The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War

by Joshua Ryan Butler

Even if Israel is not brutal, like the caricature, we still have to ask: Why does God throw down on Canaan? A couple of options come to mind. Maybe Canaan was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe God woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and decided if he couldn’t be happy, nobody could. So he walked into town looking for a brawl, and Canaan was the first civilization he came across. Or maybe this is just who God is: an angry warlord on a perpetual warpath searching high and low for people to stomp on and destroy. Fortunately, Israel’s story gives us a radically different picture.

WHAT IS “THE GREAT CITY” OF BABYLON? Babylon is not simply a place we in the West can point to from the outside, but a reality we live in from the inside. We bear its characteristic marks of economy, autonomy, and exile. God’s coming holy war on the great city is a source of confrontation, not vindication, for our civilization.

Does holy war have any practical implications for us today? Can modern nations wage holy war? Should believing in Jesus’ conflict with Babylon make us more violent or less? As someone who personally finds great hope in God’s coming holy war, I believe—ironically—that reclaiming holy war is quite possibly one of the greatest resources for living peacefully in our violent world today. In this chapter, I want to explain why.

God’s coming justice for our world is, Volf argues, the greatest resource that can empower us to live peacefully today. Because justice is in God’s hands, we don’t have to take it into our own. Volf argues that without this belief, ironically, it may be impossible to truly forgive today:

My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone. . . . Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.1

God’s violence is, in both the pacifist and just war traditions, oriented toward the protection of the shalom of society, particularly for the weak and vulnerable. The question is the extent to which we may participate with God in this protective action.

While I have great respect for the pacifist tradition (indeed, many of the authors I’ve drawn from in this holy war section are pacifist2), my own convictions land firmly in the just war tradition. A common critique of just war is that everyone, of course, thinks their wars are just. In the Croatian conflict to which Volf refers, both the Bosnians and Serbs believe their side is right. Calling any war just is simply a quick and easy tool to legitimate our side.

When properly understood, however, I believe it has th...

Augustine is one of the most influential thinkers of the just war tradition. Yet Augustine uses justice not to legitimate the Roman Empire’s many wars but to radically critique them. In The City of God, his monumental magnum opus, he spends a massive chunk of the book showing how Rome’s wars were fought for vanity, pride, self-centered glory, and violent aggression against their neighbors in greedy pursuit of the empire’s expansion.

The threat of “the sword” scared off the criminals. It made them think twice. The family’s vulnerable business and livelihood were safeguarded from hostile invasion. The officer defended their flourishing.

Some argue that this buys into the myth of redemptive violence, misleading us to believe that government can redeem evil by inflicting vengeance on our enemies and thus bring an end to the cycle of violence. But nothing of the sort is being said: government cannot redeem sin; it can simply preserve shalom.

Paul says when government does this, they act as God’s “agents of wrath.” Hold on a minute—wrath . . . that is holy war language. God’s wrath is central to the concept of holy war: when God’s patience with the destructive powers runs out, God arises in wrath. Paul is saying that today, God wages war on sin through government.

Similarly, in Canaan, God waits for “the sins of the Amorites” to reach their full extent. Waits patiently. Four hundred years. While the cries rise up against Babylon into his aching ears, mounting like a tidal wave, being stored up patiently until the dam finally bursts and God’s wrath pours out on the society like a flood. God looks upon the society as a whole.

DOES HOLY WAR HAVE ANY PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR US TODAY? When properly understood, God’s coming holy war helps us live more peacefully, rather than more violently, in our sin-struck, ravaged, war-torn world today.

To help us reclaim a healthy understanding of the lake of fire, we must first understand that it is an apocalyptic symbol. It is found in Revelation, a book filled with apocalyptic symbols: God is on a throne. Jesus is a lamb. Beasts are roaring, trumpets blowing, and scrolls unfolding. Revelation is written in the apocalyptic genre—a type of literature that relies heavily on symbolic imagery. There is a danger in interpreting these symbols too literally. For example: To say that God is on a throne does not mean he is literally a sedentary old man sitting on a big, gold chair in the sky contemplating his day. To say that Jesus is a lamb does not mean he is literally saying, “Baa!” and chewing grass while wandering around heaven on all fours. To say that a beast rises out of the ocean to terrorize the earth does not mean Godzilla has suddenly stepped out of the Atlantic to trample down our cities.

But let’s say after the war ended, convicted Nazi soldiers were lifted high on stakes and piles of wood set aflame beneath their feet. Let’s say they were slowly roasted in agony over the torment of the flames. What’s more, let’s say they were lifted just high enough to stay alive indefinitely. Most of us would think this a cruel and inhumane thing to do—a picture of torture. There is all the difference in the world between bombing an empire and torturing an individual. Fire is used very differently in these two examples. Bombing an empire is done to end a war; burning an individual is done for revenge. Bombing seeks peace, and in the interest of that peace takes up violence against hostile, aggressive, powerful forces; burning seeks violence, and in the interest of that violence inflicts vengeance on defeated, helpless, powerless forces. Bombing is a picture of fire falling from heaven; burning, of flames set from earth below.

The lake of fire does not depict the torture of individuals, but rather God’s judgment on empire. This is the meaning of the apocalyptic symbol: it is the smoldering rubble of Babylon.

THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Like a chorus in unison, these three holy war passages all sing the same tune: God will judge empire. This is the hope of the world. The lake of fire is about the end of empire, not the torture of individuals. If God’s kingdom is to come, our empire must go. If God is to rule on earth as in heaven, then our attempt to rule the earth without him must be put away. God stands against Babylon because God stands for his world. It is for this reason that the lake of fire is an image of hope. Its significance is that Babylon shall never rise again. The exile will be over; the great city and all that she represents will be replaced by Jesus’ kingdom. Sin’s destructive power will no longer be allowed to terrorize the earth. And when Babylon falls, she ain’t gettin’ back up. This is the hope of the world.

WHAT IS THE LAKE OF FIRE? The lake of fire is an apocalyptic symbol for the smoldering rubble of Babylon. It speaks to God’s judgment on empire, not the torture of individuals. Its context in Revelation and backdrop in the Old Testament make this clear.

And Satan’s rule is political; it is an authority. Satan wants to rule the earth without God. So when we seek to rule the earth without God, using our authority for freedom from God, we join sides with the arch-traitor. This is similar to what we saw at the outset of this book: the destructive power of hell (and Satan, the chief Arsonist) works its way into God’s good world through us. Whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, Satan’s power is unleashed through us.

He faces the question: who then is really Lord of this world?”4 Politics is, for the biblical authors, anything but “secular.” It is the climactic arena in which Satan’s attempt to rule the earth without God is played out through us.

Christians often reinforce this dichotomy today. For example, mission teams will go to Africa and pray rigorously against the local witch doctor, missing all the while that Satan’s dark forces are showing up most powerfully in the dictator’s regime.

We will raise the alarm about atheism and the New Age movement in America, while the country bows down at the shopping mall to the gods of consumerism.

We are kings of missing the point, brilliant at missing the obvious right in front of our eyes. And at the root of it all is our divorce of the physical from the spiritual, our bifurcation of sacred and secular, our compartmentalization of politics and religion. But the Hebrew worldview is more holistic: it does not believe such a separation is truly possible.

God’s city reconciles heaven and earth. John sees the New Jerusalem coming “down out of heaven.”3 It is worth noting which direction the city is moving: it is descending out of heaven. We are not going “up” to heaven; heaven is coming “down” to earth. This reminds us of the major theme from chapter 1: God is not on a mission to get us out of earth and into heaven or hell. He is out to reconcile heaven and earth from the destructive power of sin, death, and hell. His goal is to reconcile the world.

As we have seen, however, this picture is upside down. The gospel story provokes a paradigm shift. Heaven’s primary counterpart is not hell; it is earth. God’s goal is not to get us out of earth and into heaven; it is to reconcile heaven and earth from the destructive power of sin, death, and hell. Jesus is the Savior who reunites heaven and earth, in order to fill it with the glorious presence of God. This is the biblical story: God’s grand objective is to get heaven into earth—and get the hell out.

Rather than a “chamber” God locks from the outside against our repentant will, hell is seen to be a “coffin” we latch from the inside through our unrepentant will, fueled by our insatiable desire for freedom from God, others, and ourselves as given by God.

God’s throwing a cosmic wedding bash, and he wants the world to come. His only requirement for entry is not our behavior, but simply receiving his mercy, being washed in the blood of the Lamb, and letting him freely clothe us in his righteousness.8 God doesn’t want the cosmic celebration spoiled, so he confronts the marriage-rejecters who don’t take the invitation seriously and the wedding crashers who try to bring their sin in with them. God takes the wedding seriously because he loves the world that his wedding reconciles.

Boom!

But as we have seen, this picture is upside down. The gospel story demonstrates that God’s holy war is a source of hope for the downtrodden, a world in which all too often the powerful use their strength to oppress the weak; the rich use their advantage to exploit the poor; and leaders use their influence to be served rather than to serve.

Will it be the same creation? Yes, in an important sense. Like Jesus’ resurrection body, the new creation will still be the same creation, continuous with the old. When Jesus was raised, he didn’t come back as a Brazilian woman, a Japanese sumo wrestler, or a twenty-first-century hipster. His friends recognized him; they talked with him, ate with him, felt the nail wounds, and put their fingers into his pierced side.19 Similarly, when God resurrects his world, we’ll recognize it. It will be the same world, familiar, known. God doesn’t dump creation in a cosmic wastebasket and start over. Like an old ’57 Chevy, God’s world is worth redeeming. He’ll pull out the old toolbox and get to work on the renovation.

But in another sense, it won’t be the same creation. It will be different from the old. When Jesus was raised from death, his body wasn’t the same: he’s walking through locked doors, appearing out of nowhere, and ascending into heaven.20 Some friends don’t recognize him at first—and when they eventually do, he has to tell them not to be afraid.21 His body has been glorified, raised incorruptible, made new.22 Similarly, when God resurrects the world, it will be made new. Brighter. Stronger. Glorious. When God’s glory floods the earth as the waters cover the sea, things will look different, feel different, be different. Creation will participate in the glory of God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit. It will be made new.

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF HISTORY? God’s city—a city that will reconcile the world. God’s city reconciles heaven and earth, east and west, good and bad, weak and strong—through the power of Jesus’ resurrection, it establishes the new creation.

Resurrection means we will not be able to hide in our graves from the presence of the living God. Death cannot hold us, as much as we may want it to. We may wonder how resurrection can be the New Testament’s scariest doctrine when it is simultaneously the greatest doctrine of Christian hope. Ironically, resurrection is so scary because it is so packed with hope. It is hope because death cannot hold us. It is fear because death cannot hide us from the living God before whom we must stand. It is hope because sin will be defeated. It is fear because sin must be defeated in us. It is hope because the dragon, that serpent of old, will be cast outside God’s reconciling city. It is fear because we have made ourselves his allies and must defect if we are to be made ready for the coming world. Resurrection is the catalyst for the coming new creation. Because of this, resurrection is simultaneously the catalyst for God’s judgment on the old creation. Resurrection has implications.

It is here that the logic of hell arises. God’s city has a posture of embrace toward the world, but sin will not be allowed inside. God redeems the world from sin, so we must face the reality of which we prefer: God or sin. Freedom from God or freedom for God. Freedom from God will be cast outside the city, because it is opposed by its very nature to the glorious goodness of what is happening inside the city. The destructive power of sin will find its home in the rubble of Babylon. Hell is distance from God, and its closet is latched from the inside.

God answers Israel’s tough questions about the skeletons in the ground with powerful promises: Israel asks, “Will you end the exile and put a stop to the imperial powers that rage in arrogance against your world?” God’s answer is holy war. Israel asks, “Will you address the brutality of history, the deception of appearances, and the bondage of creation?” God’s answer is judgment. Israel asks, “Will you redeem the world and protect your kingdom from the continued onslaught of evil?” God’s answer is hell.

POWER OR PLACE QUESTION: In some parts of the book you talk about hell as a “power,” but in others as a “place.” Which is it: a power or a place? RESPONSE: Both. As is often the case with Scripture, this is a both/and, not an either/or. The destructive “power” of hell makes its way into the world from the “place” of hell. For example, in the James passage we looked at earlier, this dynamic can be seen clearly: Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell [Gehenna].4 James sees hell as a place whose destructive power, like a wildfire, makes its way into the world through us. Power and place go together. To use an analogy: let’s say the United States invades Iraq (I know, use your imagination). And let’s say you live in Iraq. And let’s say as the bombs fall around you, they destroy a local hospital, a school, and a few homes. And someone asks you, “Is the United States a power, or a place?” The obvious answer would be: both. You are experiencing the power of the United States invading your country, dropping bombs, destroying buildings. But it is a power that comes from a place; its origins are not in Iraq, but on the North American continent, across an ocean, far away. This is what makes it an invasion: a power is infiltrating your country from an outside place. Similarly, in Script...