Theology in the Raw - 629: ReGeneration Project - Views on Hell

Episode Date: January 16, 2018

In this episode Jay Kim and Isaac Serrano are discussing the various views on hell and Preston's personal journey from one particular view on hell to the uniquely different view he holds today. For many people, the topic of hell poses one of the greatest challenges to embracing the idea that God is good and loving and just. We hope this conversation opens up the dialogue and helps to broaden your horizons as you think about the topic of hell.

Thank you. Hello, Theology Narada fans and listeners. I have a special episode for you today. This is actually a podcast interview that I did for another podcast called The Regeneration Podcast, which is a rather new podcast. I believe this is only going to be the fifth or sixth episode of their podcast. The Regeneration Podcast is hosted by my friends Jay Kim and Isaac Serrano, who are both pastors out in California, in the Central California coast, Santa Cruz area, Southern Bay area. And these two guys, Jay and Isaac, are just two amazing people. They're thoughtful, they're engaging, they're relevant, they're very pastoral. Their podcast is about candid

conversations about theology, church, mission, and lots of stuff that people are thinking about. I love the vibe of this podcast. They've had other guests on, such as Dan Kimball, Tim Mackey of The Bible Project, my friend Josh Butler, Gary Brashears of Western Seminary, and I believe I think I'm the fifth person to be on the podcast. So again, it's a new podcast, but it's a really fantastic one. I would encourage you to go listen to it. But I asked Jay and Isaac, I'm like, podcast, but it's a really fantastic one. I would encourage you to go listen to it. But I asked Jay and Isaac, I'm like, man, that was such a fun conversation. Could I get the MP3 of that interview?

And even though they were interviewing me, could I release it on Theology in the Realm? And I often have guests on my show, but rarely do I interview myself on Theology in the Realm because that would be really weird. And you would probably be very concerned about my mental state if I did that. So I went ahead and let Jay and Isaac interview me and would love to give you our conversation on Theology in a Raw. We talked a lot about the doctrine of hell. I talked about my journey, talked about some things I'm currently thinking through, and they asked some really good questions. It was a fantastic dialogue, a fun one, and hopefully a very relevant one.

So please enjoy this guest podcast on theology in the raw hosted by the Regeneration Podcast. What's up, everybody? Isaac here with my friend Jay. Today we have Dr. Preston Sprinkle on the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite discussion item around the dinner table, hell. So fun. Yeah. Eternal conscious torment. Actually, Preston is going to be breaking down various views for us today on different angles of how to look at hell through the lens of scripture. And hell is not typically thought of as a hopeful topic, but you'll be surprised in this conversation

how much hope there actually is when you really get into it. One thing, just to let you know, we did have a few technical difficulties, minor technical difficulties. So you'll hear a few blips here and there during the conversation. We really apologize for that.

We're working on that. We're working on that. We'll get it fixed and figure it out. But hang in there. It's a phenomenal conversation. And at the end, especially, it really gets to the heart of the matter and how we might talk about this really difficult topic with people who are asking really important questions. So thank you guys for listening. And let's jump into this episode with Preston Sprinkle. Preston, so glad to have you on the podcast today. Hey, it's great to be on you guys. Super excited. So a while back, you edited a book that got various scholars together

to sort of outline different views of hell. And it's interesting because for a big portion of church history, everyone kind of landed in sort of what people have called the traditional view, eternal conscious torment. But what this book brought forth was brilliant minds arguing, not necessarily from emotional reasons, but trying to ground their positions in the text exegetically. And you kind of guided and structured the book so that the various scholars would have different space to argue for their different views. Can you outline those different kind of views and understandings of hell, and maybe along the way, or after we can talk about maybe your opinions about some of the pros and cons of each

views, but yeah, why don't you just lay the landscape for the listeners? It is, I guess to start, even though there has been one major view of hell that's been considered the traditional view of hell, which is called eternal conscious torment, and we'll get to that in a second. If you look at church history, there has been actually more diversity than people realize, especially when we think church history, we often mean Western church history. But there's this whole Eastern tradition that has had more diversity in how it thinks about hell or even the afterlife for those who don't believe in Jesus. But we can get into the specifics there. But yeah, in general, there's three major, let me say general views on hell. The first one that I said, eternal conscious torment,

which is what, when 90% of Christians or even the world, when they think of the Christian doctrine of hell, they automatically jump to eternal conscious torment. And for most people, they just think that's what hell means. Like hell means to be tormented forever and ever and ever. But that is,

that is not what hell means, that that is a view of hell. And it has been a dominant view of hell in the Western church for the last 1500 years or so. Another view is sometimes referred to as annihilation. It's kind of the popular term. Other people call it terminal punishment or conditional immortality or conditionalism. And that view just basically says that when people go to hell, they die, they cease to exist, that there is no ongoing torment. Maybe there's a little bit.

I mean, again, if somebody dies in an electric chair on a cross, I mean, there is suffering there, but it's not a never-ending suffering, which is why terminal punishment, I like that term the best. There is an endpoint to the punishment. The punishment is death in the sense of their life ceases. And then the third view would be, it's often referred to as universalism or ultimate reconciliation. And that is the view that at some point in eternity, everybody will end up being redeemed, being reconciled to God. Now, here's the most important thing with these three views

is that none of them deny hell. This is the biggest misunderstanding. And if people find out you're a universalist or an annihilationist, if you don't believe in the traditional view, they immediately say, well, you're denying hell and hell is in the Bible. I see it there. It's all over the place. So why are you, you know, why don't you believe scripture? And it's like, well, wait a minute. I mean, every one of these views believes in hell. They just have a different perspective on, for instance, the duration of punishment in hell, or just have a different perspective on, for instance,

the duration of punishment in hell. Or they have, you know, like as in universalism, they believe in hell. People go to hell, but they believe you can be redeemed out of hell. So they're not denying the existence of hell. They're just saying that there's more chances to turn to God when you're in hell. There is a fourth view in the book that I edited called Purgatory, which is a Catholic doctrine. It's not technically a view of hell, though. We included it because it often comes up in the discussion. But Purgatory is a time of refinement for believers to make them fit for heaven, if you will. And again, this isn't a doctrine that most Protestants endorse, although the guy who defended it in our book was an actual Protestant. And there's questions about C.S. Lewis, whether C.S. Lewis believed in a kind of purgatory, which it seems like he did. It seems

like he held on to a form of purgatory. So yeah, those would be the four dominant views. There are other nuances to that, but that's a good place to start. Hey, I'm curious. You mentioned universalism, and I think for a lot of people listening, there might be some sort of surface-level familiarity with it. My assumption is that maybe there is a question because I think on the surface-level reading of it, people assume, wait, I thought universalists say there is no hell. Explain that a little bit. When you say all of those views don't deny hell, specific to universalism, how does a universalist actually talk about hell? That's a good question. And let me distinguish between two different types of universalism. And I think this distinction is incredibly important. There is Christian universalism, and then there's, I don't know, you could call it non-Christian or, you know,

yeah, let's just call it a non-Christian universalism. Christian universalism says that everybody ends up getting saved, not because they just sort of followed their own path or followed whatever religion they wanted to. They, they end up getting saved, being reconciled to God because the finished work of Jesus was so powerful that it overcame the unbelief and rejection from, for all humanity. So it's actually,

and this is kind of more than if you've heard of, you know, Karl Barth, the Bardian view. I mean, Karl Barth was so centered on the power of the cross and Jesus that, you know, and it's, he's not crystal clear on this, but it seems that he was, you know, he believed the blood of Jesus was so powerful that it's going to overcome the unbelief of the whole world.

So that is different. I mean, it still elevates and you may completely disagree and think it's heretical or whatever, but you have to at least admit that it does elevate and prioritize the power of Jesus' finished work. It's not denying Jesus. It's not saying he's irrelevant. In fact, quite the opposite. It's saying he's hyper-relevant. Now, people confuse that sometimes with secular universalism, which says, oh, you just – all religions lead to the same place and Christ is one way and this – Buddha is another way or whatever. And that is very different from Christian universalism. But again, yeah, so even Christian universalists,

the thoughtful ones, at least, I won't name any names that I think are not very thoughtful in their expression of universalism, unless you want me to name some names. We'll include them in the show notes. we'll include them in the show notes okay um they um they they very much believe that there is a hell and um some of the more evangelical expressions of christian universalism i'm thinking of a the guy who wrote the chapter for our four views book robin perry is a committed evangelical um and he argues i mean in fact his essay in the book probably has more Bible verses than all the other essays combined. I mean, he's arguing rigorously from the text of Scripture because he believes in Scripture so much. Well, Scripture mentions hell.

I mean, Jesus mentions it 11 or 12 times with the Greek word Gehenna. I mean, it's just hell is there. It's mentioned in the Bible. He would just say, again, that when people go to hell, they don't pass out of existence. They're there, they're suffering, but then they have an opportunity to repent, turn to God while in hell, and be rescued out of hell. So it's kind of interesting that the annihilation perspective mutually excludes universalism because if you're cease to exist you can't repent in hell um but the eternal conscious torment view um actually in a sense uh creates space for universalism some people think that like

annihilation is like the first step towards universalism if you if you go the annihilation route then that's just one more step towards the universalism. If you go the annihilation route, then that's just one more step towards universalism. In my view, it's actually the opposite. If you go annihilation, you have excluded universalism. Whereas if you believe in the traditional view that you're in hell forever and ever and ever

in 10 billion years while you're suffering, that either you're not going to repent or if you do repent, God's not going to accept your repentance while in hell. So the traditionalist needs to make that argument. But again, they both believe that they're going to the same place, the universalist and the traditionalist. One just believes that you can be rescued out of it. It's interesting, as you mentioned, every single one of these views has so many different layers and nuances where there's subviews and can be compartmentalized different.

Even probably important to note with the view of purgatory, there is a very, very bad version of purgatory that somehow is speaking of justification taking place. So the finished work of Christ isn't being applied in what we would say is a theologically sound manner. But when an evangelical tries to argue it, they are saying that this kind of purgative process is for sanctification reasons, that it's like prepping you for heaven, but it's not being done in a salvific sense, in a way for salvation. I don't hold to that view, but again, all of these things, you want to be fair because there's people who are arguing for stuff and they just get lumped in a category where immediately someone goes, oh, that person, you know, doesn't believe in Jesus. I think you have a line like that where people find out John Stott in the book, in the preface, you just like, oh my gosh, John Stott isn't a Christian type of thing.

Because they lump it together with a bunch of other preconceived kind of thoughts about these views. Yeah, that's so true. So even like the way C.S. Lewis talks about purgatory, he's not like denying the finished work of Jesus. It's not like a supplement to the atoning work. It's simply part of sanctification, which everybody believes that there is atonement, but there's also a process of sanctification. So that's incredibly important that, yeah, with all these views, there's different variations. And if you don't understand that, you can make these wild accusations toward people to hold the views.

For instance, when I first found out that John Stott was, you know, believed in annihilation 20 years ago in seminary when I first thought about it, and my reaction was like, I was like, oh my gosh, wait a minute. I thought John Stott was a Christian, and we know that Christians can't hold to annihilation, so does this mean,

and I immediately went to like the one saved, all he saved, like gosh, does this mean he lost his salvation? And I don't believe you can lose your salvation, so I guess this means he wasn't a christian all along and looking back it's so so ridiculous because i mean if you look at john stott's argument and a lot of people who are annihilationists it's not like they're they don't they don't deny scripture to get there they typically go back to scripture and say i think we've misunderstood some of these passages so

it's actually out of allegiance to scripture not in spite of scripture that they hold to the view. But I'm sure we'll probably get there later in this podcast. Yeah, I do want to get there. And I want to take sort of a personal path to get there. Several years ago, actually, when I first sort of came across your work for the very first time, it was several years ago. And then we'll just name names. Let's just name names. Rob Bell had just written a book called Love Wins, and it was causing all sorts of controversy and uproar. And at the time, you were working really closely with another really well-known name in the evangelical world, Francis Chan, um, who's

been a friend of regeneration for a couple of years now and has done stuff with us. So you and Francis are close. And, um, shortly after Rob Bell's book came out, uh, you and Francis co-wrote a book called Erasing Hell, um, which to me came across as a sort of response. Um, and I don't know if it was, you can speak more to that. But it was certainly about how a lot of the uproar behind Rob's book was about what was perceived as universalism on his end. And then you and Francis wrote a book that was responding to that in a very different way.

And then your journey after Erasing Hell went in a really interesting direction as well. So maybe, I know it's more personal, but I think it'll be helpful for us in terms of framing these different views on hell. Talk us through that journey and how you've gotten to maybe where you're at now. Yeah. So when Rob Bell wrote his book, both Francis and I read it and we talked about it. And both of us had kind of the same perspective. First of all, we were like, man, we hope he'll be right. And he's such a compelling thinker and

writer and we really appreciated so much of what he did in the book. But then both of us were scratching our heads thinking, well, man, this is not what we thought the Bible taught about hell, but neither of us had really studied it for ourselves. So that's when we said, well, let's step back and actually look at what the Bible does say about hell and be open to maybe Rob Bell is right, maybe he's wrong, maybe there's something to his view. And so we kind of took a, we didn't take a real aggressive kind of like, you know, boom, we're going to prove him wrong and then go to the text and show why he's wrong. We actually said, let's explore. And we really did do that as best as we can. And early on, I became very convinced that his view was incorrect. I didn't think that the universalist view that

people saved out of hell. I just didn't see it in the text. Now, here's the thing. What we ended up arguing in the book, the main point was not about the duration of hell, how long the punishment lasts, whether it's forever or instantaneous or whatever. Our main point was that the punishment in hell is irreversible. So whether it's ongoing or terminal, whether ECT or annihilation, that really wasn't our main point. We both said that, man, there's a lot more evidence for annihilation than we had thought. But we felt that the stronger arguments favored the traditional view. So we leaned pretty heavily towards the traditional view, but acknowledged the strength

of annihilation. That's where we were at in the book. Since then, I was really fascinated with that annihilation position. And the more I came back and studied it after the book was released, you know, I would kind of periodically revisit the arguments and conversations and talking to people and studying this, studying that. And the more I did that, even to this day, the more I've become convinced that the annihilation view is actually stronger biblically than the traditional view. Now that's made a lot of people nervous. Preston Sprinkle's not a Christian. I started to doubt my own salvation. Like I'm going to end up where John Stott is.

You know, at least it won't last very long. Um, so, and here's, here's, okay. So I'm gonna start getting preachy. Let me, let me say this caveat and this caveat needs to be heard for everything else to make sense. I don't want to try to convince somebody that the traditional view is wrong. I'm not saying that they're not reading the Bible correctly. I mean, I think that there's good reasons to believe the traditional view. When I read the text and when I wrestle with the arguments, I think that the biblical evidence is far superior toward the annihilation view. But I don't want to belittle or demean or think that people who hold the traditional view don't

like the Bible or whatever. But here's, for me, as I started to explore this, and I've always been one to explore stuff publicly, and I don't really care what people think. I'll just, hey, this seems like this verse is saying this, and I'll blog about it or something, and people get all upset sometimes, and that's okay. I don't mind that at all. I'm going to go where the text leads. I know I'm committed to that. But it was the accusations that I was getting, like, Sprinkle now denies hell, or he's not reading the Bible, or they'd quote verses at me as if I haven't, you know, my grandma used to say, you know, God said it, I believe it, that settles it, you know? And that's been kind of my posture. Like, if the traditional view is in a text, God can do what he wants. That's always been my posture, and even to this day. I've never

argued for the annihilation view on emotion, that I just can't stomach the biblical view, you know? But these are the kind of accusations that were coming, but the more I started studying the arguments, the more I was like, man, I can't believe how much biblical evidence there is for the annihilation view, and I can't believe that I never saw it before. I mean, think about like John 3.16.

You know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not be tormented forever and ever but have everlasting life it's how we've read the verse or understood the verse but it says shall not perish and i said wait a minute wait a minute whoa whoa i've said that verse you know at least hundreds of times you know and i've never even stopped to think about perish perish that that sounds like that doesn't sound ongoing that sounds like their life ends like something comes to an end um and then i started to go back to many other

passages you know matthew 10 28 and second peter 2 and we can look at these if you want but there is many passages that use language of death and destruction and language that in of itself would suggest some sort of termination, not an ongoing nature of the punishment. And then it really came down to just kind of a small handful of verses, Matthew 25 and Revelation 14 could be taken to support the traditional view. But even those, the more I studied them, I wasn't really convinced. So that's been my journey, and I'm very open and eager to go where the text leads. But every time I revisit what the text says about hell, I do become more and more convinced of the annihilation view.

Yeah, I think there's a—for the average person just growing up in the church, again, there's a narrative going on, and so they fit those verses straight into that narrative that they grew up with. And it's just, oh, heaven, hell, those are both kind of eternal forever places. But when you start digging into the text and you're looking at, okay, Jesus is using the word Gehenna. What is the function of Gehenna in the first century? When you look at these verses where where in new light, like John 3, 16, and then verses that talk about the second death or the verse that says, there's someone who, you know, could take out more than your body. He can destroy all of you, body and soul. And then

all of a sudden, then a real exegetical argument has to be made. And I think that's where I'm at personally is the two kind of real viable options for me exegetically are the traditional eternal conscious torment view and then an annihilation view with... And tell me what you think about this. There still has to be some punishment. There's people in our culture, especially in our culture that go like, how could God punish someone in hell? And I'm going like, man, how could God not? I mean, when you look at some of the most evil, vile, when you look at people who traffic children for sex, I'm going, if that person dies without ever having to face some type of judgment, the question for me isn't how could a good God exist and send people to hell? I'm going, how could a good and just God

not do something with human evil? And so for me, both exegetically, philosophically, and the emotional bent tells me my two options are eternal conscious torment and a view of annihilation, where there's still some type of justice served to those who deserve it. Right, right. And that's where, yeah, absolutely. And that's where the annihilation would say that death is the punishment. But, you know, Paul says the wages of sin is death. And I know a traditionalist is going to say, well, what that means is, you know, separation from God. And we know that in hell, you're separated from God, you're tormented forever and ever. But I think that is a bit circular. It's like, well, maybe, but it could perhaps be expanded to mean ongoing torment forever and ever.

Life is continued, but we have to prove that, not just assume it. But yeah, so here's another thing that's misunderstood about annihilation. They think that when you die, then that's it. You just pass out of existence. That is not what annihilation is saying. They say that, you know, Daniel 12 and John 5 and other passages talk about a resurrection of the godly and the ungodly. When Jesus returns, all the dead are raised, they all face judgment, and that judgment

is either according to the annihilationist view, you know, eternal life with God, or punishment via death. Like, the death is the final final punishment or what we would call it you know we would consider capital punishment i mean what's the worst the worst kind of punishment in the united states is not torture it's it's death it's the electric chair i mean that's like and when people say you're you're just downplaying the justice of god or the wrath of god i'm like we capital punishment is a big deal like that's kind of you know that's like debated today right that we should even have that and and um i don't think you're taking the the the softer route or diminishing the wrath of god that's to say capital punishment is death and you have scriptural themes

that would support that when adam and eve sinned you know death not torment was introduced as a punishment for their for their sin. What's interesting and probably good for our listeners to know is the ancient mind thought about death a little differently than we do. So when you ask me what's worse, death or torture, I immediately say torture. Torture is far worse than death. The second they start pulling out my fingernails, kill me. done deal. But if you look at the way people talked about it, especially into the context of the New Testament, actually ceasing to exist was far worse in people's mind than being tortured. And there's numerous quotes

and people who talk like that. And so the framework then is different than ours, which is very, very interesting. Here's a question for you, Preston. Sure. And again, I'm arguing now from a philosophical point, and I'm betraying my own rules by not grounding this in the text, but on a kind of philosophical and emotional level. If there's two people and one person, you know, by normal society standard lived a morally upright life, they paid their bills, you know, didn't do the best not to hurt people. They were a relatively good person in a kind of 21st century modern sense versus say someone like Pol Pot. For God to annihilate both of them and there's an equal penalty, does that bother you with the justice of God? Because on my gut level, I'm going like, no, there's a different level of punishment that has to be reserved for this. Does that bother you?

And if it does or if it doesn't, how do you resolve that and work through it with your view, if that makes sense? There's variations, and some forms of annihilation would allow for different degrees of punishment. Again, it's not that everybody is killed in the same way or annihilated in the same way. There could be punishment that prefaces the actual death. It just says that it's not going to be forever and ever. Maybe it's an hour, maybe it's a day, maybe it's a week, maybe it's a year, whatever. I don't think Scripture gets

that specific. But there does seem to be, you know, Jesus in Matthew and other passages, Matthew 10, where he does seem to talk about higher degrees of punishment for different people. And even in the Old Testament justice system, there's... But yeah, again, the annihilation view, some forms of it would very much allow for that sort of thing. As far as on a philosophical level, yeah, I don't know. I guess I am so exegetically driven. That sounds a little arrogant. But I truly but i truly am like i to me i dismiss your philosophy i only ground my thoughts in the biblical text that's great yeah i just like the bible says that that's where i'm gonna go but i yeah i i'm not really too troubled i don't i don't know i i don't need really bad people to get a worse punishment. I'm just seeking emotionally,

or maybe more philosophically, maybe emotionally I would, but philosophically, because on the flip side, I don't think that really good Christians should get a higher chair in heaven. I know some people believe that, but I think when we're talking about grace,

I think the person who worked the field in the last hour gets the same reward as a person who's been working all day. Jesus has a parable about that and gets on people for being kind of upset at that. So, yeah, but I do think, again, that the annihilation view would allow for different degrees of punishment if that's indeed what the text demands. Yeah, you know, when I hear some of that, it gets back to the level of emphasis. And I think, you know, for self-preservation sake, most people are most interested in what hell is. That's like, that's the brunt of the conversation. And what we risk losing in that is that the point of the biblical story and the story of God unfolding in the scriptures and in our world today, the emphasis is not hell, hell, hell, but rather heaven and earth making wrong things right.

And that hell and the consequences of choosing something other than God is really a part of the larger unfolding story, which is God is making everything right. God is healing and restoring and renewing all things. And there's fallout because of that, because of the stuff that isn't of God's good new world has to be done away with. And I think that's where, Isaac, it gets down to the justice of God. God must, as a just God, in recreating the world, he must eradicate the world of all the brokenness and sin. And sadly, that includes people who choose something other than God and his good

new world. And I think that's where it gets really tricky. So Preston, I'd be curious to know, maybe put on like your pastoral hat. And there's a lot of young people who have been a part of regeneration. They're maybe on our website. They listen to our podcast. They're starting to really ask, you know, the statistics even tell us young people are starting to really ask these tough questions that even our generation didn't really ask as much, you know, these really smart, bright, thoughtful questions about, man, hell and a good God, that doesn't make sense. Talk pastorally.

You know, if the three of us were also sitting with, you know, the 22-year-old college kid who maybe grew up in the church, but it's all starting to break down now, and he's having a hard time reconciling. Yeah, I was told God's really good and loving and wants everybody to know him, but then he sends people to hell, and maybe it is annihilation, and he destroys them forever, and they're gone. Or maybe it is he's just beating them over the head with a baseball bat forever. I mean, that doesn't make sense to me. Talk pastorally to that person who has that tension. The first thing I'd say is, let me tell you a story. A friend of mine, former colleague, he's in his 60s, been a missionary, been a pastor, church planner,

really amazing guy. He says the traditional view of hell has been the number one thing that has been a a hindrance in his faith he just and he's a he's a evangelical committed to the bible and and he just never thought about another doctrine and he's believed it but he says that has caused me to doubt god more than any other thing when i started to give biblical credibility to the annihilation not that i'm the only one to do it but he was following my my blogs and discussions and stuff he says his faith in god was just like was just opened up and and in ways he's never experienced in in his you know 40 50 years of ministry. And I've gotten that response from several people. And I think pastorally, there are a few things in the Christian faith that have been major

stumbling blocks for people either embracing the God of the Bible or trusting the God of the Bible. And I think that the traditional view of hell has been one of them. Now, let me be, again, really clear. traditional view of hell has been one of them. Now, let me be, again, really clear. If the Bible says the traditional view is correct, then we cannot manipulate the Bible not to say that, because we just can't handle it, or we can't believe in a God who would do that. I think we need to believe in a God who can do whatever God says he does. We need to trust in the Creator to be the Creator in the way that he is the

Creator as revealed in Scripture, not try to say, well, God must fit my standard of fairness for me to believe in him. However, there is, and this is what I do want everybody to agree on that there is at least, even if you can't fully go there, there is remarkable biblical evidence for the annihilation view. It needs to be considered as an evangelical biblical option. You know, kind of like the debate between can you lose your salvation or not, or are tongues for today or not? Like most sane people would say, look, I can see both. I definitely land on this side and here's why. But I'm not going to say the other view is not biblical. Like it's not an option, you know.

And that's what for people to know that like there are other biblical options other than the traditional view. I think that can be pastorally incredibly helpful. And this is where even pastors that hold to a traditional view, I think at least open up this possibility. I think you will probably get a lot more traction in your gospel witness or your discipleship for a lot of people, especially younger people. Now, some people are still hung up on the annihilation. Any kind of hell, any kind of punishment is problematic. But again, I do bring it back to that statement in Genesis 18, will not the judge of all the world do what is right? I do think that is our primary commitment. And I would see it's just part

of the fabric of believing in God in general. Part of believing in God, this God of the Bible, is trusting that he will execute justice in a way that is right and fair and is consistent with his goodness. I think that does come with believing in God. Not that you can't wrestle with that or have problems with that, but you must first of all believe that the judge of all the world will do what is right. And then we can look at scripture and see how that justice is executed. But I'm just, I'm not comfortable pastorally with people saying, until God fits this kind of standard of goodness that I think is goodness, I can't believe in him. I think we do need to get over that. Maybe that's not very pastoral for me to say that. No, no, that's very, very pastoral. I think I was actually going to close with the Genesis 18 text, primarily because if you have

a problem with this, you're wrestling with it. No matter what view is right, you need to know you can go to bed at ease tonight, not wrestling with tormenting yourself over this because the God revealed in Jesus Christ who was crucified for men and women, that God will judge rightly. No one will be able to say to that God, you didn't do right. He always does right. He's always good. So whatever he's going to do with this when it's all said and done, we know there's a good king who's on the throne who made a promise to eradicate evil, and we can trust his process, whatever that looks like. And to me, that's just wrapped up in the character, the fundamental character of God that's revealed in Scripture. It almost comes with believing in that God is trusting that

his goodness will not always make sense, his justice will believing in that God is trusting that His goodness will not always make sense, His justice will not always make sense, but that He is good and just, and that's a fundamental part of His character. Yeah, I love that. Preston, your tone and, you know, it's funny, you just said like, maybe I said that and it wasn't that pastoral, but you have such a pastoral tone in everything you do in your writing, both your blogs and your books, as well as, you know, both Isaac and I have been in the room when you've done presentations on incredibly difficult topics. And the way you balance significant, rich, responsible theology with a pastoral, very human, loving, kind, generous spirit. It's unlike many, most people out there. So you're a gift to the church and to leaders. So we just want to say thank you so much for your

work. We hope that today is the first of... There's so many things we want to talk to you about. So we want to make sure we have you back on as much as we can. But for people who want to stay connected to you, let people know maybe some of the different ways they can stay connected to you and follow some of your work. Yeah, my website, pressandsprinkle.com, super easy to remember. It's kind of a one-stop shop with all the stuff that I'm doing. My podcasts are on there, my blogs, my books I've written. I'm also the president of an organization called the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. And that website is centerforfaith.com. And that's really where my primary ongoing activity is right now. That's my full-time job. And so that'd be another one

to look at. Also, I mean, if people are interested in learning more about hell, I'm speaking at the Rethinking Hell Conference in March, March 9th and 10th in Dallas, Texas. If you go to RethinkingHell.com and look up conference, you can register for that. What's so cool about that conference is you have both the traditional view and the annihilation view represented. And you have other really world-renowned scholars that are going to be there on different sides of this question. So if this is a topic that your listeners are really, really grasping for more understanding, that would be a fantastic place where they can ask questions and rub shoulders with people who are wrestling with it as well. That's awesome. Preston, thank you so much for

your time and for your work. And I so appreciate it. And we really do hope to talk to you again really soon. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Thank you.