christianity and World Religions: The Challenge of Pluralism, 1984, p. 153).

Speaking now for myself, although I am attracted by Sir Norman Anderson's concept, and although there may be truth in it and even in some of the other suggestions, I believe the most Christian stance is to remain agnostic on this question. When somebody asked Jesus, 'Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?', he refused to answer and instead urged them 'to enter through the narrow door' (Luke 13:23-24). The fact is that God, alongside the most solemn warnings about our responsibility to respond to the gospel, has not revealed how he will deal with those who have never heard it. We have to leave them in the hands of the God of infinite mercy and justice, who manifested these qualities most fully in the cross. Abraham's question, 'will not the Judge of all the earth do right?' (Genesis 18:25) is our confidence too.

Like yourself, however, I am imbued with hope. I have never been able to conjure up (as some great Evangelical missionaries have) the appalling vision of the millions who are not only perishing but will inevitably perish. On the other hand, as I have said, I am not and cannot be a imiversalist. Between these extremes I cherish the hope that the majority of the human race will be saved. And I have a solid biblical basis for this belief. True, Jesus said that those who find the narrow road that leads to life were 'few' (was he referring to the little remnant of his own day within the nation of Israel?). But we need to remember that God is the Creator of all humankind, and remains infinitely loving, patient and compassionate towards all whom he has made. Yes, and he is also everybody's 'Father', both in the sense that they 'live and move and have their being' in him, deriving the richness of their human life from his generosity (Acts 17:25-28), and in the sense that he continues to yearn for his lost children, as in the parable of the prodigal son. (It is the intimacy of a father-child relationship which according to the New Testament is given only to those whom God has reconciled to himself through Jesus Christ.) We have to remember too that God does not anybody to perish but wants everybody to be saved (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy 2:4); that Jesus expressed his compassion for society's outcasts (the 'publicans and sinners' and the prostitutes), refused to reject them, but deliberately made friends with them; that his own forecast was that 'man/ would come from the four points of the compass and the four comers of the earth to join the Jewish patriarchs in God's kingdom (Luke 13:29); and that the final vision of the redeemed in the Book of Revelation is of 'a great multitude that no-one could count' (7:9), a huge international throng, in whom God's promise to Abraham will at last be fulfilled that his seed (his spiritual posterity) would be as innumerable as the stars in the sky, the dust of the earth and the grains of sand on all the seashores of the world.

That is the hope I cherish, and that is the vision that inspires me, even while I remain agnostic about how God will bring it to pass. Meanwhile, there is an urgency to make the gospel known. This is 'our obligation', as you rightly say near the beginning of your chapter. We are charged to share the good news with 'all the nations'. This must include the Jews, for the gospel is 'the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile' (Romans 1:16). And our supreme motivation in world evangelisation will not primarily be obedience to the great commission, nor even loving concern for those who do not yet know Jesus, important as these two incentives are, but first and foremost a burning zeal (even 'jealousy⁷) for the glory of Jesus Christ. For God has exalted him to the highest place, and desires everybody to honour him too.

The Gospel for Today

Once more I have gone on too long. But you have raised so many issues and asked so many questions! I must now be brief in responding to the main topic of your final chapter: What is the gospel for the world? What is the gospel for today?

I feel confident that you and I would want to begin our reply in relation to Jesus Christ. It would be impossible to share the good news without talking about Jesus. So we focus on God's love in the gift of his Son to live, die and rise again, and on his further gift to those who trust in him of a new life of forgiveness and freedom in the Spirit, of a new community of brothers and sisters to which he joins us, and one day of a new world of perfect righteousness and peace. But how shall we formulate this good news, especially in our increasingly pluralistic society, in a way that communicates and resonates with people? There seem to me two extremes to avoid.

The first is total fixity. Some Christians (including some of us Evangelicals) are in bondage to words and formulae, the prisoners of a gospel stereotype. They wrap up their message in a neat little package, almost labelled and price-tagged as if destined for the supermarket. Then, unless their precise schema and their favourite phraseology are used, they declare that the gospel has not been preached. For many Evangelicals it used to be 'the precious blood of Jesus'. Now for some it is being bom again or justified by faith, and for others the kingdom of God (which you yourself call 'the heart of the gospel' and 'absolutely basic', although the apostles did not concentrate on it as much as Jesus did, especially to Gentile audiences). For yet others the 'in-word' is human liberation. What these folk seem not to have noticed is the diversity of gospel formulation within the New Testament itself. Also, in their determination to recite their set piece, they tend to be insensitive both to the leading of the Spirit and to the existential situation. There is of course only one apostolic gospel, as Paul emphasised (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:11), so that he could call down God's judgement on anybody (NB himself included) who preaches 'a different gospel' (Galatians 1:6-9). Yet the apostles presented it in a wide variety of ways - now sacrificial (the shedding and sprinkling of Christ's blood), now messianic (the breaking in of the new age or of God's promised rule), now mystic (receiving and enjoying eternal life, being 'in Christ'), now legal (the righteous Judge pronouncing the unrighteous righteous), now personal (the Father reconciling his wayward children), now salvific (the heavenly liberator coming to the rescue of his oppressed people, and leading them out in a new exodus) and now cosmic (the universal Lord claiming universal dominion over the powers). And these seven are only a selection!

The opposite extreme to avoid is total fluidity. I remember hearing Bishop David Brown of Guildford, shortly before he died, saying to a group on evangelism convened by the British Council of Churches: 'You don't even know what the gospel is until you enter each particular situation. You have to enter the situation first, and then you discover the gospel when you're there.' Now I think I know what he was driving at, namely that he wanted a gospel in context and not a gospel in vacuum, and that we need to relate the gospel sensitively to each situation. But I think his claim that the gospel remains unknown until we have entered each situation was a serious overstatement. For what the advocates of total fluidity seem not to have noticed is that, alongside the New Testament's rich diversity of gospel formulation, there is an underlying unity which binds the different formulations together. As A. M. Hunter put it some years ago, There is ... a deep unity in the New Testament, which dominates and transcends all the diversities' ( The Unity of the New Testament, 1943, p. 109).

Now both extremes express important concerns. The first ('total fixity') emphasises that the gospel has been revealed and received. We did not invent it, and therefore we may not tamper with it. The second ('total fluidity') emphasises that the gospel has to be contextualised, that is, related to each particular person or situation. Otherwise it is irrelevant. Somehow, it seems to me, we have to learn to combine these two proper concerns. We have to wrestle with the dialectic between the ancient and the modern, God's word and our world, the given and the open, content and context, Scripture and culture, revelation and contex-tualisation. We need more integrity (faithfulness to the New Testament) and more sensitivity (awareness of the particularity of each person or group). Not one without the other, but both.

In theory I think you and I will be agreed about this, even if in practice we come to different conclusions about the gospel.

Yours ever,

John

EPILOGUE BY JOHN STOTT

My dear David,

Our dialogue is nearly over, but in conclusion I would like to share with you one or two general reflections. To begin with, it still grieves me somewhat that, in order to respond to your criticisms, I have had to be so defensive. Several times I have remembered the famous remark of Buffon, the eighteenth-century French naturalist, who used his knowledge of animals to comment on the behaviour of people: 'Cet animal est tres mechant: quand on l'attaque, il se defend'! At the same time, I hope my concern has not been self-defence so much as what Paul called 'the defence and confirmation of the gospel' (Philippians 1:7,16).

I think that during our dialogue what is meant by the question, What is essential for Evangelicals? has been clarified. It is what Evangelicals believe is necessary to be an Evangelical in particular, not a Christian in general. Although we believe in principle that to be a Christian is, or should be, to be an Evangelical, yet my concern in attempting to answer your questions has been to define and justify our distinctives and not to disenfranchise you or anybody else.

What, then, is the ultimate difference between us? In the course of our discussion we have often been in agreement -sometimes in areas which have surprised me. So wherein lies our basic disagreement? It seems still to belong to those two subjects of traditional debate - authority and salvation. Indeed, the fundamental questions in every religion are the same: By what authority do we believe and teach what we believe and teach? By what means can sinful men and women be reconciled to God, or 'saved'?

Have we made any progress in our exchanges on authority? Repeatedly I have appealed to Scripture, and you to rationality. Of course the contrast is not as stark as that. For in appealing to Scripture I have insisted on the vital importance of the mind and the Church's tradition in the elucidation of Scripture, while you in appealing to rationality have also argued from Scripture, and in particular from the teaching and example of Jesus. Nevertheless, even when these necessary modifications have been made, the final court of appeal for you is rationality and for me is Scripture. Sometimes you objectify your authority, as when you write in chapter 4 of 'the climate of educated opinion', 'modem knowledge', 'contemporary culture' and in chapter 3 of 'the world which we have entered either through education or through daily experience'. At other times you have been more subjective, referring to your mind and conscience, 'what the Christian conscience can now accept' (chapter 6) and your experience (especially as a human parent). In either case, is it unfair to say that your final criterion for truth is 'modem opinion', whether yours or others'? It certainly seems to me like that, and explains why you feel able to set aside biblical teaching, e.g. on the cross, on miracles and on homosexuality. Is your position very different from that of Thomas Maurer who wrote:

There is no greater misuse of the Bible than to make it our taskmaster, a body of writing to which we are enslaved. I can see no validity whatsoever to the claim that something written two or three thousand years ago has any special relevance to my way of living and thinking. I happen to buy most of what Jesus said, but not because it's in the Bible or because he said it, but rather because I find it existentially valid. And I have to be candid enough to say that there are a few things Jesus said that I can't buy. (quoted from Is Good? Ethics, Theology and Homosexuality by Richard Lovelace in Homosexuality and the Church, 1978, p. 44)

I grant that this is an extreme statement which you would probably not endorse. For theological liberalism, I realise, covers a broad spectrum of positions. There are many truths to which you yourself (like the 'liberal Evangelicals' of an earlier period) are committed, but which the latter-day radicals reject. Nevertheless, what you write provokes me to ask a series of questions: How are we to evaluate modem knowledge and educated opinion? Will the next generation view them as favourably as you do? How are the Christian mind and conscience to be informed and directed? Do not these subjectivities need the objectivity of Scripture to control them? You will perhaps respond that Evangelicals are subjective too, because our authority is not in practice 'Scripture' but, as I have said, 'Scripture as correctly interpreted'. Does that not put our opinion as interpreters above the Scripture itself? And in that case are not both Evangelicals and liberals in the end subjectivists, finding our criterion of judgement inside rather than outside ourselves? Honestly, no! For although our authority is 'Scripture as correctly interpreted', the qualifying clause is a parenthesis, so that the emphasis is not on our interpretation but on the Scripture which is being interpreted. Consequently, in Christian debate both sides can appeal back from an interpretation of Scripture to Scripture itself. This is exactly what Jesus did in his controversies with the Jewish authorities. Both they and he accepted the supreme authority of Scripture; their disagreement was over its true interpretation.

If Evangelicals continue to insist, however, that Scripture has authority even over 'modem knowledge' and 'educated opinion', are we not heading straight for another confrontation comparable to the Church versus Galileo or the Church versus Darwin, in which yet again the Church will have to beat a humiliating retreat? My response is again 'honestly, no'. The mistake, I suggest, would be to contrast 'science' and 'Scripture', since these, being respectively (in our view) human formulation and divine revelation, are not comparable. What we should be comparing instead is nature with Scripture, and science with theology. For 'science' is the systematic study of the natural order, while 'theology' is the systematic study of the biblical revelation. I do not feel able to accept your phrase 'the revelation of science', since it seems to me dangerous to elevate science (as a human study) to the level of revelation. What I do accept is that nature and Scripture are both divine revelation ('general and special', 'natural and supernatural', to use the traditional terms), since God has revealed himself both in the world he has made and in Christ and the biblical witness to Christ. Science is the fallible human interpretation of nature, while theology (or 'tradition', which is theological reflection) is the fallible human interpretation of Scripture. You and I believe (I think) that in nature and Scripture there are certain given things, data (although they relate to largely different spheres), which, if they truly come from God, cannot contradict one another. The contradictions have not been between nature and Scripture, but between science and theology, that is, between different human interpretations of God's double revelation. If, therefore, we are to learn lessons from the past, it is neither for conservatives to deny the evidence of nature, nor for liberals to deny the evidence of Scripture, but for all of us to re-examine our interpretations of both. Through such a reciprocal challenge, and through humble and patient listening to one another, it should be possible to find an increasing integration of word and world, Scripture and nature, theology and science. It will involve what I have sometimes called the pain of 'double listening', as we listen above all to the word of God, although in the light of contemporary questions and opinions, but also to the voices of the modem world, although in submission to God's word.

Turning from authority to salvation, the basic difference between us seems to be that you see the sincerity, devotion and uprightness of adherents of other religions or none, and ask why God should not accept them, while I see the sinful rebellion of all human beings (in addition to their value and dignity as creatures made in God's image), and hear the uncompromising words of Scripture 'there is no-one righteous, not even one' and 'no-one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law' (Romans 3:10,20). Such an emphasis on human sin and inability is not morbid, or at least it does not need to be. On the contrary, it is the way to health because it is the indispensable preliminary to trusting in Christ. He did not come to call the righteous (i.e. the self-righteous) to repentance, but sinners. Was not the purpose of the law to be our paidagogos, condemning and imprisoning us in sin, in order 'to lead us to Christ' who alone can rescue us (Galatians 3:23-25)? And is not the ministry of the Holy Spirit first to convince us of our sin and then to bear witness to Christ as the Saviour of sinners (John 15:26; 16:8)?

So then, behind our differences in relation to both authority and salvation there lies a divergent understanding of our human being and condition. Both the Catholic and the liberal traditions have tended to exalt human intelligence and goodness and therefore to expect human beings to contribute something towards their enlightenment and their salvation. Evangelicals, on the other hand, while strongly affirming the divine image which our humanity bears, have tended to emphasise our human finitude and fallenness and therefore to insist that without revelation we cannot know God and without redemption we cannot reach him.

That is why Evangelical essentials focus on the Bible and the cross, and on their indispensability, since it is through these that God's word to us has been spoken and God's work for us has been done. Indeed, his grace bears a trinitarian shape. First, in both spheres the Father took the initiative, teaching us what we could not otherwise know, and giving us what we could not otherwise have. Secondly, in both the Son has played a unique role as the one mediator through whom the Father's initiative was taken. He is the Word made flesh, through whom the Father's glory was manifested. He is the sinless one made sin for us that the Father might reconcile us to himself. Moreover, the word God spoke through Christ and the work God did through Christ were both hapax, completed once and for all. Nothing can be added to either without derogating from the perfection of God's word and work through Christ. Then thirdly, in both revelation and redemption the ministry of the Holy Spirit is essential. It is he who illumines our minds to understand what God has revealed in Christ, and he who moves our hearts to receive what God has achieved through Christ. Thus in both spheres the Father has acted through the Son and acts through the Spirit.

It is this horizon of trinitarian grace which, more than anything else, makes humility appropriate, the humility which acknowledges our dependence on grace. Is this not why Jesus made the little child our model? We have to humble ourselves like a little child, he said. And since children are often far from humble in their behaviour, it must have been the humility of their status to which he referred. For children are rightly named 'dependants'. Everything they know has been taught them; everything they possess has been given them. So Jesus taught that God reveals his truth not to 'the wise and learned' but to 'little children' (Matthew 11:25), and that the kingdom is given only to little children and to those adults who become like them (Mark 10:13-15). This is not to denigrate human beings, or to inculcate irresponsibility. For the same Scripture, which tells us to resemble little children in the humble way in which we learn and receive, forbids us to behave like children in other ways. Jeremiah was rebuked for wanting to abdicate the responsibility to work by declaring himself 'only a child' (Jeremiah 1:6-8). And the Corinthians were rebuked for wanting to abdicate the responsibility to think: 'Stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults' (1 Corinthians 14:20). We are to think hard, using our God-given minds, but to do so humbly, acknowledging our dependence on his grace in revelation. We are also to work hard, 'struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works' in us (Colossians 1:29), but to do so humbly, acknowledging our dependence on his grace in redemption.

Technologically and scientifically it may be accurate to speak of 'man come of age'. Morally and spiritually it is not. Like little children we still depend utterly on divine grace both to teach us what we do not know and to give us what we do not have. Such dependence on grace brings glory to God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Indeed 'from him grace, to him glory⁷ seems to summarise what is 'essential for Evangelicals'. 'Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded'; 'let him who boasts boast in the Lord' (Romans 3:27; 1 Corinthians 1:31).

I thank you again, David, for initiating this dialogue, and for giving me the opportunity to respond to what you have written. For myself I believe that some useful clarifications have emerged. You have my continuing, warm good wishes.

Yours as ever,

John

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