Chapter 16

The Philosophical Case—Manis and the Logic of Divine Presence

“Having developed the standard problems for the doctrine of hell . . . and having examined the standard options . . . as well as the shortcomings of each approach, we are finally in a position to fully appreciate the extent of the challenge of constructing an adequate solution to the problem of hell.”¹

A. Why Philosophy Matters for Hell

If you’ve made it this far in the book, you know that the divine presence model is not some brand-new idea somebody cooked up in a seminary library. We’ve already seen how the earliest Greek-speaking Church Fathers—Isaac the Syrian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa—understood hell as the experience of God’s inescapable love by those who hate Him. We’ve walked through the Orthodox tradition with Kalomiros. The theology is deep. The history is rich.

But theology and history alone are not enough. We need something more. We need careful, precise thinking about how the pieces fit together. We need someone to take the beautiful insights of the Fathers and show that they actually work—that the divine presence model is not just poetic and moving, but philosophically airtight. That it can withstand the hardest questions skeptics and critics can throw at it.

That is exactly what R. Zachary Manis has done.

Manis is a philosopher, trained in the rigorous methods of analytic philosophy. In his landmark work Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, he provides the first sustained philosophical development and defense of the divine presence model ever written.² Before Manis, the divine presence model existed as scattered insights in Orthodox theology, hints in the writings of Western thinkers like Martin Luther and C. S. Lewis, and occasional footnotes in academic discussions of hell. Nobody had sat down and built the philosophical case from the ground up. Nobody had shown, step by careful step, that this model satisfies the toughest criteria for what a good view of hell must accomplish.

Manis did that. And in his more accessible follow-up, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell: The Divine Presence Model, he presents these arguments in a way that doesn’t require a philosophy degree to follow.³

This chapter is devoted to making Manis’s philosophical case accessible to you. We are going to walk through the logic of the divine presence model step by step. I want you to see not just that this model is beautiful, but that it is sound. It answers the hardest questions. It handles the toughest objections. And it does all of this without compromising a single thing about God’s love, justice, or goodness.

Grab a cup of coffee. This chapter asks you to think carefully. But I promise to make it worth the effort.

B. Setting the Bar: What Makes a View of Hell “Adequate”?

Before you can judge whether any view of hell is a good one, you have to know what you’re measuring it against. What standards should a view of hell meet? This is where Manis starts, and it’s where we need to start too.

Imagine you’re a judge at a cooking competition. You can’t just taste the dishes and go with your gut. You need scoring criteria. Flavor, presentation, originality, technique. Without clear criteria, every judge picks a different winner, and nobody learns anything.

The same is true for views of hell. Without clear criteria, the conversation goes in circles. Traditionalists point to their texts, universalists point to theirs, and everybody talks past each other. Manis cuts through this by laying his criteria on the table for everyone to see. He writes:

That is a demanding list. Notice what it requires. A good view of hell must:

First, it must be biblical. It can’t just be a clever idea—it must find real support in Scripture. If a view of hell has no serious biblical grounding, it doesn’t matter how elegant the philosophy is.

Second, it must be traditional. It should align with the best thinking of the Christian church through the centuries. This doesn’t mean every single church father has to agree with it. But it can’t be something nobody ever believed before the twenty-first century. As a safeguard against theological novelty, it should be a view that is already accepted, in its general form, by a significant portion of the church today.⁵

Third, it must be theologically sound. Specifically, it must be consistent with what theologians call “perfect being theology”—the conviction that God is the greatest possible being. His goodness is the greatest possible goodness. His justice is the greatest possible justice. His love is the greatest possible love. Any view of hell that makes God less good, less just, or less loving than He could possibly be has failed this test.

Fourth, it must be morally coherent. It must understand love—especially the kind of self-giving love the New Testament calls agape (ah-GAH-pay)—as including the desire for another person’s highest good. If your view of hell requires God to stop willing the good of the people He created, your view has a problem.⁶

These are not easy standards to meet. That’s the whole point. Manis is not rigging the game in favor of his preferred view. He is setting the bar high and then showing that the divine presence model clears it—and that its competitors do not.

Think about what this means for the four standard views we evaluated earlier in this book. Traditionalism (eternal conscious torment) has strong traditional support, but it stumbles badly on the moral and theological criteria. It struggles to explain how a God of unsurpassable love can inflict infinite suffering for finite sins.⁷ Universalism handles the love and justice criteria beautifully, but it conflicts with major streams of Christian tradition and faces real tension with biblical texts about finality.⁸ Annihilationism (conditional immortality) makes good sense of the destruction language in Scripture, but in its retributive forms, it shares many of traditionalism’s philosophical problems. And the choice model protects God’s character nicely, but it fails to account for large chunks of the biblical witness about judgment.⁹

Every standard view excels in some areas and fails in others. This is not because the people who hold these views are stupid or careless. Far from it. Some of the greatest minds in Christian history have defended each of these views. Augustine and Aquinas defended traditionalism. Gregory of Nyssa defended universalism. John Stott and Edward Fudge made the case for annihilationism. C. S. Lewis and Jerry Walls championed the choice model. These are brilliant thinkers, and we honor their work. But the problem of hell is genuinely hard. The criteria pull in different directions, and meeting all of them at once has proven almost impossible.

Manis describes this situation with intellectual honesty. He writes that after examining all four standard views, “we have found that the retributive views face grave philosophical and theological problems, and the non-retributive views are unorthodox, nontraditional, and/or fail to do justice to the full scriptural witness.” For those who refuse to compromise in any of these directions, the problem of hell seems stuck. Must we simply throw up our hands and say, “It’s a mystery”?

Manis refuses to take that route. Appeals to mystery have their place in theology, but when it comes to the character of God—whether God is truly good, whether God truly loves the people He created, whether God is just in His treatment of sinners—these are not questions we can afford to leave unanswered. Too much is at stake. Too many people have walked away from the faith because the only view of hell they were offered made God look like a monster. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to do better.

Almost.

C. The Middle Way: Between Traditionalism and the Choice Model

Here is where the genius of the divine presence model begins to show itself. Manis does not try to create a new view from scratch. Instead, he identifies what the best existing views get right and finds a way to combine those insights while leaving behind what they get wrong.

To understand this, you need to see how the views of hell relate to each other. Manis uses a helpful picture. Imagine a spectrum. On one end stands traditionalism. On the other end stands the choice model. Both agree that some people will experience eternal suffering. But they disagree, sharply, about why.

Traditionalism says hell is a retributive punishment—God imposes suffering on the wicked because their sins demand it. The punishment is chosen by God, inflicted by God, and its purpose is to give sinners what they deserve.¹⁰

The choice model says the opposite. Hell is not imposed by God at all. Hell is chosen by the damned. They freely reject God, and hell is simply the natural result of that rejection. God does not punish anyone. He just respects human freedom.¹¹

Each view has genuine strengths. Traditionalism takes seriously the biblical language of divine wrath, judgment, and the fear of the Lord. When Scripture says the wicked are “thrown” into the lake of fire, or that God has “authority to throw you into hell,” the traditionalist can point to those texts and say, “See? This is something God does, not something people choose.”¹²

The choice model, on the other hand, protects God’s character. If hell is self-chosen, then God cannot be accused of cruelty. The doors of hell are locked from the inside, as Lewis famously put it.¹³ God is not a torturer. He is a gentleman who will not force His way in where He is not wanted.

But each view also has serious weaknesses. Traditionalism makes God look like a tyrant—selecting and imposing infinite suffering for finite sins. The choice model makes God look passive—and it can’t explain why Scripture so consistently uses the language of divine action in judgment. If hell is entirely self-chosen, why does Jesus talk about God throwing people into hell? Why does Paul describe the revelation of Christ as “inflicting vengeance” on the wicked?¹⁴

The divine presence model stands between these two views. It shares the choice model’s rejection of retribution as the purpose of hell. God does not punish to get even. But it also shares traditionalism’s insistence that hell is, in a real sense, something that happens to the damned—it is not merely chosen.¹⁵

How can both of these things be true at the same time? That is exactly the question we need to answer. And the answer is, I think, one of the most brilliant moves in the entire discussion of hell.

Manis describes the divine presence model as combining “key elements of both retributivism and non-retributivism.” It stands with non-retributive views in rejecting the claim that the purpose of hell is to punish sinners. God is not in the business of getting even. But it also stands with the retributive tradition in affirming that something real and terrible happens to the damned—something they do not want and would escape if they could. This is not a contradiction. It is a synthesis that captures what is true in both sides while leaving behind what is false in each.

Think of it this way. Traditionalism gets the experience of the damned right but the character of God wrong. The damned really do suffer something that feels imposed, that feels like punishment. But the traditional explanation—that God is deliberately inflicting this punishment as payback—makes God look vindictive. The choice model gets the character of God right but the experience of the damned wrong. God really is loving, and He really does not want anyone to suffer. But the idea that the damned simply choose their suffering and could walk out whenever they please does not match the biblical picture of people being thrown into fire, shut out, and subjected to judgment against their will.

The divine presence model says: what if both experiences are real, but the explanation is different from what either side has assumed? What if the damned really do experience something imposed, something overwhelming, something they did not choose—but the thing being “imposed” on them is not a punishment? What if it is God Himself?

D. The Natural Consequence: Hell as the Result of Encountering Love

Imagine a man who has lived in total darkness his entire life. Not just in a dark room—deep underground, where no light has ever reached him. Over the years, his eyes have deteriorated. Not just weakened. Damaged. Scarred. His pupils can no longer adjust. His retinas have hardened.

Now imagine that one day the ceiling above him is ripped away, and pure, brilliant sunlight floods into his cave.

What happens?

The light does not attack him. The sun is not angry at him. The sunlight that pours over him is the same sunlight that warms the faces of children playing in a park and makes flowers bloom in a garden. It is good light. It is life-giving light.

But for this man, with these ruined eyes, that same light is agony. It sears. It blinds. It overwhelms. He screams and covers his face. He curses the sun. He begs for the darkness to return.

Is the sun punishing him? No. The sun is just being the sun. The problem is not the light. The problem is the condition of his eyes.

This is the heart of the natural consequence aspect of the divine presence model. Hell is not a punishment that God selects from a menu of options and inflicts on sinners because they deserve it. Hell is what naturally happens when a soul that has hardened itself against love encounters Love in its fullness.¹⁶

Manis is careful with the terminology here. Philosophers distinguish between two kinds of consequences: natural and artificial. A natural consequence flows directly from the action itself. If you put your hand in a fire, you get burned. The burning is a natural consequence of touching flame. An artificial consequence is something imposed by an authority figure that has no natural connection to the action. If you drive too fast and get a fine, the fine is an artificial consequence—there is no natural link between speeding and losing money. Some other penalty could just as easily have been chosen.¹⁷

Traditionalism treats hell as an artificial consequence of sin. God chooses to inflict this particular punishment. He could have chosen something else. This is precisely what makes the problem of justice so severe for traditionalism. If God picked eternal suffering as the penalty, and He could have picked something less severe, then His choice looks disproportionate and vindictive.¹⁸

The divine presence model treats hell as a natural consequence. The suffering of hell flows directly from the condition of the soul encountering the overwhelming reality of God’s presence. God did not choose this suffering for the damned. He did not design hell as a torture chamber. He simply is who He is—infinite love, perfect holiness, consuming fire—and hearts that have hardened themselves against Him experience His unveiled presence as torment.¹⁹

Think about it this way. When Scripture says “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), it does not mean God is an angry furnace looking for people to burn. It means God’s love is so intense, so pure, so overwhelming, that it cannot leave anything untouched. The gold is purified. The dross is consumed. The fire is the same. The difference is in what it touches.²⁰

Manis puts it with philosophical precision. Both the choice model and the divine presence model are “natural consequence models of hell.” They both reject the retribution thesis—the idea that God’s purpose in hell is to pay sinners back for their earthly wrongs. But the divine presence model goes further than the choice model. On the choice model, the suffering of hell is entirely self-inflicted. The damned choose separation from God, and their misery comes from that separation. On the divine presence model, the suffering comes not from separation but from exposure—exposure to God’s unveiled presence by souls that cannot bear it.²¹

This difference matters enormously. As Manis explains, the choice model treats damnation as entirely the product of human free choice. God respects freedom, and some freely choose hell. But the divine presence model recognizes that there is also a divine act involved. God reveals Himself. Christ returns in glory. The apocalypse—the Greek word apokalypsis (ah-poh-KAH-loop-sis), literally meaning “unveiling”—is something God does, not something humans choose. And for those whose hearts have hardened against Him, that unveiling is experienced as judgment.²²

This is not a minor detail. It is the hinge on which the whole model turns. The choice model says the damned are entirely responsible for their own suffering. The divine presence model says something more nuanced: the damned are responsible for the condition of their hearts, but the event that triggers their suffering—the unveiling of Christ in glory—is God’s action, carried out for reasons that have nothing to do with punishing anyone. God reveals Himself because it is time for truth to reign, for death to be defeated, for creation to be renewed. The fact that this glorious act causes suffering to those who have corrupted themselves is a tragic consequence of their own choices—but the act itself is aimed at the highest good of all creation.

That is how the divine presence model can affirm both sides of the biblical witness. Yes, hell is the natural consequence of sin, as the choice model says. But yes, hell is also something the damned experience as imposed—because the revelation of Christ is God’s act, not theirs. The Bible says both things because both things are true.²³

E. Why God Hides—And Why He Won’t Forever

If encountering God’s unveiled presence is torment for the wicked, then why doesn’t God just remain hidden forever? If divine hiddenness protects sinners from suffering, wouldn’t a loving God keep the veil in place permanently?

This is one of the most important questions in the entire discussion of hell, and Manis gives it sustained attention. His answer involves two interlocking ideas: why God is hidden now, and why He cannot remain hidden forever.

Start with the first question. Why is God hidden in this life?

You’ve probably felt this at some point. You’ve prayed and heard silence. You’ve looked for God in a crisis and felt alone. Atheists point to this experience and say, “See? There is no God.” But the divine presence model offers a very different explanation. God is hidden because He must be hidden—at this stage—for the sake of our freedom and our salvation.²⁴

Here is the logic. God’s purpose in creating human beings is to bring them into a relationship of loving communion with Himself. But genuine love requires genuine freedom. You cannot force someone to love you. A “love” that is coerced is not love at all—it is slavery. So God must create conditions in which human beings can freely choose to love Him or reject Him.²⁵

Now here is the key point. If God were fully revealed to us right now—in all His blazing glory, His infinite beauty, His overwhelming power—genuine freedom would be impossible. It would be like trying to freely decide whether you want to breathe while someone holds your head underwater. The stakes are so high and the reality so overwhelming that any “choice” made under those conditions would be coerced.²⁶

Manis draws on the philosopher John Hick’s “soul-making theodicy” here. Hick argued that God places us in a world where His existence is not immediately obvious so that we have genuine room to grow morally and spiritually. This environment of “epistemic distance” from God is not a punishment. It is a gift—the necessary condition for the kind of character formation that genuine love requires.²⁷

But Manis goes further than Hick. On the divine presence model, the reason divine hiddenness is necessary is not just that freedom requires uncertainty. It is that, in our fallen condition, a full encounter with God’s holiness would be devastating. Remember the man in the cave with the ruined eyes? God is shielding us from the full force of His presence because we are not yet ready for it. Divine hiddenness in this life is not God’s cruelty. It is His mercy.²⁸

Manis summarizes the point: God remains partially hidden in this life so that human beings can be saved. Divine hiddenness is one of the requirements of an environment in which soul-making can take place in a fallen world. By remaining partially hidden, God is creating the conditions that make it as likely as possible that all will be saved.²⁹

God is not absent. He is veiled—deliberately, lovingly, for our sake. He reveals Himself gradually, personally, at the pace each soul can handle. As a person’s heart grows softer and more open to love, God reveals more of Himself. The saints experience deeper and deeper communion with God precisely because their hearts have been progressively healed and prepared to receive more of His presence.³⁰

Consider an analogy from medicine. When a patient has been in total darkness for a long time—say, after eye surgery—the doctor does not throw open the curtains and flood the room with sunlight. That would damage the healing eyes. Instead, the doctor introduces light gradually. A dim lamp first. Then a brighter one. Then a window with a thin curtain. The light increases as the eyes heal. The goal is full exposure to daylight—that is the desired outcome. But the path there must be careful and gradual, tailored to the patient’s condition.

God does the same thing with the human soul. He introduces Himself gradually. A quiet prompting of conscience here. A moment of unexpected beauty there. A passage of Scripture that suddenly comes alive. A kindness from a stranger that opens the heart just a crack. Each revelation is calibrated to what the person can receive at that moment. God is not withholding Himself out of stinginess. He is revealing Himself at exactly the pace that gives each person the best possible chance of responding with love rather than fear.

This means that divine hiddenness is not a problem to be solved. It is part of the solution. It is God’s strategy for saving as many people as possible. And it will not last forever, because it is not meant to last forever. It is a temporary mercy for a temporary condition. The day is coming when the condition will no longer be temporary—when every soul will have had its full opportunity, and the time for veiling will be over.

But now the second question presses in. If hiddenness is merciful, why does it ever end?

Because the Day of Judgment must come. Christ must return. The truth must be revealed. And here the divine presence model finds powerful support in Scripture. The Bible repeatedly teaches that a day is coming when everything hidden will be brought to light. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). Jesus Himself says, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known” (Luke 12:2).³¹

The divine presence model sees the return of Christ as the defining event of human history. It is the apokalypsis—the great unveiling. Christ returns in glory, fully revealed, and in that moment, the partial hiddenness of God comes to an end forever. God becomes “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). His presence fills the new creation. There is nowhere to hide.³²

For those whose hearts have been prepared—for those who have learned to love the light—this is paradise. The beatific vision. The ultimate homecoming.

For those who have spent their lives running from the light, hardening their hearts, choosing the darkness—this is judgment. The very same event that fills the righteous with joy fills the wicked with anguish. Not because God treats them differently, but because their hearts receive Him differently.

Manis calls this the “judgment of transparency.” On the day of judgment, the presence of God finally and fully reveals the deepest moral and spiritual truth about everyone.³³ The secrets of every heart are disclosed. There is no more pretending. No more masks. No more self-deception. Every soul is laid bare. And the experience of that exposure is either cleansing or devastating, depending on what it finds.

This is why God cannot remain hidden forever. The whole arc of salvation history is moving toward this moment. It is a great good for Christ to be fully revealed, for the light of His glory to fill the world, for truth to triumph over every lie and every illusion. A God who remained permanently hidden would be a God who never finished what He started. He would be a God who let the darkness win.³⁴

F. The Poison of Self-Deception

If hell is the natural result of a hardened heart encountering God’s love, then we need to understand how hearts become hardened in the first place. What goes wrong inside a person to make them experience perfect Love as torment?

Manis’s answer is self-deception. And once you see how it works, a lot of the puzzle pieces fall into place.

Self-deception is not just lying to yourself about small things. It is a deep, corrosive process by which sin distorts a person’s ability to perceive reality accurately. Think of it like a slow poison. A person makes a selfish choice. Then another. Then another. Each choice does not just affect their behavior—it reshapes how they see the world. Over time, good starts to look threatening, and evil starts to look reasonable. The person’s moral vision gets warped, like looking through a funhouse mirror.³⁵

The Bible describes this process vividly. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Paul writes about those who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). Isaiah warns of those who “call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa. 5:20). This is not just poetic language. It is a precise description of what self-deception does to the human soul.

Manis is drawing here on a deep philosophical tradition. Søren Kierkegaard wrote extensively about how despair and sin involve a refusal to be oneself before God. The person in despair does not just make bad choices—they construct an entire false self, a self built on lies, and then fiercely defend that false self against anything that threatens to expose it.³⁶

Here is the terrifying thing: as self-deception deepens, the person becomes less and less able to recognize what is happening to them. In the early stages, there is still an inner voice whispering, “This is wrong.” But the more a person suppresses that voice, the quieter it gets, until eventually it falls silent altogether. The person has become so thoroughly deceived that they can no longer see the truth even when it stares them in the face.³⁷

Think of it like an addiction. An alcoholic may know, on some level, that the drinking is destroying his family, his health, his career. But the addiction has rewired his desires so thoroughly that he cannot stop. Knowledge alone does not produce change. He sees the problem—dimly, distantly—but he cannot act on what he sees. The self-deception is too deep.³⁸

Now apply this to the divine presence model. On the Day of Judgment, God’s presence is unveiled. Every lie is exposed. Every self-deception is stripped away. The person’s true condition is revealed in the piercing light of divine truth. But—and this is the critical point—the revelation of truth does not automatically produce repentance. A person whose soul has been thoroughly corrupted by self-deception may experience that revelation not as a liberating gift but as an assault. They may rage against the light. They may curse the truth. They may experience the overwhelming love of God as an unbearable burning.³⁹

The Pharaoh of Exodus is the classic biblical example. God sent plague after plague. Each plague was a revelation of God’s power and holiness. Each one should have brought Pharaoh to his knees. Instead, Pharaoh’s heart hardened further with each revelation. The light only made the darkness in him more stubborn.⁴⁰

This is why self-deception is so dangerous, and why Scripture takes sin so seriously. Sin is not just rule-breaking. Sin is soul-corruption. Every sinful choice does not just violate a law—it reshapes the person who makes it. It moves their heart one step further from the capacity to receive love. And if that process continues long enough, the heart may reach a point where it is incapable of responding to love at all.⁴¹

Manis connects this to the soul-making process. God places us in an environment designed to cultivate character—to shape us, through our free choices, into the kind of people who can enjoy eternal communion with Him. But character can develop in either direction. The virtuous become more virtuous. The vicious become more vicious. That is the terrifying freedom God has given us.⁴²

The Bible gives us vivid illustrations of both directions. Think of Peter and Judas. Both of them betrayed Jesus on the same night. Peter denied Jesus three times. Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Both sins were terrible. Both men were stricken with grief afterward. But their responses diverged in the most dramatic way possible. Peter repented. He wept bitterly, came back to Jesus, and was restored. Judas despaired. He threw the silver on the temple floor, walked out, and hanged himself. What was the difference? Not the severity of the sin. The difference was the disposition of the heart. Peter’s heart, though badly shaken, was still oriented toward love. Judas’s heart had turned so far inward, so deeply into self-loathing and self-deception, that he could not receive the forgiveness that was being offered to him.

The elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son is another powerful example. Remember, the elder brother never left home. He was always in his father’s house. He was always surrounded by his father’s love. And yet, when the father threw a feast for the returning younger son, the elder brother was furious. He stood outside and refused to come in. He was in his father’s presence and experienced it as injustice. He was surrounded by love and experienced it as betrayal. That is a picture of hell on the divine presence model: a person standing in the middle of a party, surrounded by joy and love, experiencing nothing but rage.

This is the pattern that self-deception produces. It does not simply make a person do bad things. It transforms how a person perceives reality. It makes love look like a threat. It makes generosity look like injustice. It makes the Father’s embrace look like an insult. And the deeper the self-deception goes, the more completely the person’s perception is inverted—until, finally, they experience the most beautiful thing in the universe as the most terrible thing in the universe.

G. Retributive Elements Without the Retribution Thesis

Here is where many readers stumble. If the divine presence model rejects retribution as the purpose of hell, doesn’t that mean it is “soft on sin”? Doesn’t it leave out the biblical language of divine wrath, vengeance, and punishment?

Not at all. And Manis’s handling of this issue is one of the most impressive parts of his argument.

The key insight is the difference between function and intent. Something can function as a punishment without being intended as one.⁴³

Here is an everyday example. A father tells his teenage son, “If you stay out past midnight, the doors will be locked.” The son stays out until 2 a.m. and finds the doors locked. The father did not lock the doors to punish the son. The father locks the doors every night at midnight because that is his routine, his household rule, established for the good of the whole family. But the son experiences the locked doors as a punishment. From his perspective, it feels like the father is punishing him.

Something similar is happening on the divine presence model. When Christ returns in glory, He does not come back in order to punish the wicked. He comes back because it is time for the new creation to begin, for truth to be revealed, for God to dwell with His people in perfect, unveiled communion. That is God’s purpose. That is God’s intent. But for those who have spent their lives hardening their hearts against God, the experience of Christ’s return functions as a punishment. It feels like divine wrath. It feels like vengeance.⁴⁴

Manis puts this with technical precision. Hell has retributive elements without having a retributive purpose. The suffering of the damned is not an artificial punishment freely selected and imposed by God as payback for earthly sins. Rather, the damned experience the culminating act of God’s salvific work—the revealing of Christ in glory—as a retributive punishment, because that is the only way their corrupted hearts can interpret the experience.⁴⁵

This distinction is philosophically elegant, but it is also pastorally powerful. It means the biblical language of divine wrath, judgment, fear, and vengeance is phenomenologically accurate. That is a philosopher’s way of saying: the language describes the experience correctly. The damned really do experience God’s presence as wrath. They really do experience it as punishment. Scripture is not lying or exaggerating when it uses this language. It is describing the first-person experience of sinners in the presence of a holy God.⁴⁶

But—and this is crucial—the language describes the experience of the damned, not the intent of God. God’s intent is always restoration. God’s purpose is always love. The fire is love. The wrath the damned feel is not something God does to them—it is something their own corrupted hearts generate in response to perfect Love.

This is why Manis says the divine presence model stands “between” traditionalism and the choice model. Like traditionalism, it can account for the biblical language of divine punishment, wrath, and judgment—because those are real experiences of the damned. Like the choice model, it rejects the claim that God’s purpose in hell is retribution—because God’s purpose is always the highest good of every person He has made.⁴⁷

Let me be direct about what this means for the fear of the Lord. The choice model has always struggled with this concept. If hell is entirely self-chosen and self-inflicted, then strictly speaking, you should fear yourself—your own capacity for self-destruction—not God. The choice model can explain why you should respect God deeply. It has a harder time explaining why you should fear Him.⁴⁹

The divine presence model does not have this problem. On this model, you should fear God because encountering His unveiled presence without a heart prepared by grace really is the most terrifying thing that could ever happen to a human being. Not because God is cruel, but because God is real—and His reality is overwhelming. The psalmist was not exaggerating when he wrote, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom precisely because the Lord is a consuming fire, and only the wise prepare their hearts to meet that fire with love rather than hatred.⁵⁰

H. The Universalist Objection

Every strong model has to face its strongest critics. For the divine presence model, the most powerful objection comes from the universalist camp. And Manis takes it very seriously.

The universalist argument, stated simply, goes like this: If God is truly loving and truly powerful, He will eventually win every heart. No finite creature can hold out forever against infinite Love. Self-deception is real, but it cannot endure eternally against the God who is truth. So in the end, everyone will be saved. Hell is real, but it is temporary—a painful process of purification that will end, eventually, in the reconciliation of all things.⁵¹

Thomas Talbott develops this argument with great force. He insists that no rational person would choose eternal misery if they truly understood what they were choosing. The choices that lead to damnation are always made under conditions of ignorance or self-deception. And God, Talbott argues, can cure self-deception without violating human freedom, just as a physician can cure an illness without violating the patient’s autonomy.⁵²

It is a powerful argument. And I confess that I feel its pull. As I mentioned in Chapter 13, the universalist hope is genuinely beautiful, and the God of infinite love does seem like the kind of God who would never give up on anyone. If you’ve never felt the tug of that hope, you may not be paying close enough attention.

But Manis identifies a critical flaw in the argument, and it centers on the nature of freedom. Talbott assumes that if God removes all the “interfering factors”—the ignorance, the bad habits, the self-deception—then a person will inevitably choose God. But this is not obviously true. As Jerry Walls points out, the ability to deceive ourselves may be an essential component of moral freedom. If we cannot deceive ourselves, there can be no sustained motive to choose evil, and therefore no genuine freedom to do so.⁵³

Think carefully about what Talbott is really saying. He is saying that no one would freely choose hell if they truly understood the consequences. The choice of hell is always the result of ignorance or deception. Remove the deception, and the choice disappears. This sounds compassionate. It sounds hopeful. But follow the logic to its conclusion. If no one can freely choose hell, then no one can freely choose anything evil with full knowledge. And if that is true, then what we call “freedom” is really just an elaborate illusion—God has rigged the game so that everyone eventually makes the “right” choice, and the only variable is how long it takes. Is that genuine love? Or is it a form of divine manipulation that just takes a longer route?

More importantly, Manis argues that Talbott’s own reasoning undermines his case. Talbott admits that sufficiently strong motives can override the pain of any experience—you might keep your hand in a fire if your child’s life depended on it. If this is true, then the self-deceived person who believes with fanatical intensity that God is the enemy may have a motive strong enough to resist even the overwhelming experience of divine presence.⁵⁴

And here is the crucial point: if God cures self-deception by force—by making the person ever more miserable until they finally break down and repent—then the resulting “repentance” is not genuine. It is coerced. As Walls writes, there is a limit to how much pressure freedom can bear. Just as a person subjected to ever-increasing physical pressure will eventually be crushed, so a person subjected to ever-increasing spiritual pressure will eventually have their freedom destroyed. The “conversion” produced by such pressure is not love. It is surrender under torture.⁵⁵

Jonathan Kvanvig makes a similar point. Even after all interfering factors are removed, it remains possible that some persons have a fundamental desire to pursue self-determination over everything else—including union with God. God could remove the effects of bad habits, but removing the fundamental orientation of the will itself would amount to overriding the will rather than freeing it.⁵⁶

The divine presence model, then, takes the universalist objection seriously but concludes that it does not succeed. The capacity for salvation and the capacity for damnation are inseparable. A creature capable of experiencing heaven must also be capable of bringing about its own eternal ruin. As Manis puts it, there is no way, even for an omnipotent being, to ensure that every human being will use their free will in the divinely intended way.⁵⁷

I want to be honest with you. This is one of the hardest questions in all of theology. The tension between God’s infinite love and human freedom’s terrible power is real. I lean toward conditional immortality—the view that those who finally refuse God even in the full blaze of His unveiled presence will eventually be consumed by the very love they cannot bear. But I hold that position with humility. The divine presence model is compatible with either outcome. If universalism is true, then God’s love eventually melts every hardened heart. If conditional immortality is true, then some hearts harden beyond recovery, and the fire of love consumes what it cannot purify. Either way, the character of God remains the same: love, all the way down.⁵⁸

I. Objections and Responses

“This sounds like you’re just making hell more comfortable.”

I hear this one a lot, and I understand the concern. If we take away the image of God actively tormenting sinners, doesn’t that make hell seem less serious?

Absolutely not. The divine presence model does not make hell milder. If anything, it makes hell worse. On the traditional view, hell is painful because God inflicts pain. On the divine presence model, hell is painful because the damned are in the presence of everything they could have had—infinite love, perfect joy, complete communion with God—and they cannot receive it. They are surrounded by love and can experience it only as fire. They see the beauty of God and it burns them. That is not a mild hell. That is the deepest possible hell—to be in the very presence of the highest good and to experience it as the worst evil.⁵⁹

Isaac the Syrian understood this. Those who suffer in hell, he wrote, are suffering because they are being scourged by love. The very love that the saints experience as paradise, the damned experience as torment. The same fire. Two different experiences.⁶⁰

“Isn’t this model too speculative? Where is the hard biblical evidence?”

Manis is refreshingly honest about this. He acknowledges that his formal training is in philosophy, not biblical studies, and that the biblical case for the divine presence model needs further development by scholars with the expertise to do it full justice.⁶¹ But he does point to several lines of biblical support: the omnipresence of God (Psalm 139:7–8), the revelation of Christ in glory as the event that constitutes judgment (2 Thess. 1:7–9), the theme of disclosure and transparency on the day of judgment (Luke 12:2–5; Heb. 4:13), and the identification of God with fire throughout Scripture (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29).⁶² We will develop the full biblical case in Chapters 21–26, but the philosophical foundation is already in place.

“If God doesn’t intend to punish the wicked, how is this justice?”

This objection assumes that justice requires God to intend suffering for sinners. But that assumption is exactly what the divine presence model challenges. Justice, on this model, is not about payback. It is about truth. The judgment of God is the moment when the truth about every person is revealed in the light of God’s presence. Those who have lived in truth find themselves at home in the light. Those who have lived in lies are exposed. The “punishment” is the experience of having one’s self-deception stripped away. It is painful, but it is just—not because God is getting even, but because truth has a way of burning when you’ve built your life on lies.⁶³

Manis argues that this actually saves divine justice from the problems that plague retributive models. On traditionalism, God’s justice looks disproportionate—infinite punishment for finite sins. On the divine presence model, the “punishment” is proportionate because it flows naturally from the condition of the person. A soul that is deeply corrupted by self-deception experiences deep suffering in the light of truth. A soul that is less corrupted experiences less. The suffering is not arbitrary. It is the natural result of what the person has become.⁶⁴

J. Why This Model Succeeds Where Others Fail

We have now walked through the major pillars of Manis’s philosophical case. It is time to step back and see the whole building.

The divine presence model meets every criterion Manis laid out at the beginning:

It is biblical. It finds support in the omnipresence of God, the apocalyptic revelation of Christ, the themes of disclosure and transparency at the judgment, the identification of God with fire, and the consistent biblical teaching that the same divine presence is experienced differently by the righteous and the wicked. The full biblical case will be developed in Part V of this book.

It is traditional. It is not a modern invention. It is the recovery of an ancient understanding of hell that has been the dominant view in the Eastern Orthodox tradition for centuries, with roots in the earliest Church Fathers and echoes in Western thinkers from Luther to Lewis. As Manis says, the divine presence model is not the invention of a new idea; rather, it is the echo of an ancient one in a contemporary discussion.⁶⁶

It is theologically sound. It does not compromise God’s goodness, justice, or love. God wills the highest good of every person. God does everything in His power to save everyone. The suffering of the damned is not intended by God and is not chosen by Him from among other available options. God’s love extends to every person without exception, both in this life and in the life to come.⁶⁷

It is morally coherent. Divine love is understood as agape—the desire for the highest good of the beloved. This love is never withdrawn from anyone, not even the damned. The damned experience God’s love as torment not because the love has changed, but because their hearts have hardened against it. The moral vision is clear: sin is the problem, not God. The fire is love, not vengeance.

And it does something none of the standard views can do. It holds together both sides of the biblical witness. The retributive language and the restorative language. The wrath of God and the love of God. The fear of the Lord and the mercy of the Lord. The judgment of the wicked and the salvation of the righteous. On the divine presence model, these are not contradictions to be resolved. They are two sides of the same coin—two experiences of the same overwhelming reality, which is the inescapable presence of the God who is love.⁶⁸

K. Conclusion: The Logic Holds

I started this chapter by saying that theology and history need philosophy to show that the pieces fit together. Manis has given us that philosophy. He has shown that the divine presence model is not just a beautiful idea but a coherent, well-reasoned, philosophically defensible account of hell that outperforms every standard alternative at the points where they are weakest.

The criteria for an adequate view of hell are demanding. The standard views each fail to meet them all. Traditionalism sacrifices love and justice. Universalism sacrifices tradition and finality. Annihilationism, in its retributive forms, shares traditionalism’s worst problems. The choice model sacrifices the full biblical picture of judgment.

The divine presence model threads the needle. It keeps the biblical language of wrath, judgment, and punishment—because those are real experiences of the damned. It keeps the theological commitment to God’s unsurpassable love—because God never intends suffering for anyone. It keeps the philosophical coherence of natural consequences—because hell is what happens when a corrupted soul meets uncorrupted Love. And it keeps the traditional commitment that hell is real, serious, and final—because the fire of God’s presence burns, and there is no escape from it.

Manis himself is modest about what he has accomplished. He calls his work a “theodicy of hell in the weak sense”—meaning he has shown the model is plausible and that all the pieces fit together, even if some of the details remain speculative.⁶⁹ I think he undersells himself. What he has built is not just plausible. It is the most satisfying, most comprehensive, most faithful account of hell I have encountered in years of study.

And there is something else Manis has accomplished that deserves special attention. By laying this philosophical groundwork, he has shown that the divine presence model is not just an Orthodox curiosity or a modern innovation. It is a view that meets the most rigorous standards of philosophical and theological analysis. It is a view that a serious thinker can hold without checking their brain at the door. The patristic theology we explored in the previous chapter is beautiful. Manis has shown that it is also true—or at least, as true as any model of hell we have available to us.

I want to say something directly to those of you who have always suspected that the traditional view of hell did not do justice to the God you worship. You were right. Your moral instincts were not leading you astray. The God who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ—the God who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, who ate with sinners, who laid down His life for His enemies—that God does not torture people forever. That God does not design dungeons for His own children. The fire of God is real, and it burns. But it is the fire of love, not the fire of vengeance. And Manis has given us the philosophical framework to understand exactly how that can be the case.

But the philosophical case is only one leg of the argument. In the next chapter, we will turn to Sharon Baker and see how the divine presence model takes on flesh and blood in the world of pastoral theology. Baker does not just argue the model—she tells it as a story. And her story will stay with you long after the philosophical arguments have settled into memory.

The logic holds. The love holds. The fire is real. And the fire is love.