Chapter 15
If you grew up in the Western church—whether Catholic or Protestant—you probably learned something like this about hell: it is the place where God sends the wicked to be punished forever. God is the judge. Sin is the crime. Hell is the prison. And the fire? The fire is God’s instrument of wrath—a tool of punishment designed to make sinners pay for what they’ve done.
That picture feels normal to most of us. It’s what we grew up with. It’s in our hymns, our sermons, our paintings. But here is something that may surprise you: for hundreds of years, another branch of Christianity—the Eastern Orthodox Church—has taught something very different. And their teaching reaches all the way back to the earliest Greek-speaking Christians. The men and women who could actually read the New Testament in the language it was written in.
The Orthodox tradition says that paradise and hell are not two different places at all. They are two different experiences of the same reality: the overwhelming, inescapable presence of God. The same fire that warms those who love God burns those who hate Him. The difference is not in the fire. The difference is in us.1
In Chapter 14, we introduced the divine presence model and laid its foundation. Now I want to take you deeper. I want to walk you through the Eastern Orthodox understanding of hell, drawing especially on a powerful little work called The River of Fire by Alexandre Kalomiros, and on the ancient Church Fathers who shaped this tradition centuries before the Western church settled on the picture most of us inherited. My aim in this chapter is simple: I want you to see that the divine presence model is not some clever new idea cooked up by modern scholars. It is the recovery of the oldest Christian understanding of God’s judgment—an understanding preserved in the East and now being rediscovered in the West.2
I need to be honest about something up front. I am an evangelical, not an Orthodox Christian. I do not agree with everything the Orthodox Church teaches. We differ on important matters. But on this particular question—the nature of hell and the character of God’s fire—I believe the Orthodox have preserved something precious that the Western church lost along the way. And I think we need to listen.3
In 1980, a Greek Orthodox layman named Alexandre Kalomiros delivered a lecture that would change how many English-speaking Christians thought about hell. The lecture was later published as a short book called The River of Fire. It carries a bold subtitle: A Reply to the Questions: Is God Really Good? Did God Create Hell?4
Kalomiros was not a professional theologian. He was a medical doctor. But he was deeply steeped in the writings of the Church Fathers, and his little book hit like a thunderbolt. It laid out, in clear and passionate language, what the Orthodox Church had been teaching for centuries: that the Western picture of God as an angry judge who tortures sinners in hell is a terrible distortion of the gospel. And that the Fathers of the early church taught something radically different.
Kalomiros begins The River of Fire with a bold claim: the reason so many people in the modern world reject Christianity is not because they are wicked or foolish. It is because the Christianity they have been shown is a distortion of the real thing. They have been told that God is a being who creates people knowing that many of them will end up in eternal conscious torment. They have been told that this same God demands worship and calls Himself “love.” And they look at that picture and say: no thank you. If that is God, I want nothing to do with Him.61
Kalomiros agrees with them. Not with their rejection of God—but with their rejection of that God. The God who tortures people forever is not the God of the Bible, he argues. That God is a projection of human cruelty onto the face of the Creator. The real God—the God the Fathers knew, the God revealed in Jesus Christ—is something else entirely.
The heart of Kalomiros’s argument is breathtakingly simple. God is love. Not just loving—love itself (1 John 4:8). And because God is love, everything He does flows from love. His judgment is love. His fire is love. His wrath is not the opposite of His love—it is how His love feels to those who have set themselves against it. Kalomiros puts it this way:
God is truth and light. God’s judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light. In the Day of the Great Judgment, all people will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth. The “books” will be opened. And what are these “books”? They are our hearts.5
Think about that image for a moment. On the Day of Judgment, God does not need to open a legal record. He does not need to pull out a list of charges. He simply shines. His light penetrates every heart. And what that light reveals is not something God puts there—it is what was already there all along.
Kalomiros continues: if there is love for God in those hearts, they will rejoice in seeing God’s light. But if there is hatred for God in those hearts, they will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they hated all their life. The difference between the saved and the lost is not a decision made by God. It is not a reward or a punishment that God hands out. The difference comes from within—from the love or the hatred that has taken root in each human heart.6
Now, I know what you might be thinking. This sounds too simple. Can it really be that the difference between heaven and hell is just—us? Our own hearts? Yes. That is exactly what the Orthodox tradition teaches. And they would say: where did you think the problem was? Did you think the problem was in God?
One of the most powerful ways the Orthodox Church communicates theology is through icons—sacred images that tell the story of the faith. And one of the most important icons in the Orthodox tradition is the icon of the Last Judgment.7
In this icon, you see the Lord Jesus Christ seated on a throne. To His right are the blessed—the saints, the faithful, those who loved God. To His left are those who rejected God, those whose lives were shaped by hatred, even if they appeared religious on the outside. And here is the remarkable detail: right in the middle, flowing out from beneath Christ’s throne, you see a river of fire. It flows toward both groups. The same fire. From the same source. Reaching everyone.8
Kalomiros asks us: What is this river of fire? Is it an instrument of torture? Is it an energy of vengeance coming out from God to destroy His enemies?
No, he answers. Nothing of the sort. This river of fire is the river that came out of Eden to water the garden of old (Genesis 2:10). It is the river of God’s grace, the outpouring of God’s love for His creatures. Love is fire. Anyone who has ever truly loved another person knows this. God is love, so God is fire. And that fire consumes all those who are not fire themselves, and renders bright and shining all those who are.9
I want you to sit with that image. In the Orthodox icon, the same river flows from the same throne to the same people. The blessed stand in it and shine like gold. The wicked stand in it and burn. The fire has not changed. The throne has not moved. God has not done something different to one group than to the other. The only difference is in the hearts of those who receive the fire.
This is the divine presence model in a single image.
Kalomiros presses a point that is absolutely crucial for understanding the Orthodox view. During this present life, it is possible to hide from God. We can distract ourselves. We can deceive ourselves. We can build walls around our hearts and pretend that God is not there. The Bible even says that God, in a certain sense, hides Himself during this age—not because He is absent, but because He respects our freedom and gives us room to choose.10
But in the age to come, that will no longer be possible. At the resurrection, God will be everywhere and in everything. Paul says it plainly: God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). There will be no place to hide. No corner of reality where God’s light does not shine. No pocket of the universe where His love does not reach.11
Kalomiros puts it starkly. During this life, there was a possibility of escaping God’s light. In the new creation of the resurrection, God will be everywhere and in everything. His light and love will embrace all. There will be no place hidden from God. The devil’s kingdom will be destroyed by the common resurrection, and God will take possession of His creation again. Love will wrap everything in its sacred fire, which will flow like a river from the throne of God and will water paradise. But this same river of love—for those who have hate in their hearts—will suffocate and burn.12
Here is the key. The problem is not that God changes. God does not change. He loves the righteous and the wicked with the same unchanging love. The sun shines on healthy eyes and diseased eyes alike, Kalomiros writes, without any distinction. Healthy eyes enjoy the light and see the beauty all around them. Diseased eyes feel pain, they hurt, they suffer, and they want to hide from this same light which brings such happiness to the healthy. But in the age to come, there is no more hiding.13
Key Argument: The Orthodox teaching is that God’s fire and God’s love are the same thing. The difference between heaven and hell is not in what God does to us, but in what we have become. The fire that purifies gold also consumes wood. The difference is not in the fire. The difference is in the material. (See Hebrews 12:29.)
Kalomiros uses an analogy from metalworking that I find tremendously helpful. He writes that the very fire that purifies gold also consumes wood. Precious metals shine in it like the sun. Rubbish burns with black smoke. All are in the same fire of love. Some shine and others become black and dark. In the same furnace, steel shines like the sun, whereas clay turns dark and is hardened like stone.14
That analogy helps us understand something that the traditional Western view of hell makes nearly impossible to understand: how the same God can be the source of both infinite joy and infinite suffering without being unjust or cruel. In the Western picture, God is kind to the saved and cruel to the lost. He rewards one group and punishes the other. But in the Orthodox picture, God does not change at all. He is the same fire for everyone. The gold comes through gleaming. The wood is consumed. The furnace did not decide to be kind to the gold and mean to the wood. The furnace just burned. The difference was in the material.
Kalomiros drives this home with a sentence that deserves to be written on the wall of every church in the world: “The difference is in man, not in God. The difference is conditioned by the free choice of man, which God respects absolutely. God’s judgment is the revelation of the reality which is in man.”15
God’s judgment, then, is not God deciding who to punish. It is God revealing what is already there. The books are opened—and the books are our hearts. Every hidden motive, every secret love, every buried hatred is brought into the light. And the light either makes us radiant or makes us burn, depending on what it finds.
Kalomiros was not making this up. He was drawing on a tradition that stretches back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. Let me introduce you to some of the Church Fathers whose voices shaped this understanding—voices that much of the Western church has never heard.
Isaac of Nineveh, known to the church as Saint Isaac the Syrian, lived in the seventh century. He was a monk, a bishop (briefly), and one of the most beloved spiritual writers in the entire Eastern tradition. His writings have been treasured by Orthodox, Catholic, and even some Protestant readers for over a thousand years.16
Isaac wrote something about hell that, once you hear it, you cannot unhear. He said that those who find themselves in Gehenna (the Greek word often translated “hell”) will be chastised with the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love undergo greater sufferings than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart which has sinned against love is more piercing than any other pain.17
Read that again slowly. Isaac is not saying that God tortures people. He is saying something far more devastating: the torment of hell is the torment of realizing what you have done to Love. The suffering is not inflicted from outside. It rises up from within, from the heart that has sinned against the very thing it was made for.
Isaac goes further. He insists that it is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God. No—God’s love reaches them too. But love acts in two different ways: as suffering in those who are guilty, and as joy in those who are blessed.18
Can you see the picture Isaac is painting? God does not stop loving anyone—not ever. His love reaches every corner of existence. But the person who has spent a lifetime building walls against love, who has hardened their heart against every gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit, who has chosen hatred and selfishness over and over again—that person, when they finally stand naked before perfect Love, does not feel joy. They feel anguish. Not because God is hurting them. Because they have made themselves unable to receive what God is giving.
Isaac also wrote extensively about the nature of God’s wrath. He was emphatic that God does not experience wrath the way we do. In his Ascetical Homilies, Isaac insists that wrath and anger are far removed from the nature of God. God does not change from kindness to anger, the way a human being does. The wrath of God, Isaac teaches, is a human way of describing what happens when a sinful heart encounters holy love. The experience feels like wrath to the one who suffers it. But from God’s side, there is only love—unchanging, unrelenting, all-consuming love.62
This is a critically important point. Many people assume that when the Bible speaks of God’s wrath, it means God gets angry the way a human being gets angry—that He loses His temper, that He boils with rage, that He lashes out in fury. But the earliest Christian teachers understood that this kind of language about God is what theologians call anthropomorphic—it uses human emotions to describe something in God that is beyond our full understanding. Just as the Bible speaks of God having “hands” and “eyes” without meaning that God has a physical body, so it speaks of God having “wrath” without meaning that God experiences the emotional turmoil of human anger.63
Isaac understood this. And he taught that the fire of God is the fire of love—not the fire of rage. The suffering that fire causes in the wicked comes not from any cruelty in God, but from the collision between perfect love and a heart that has made itself love’s opposite.
Think of it this way. Imagine someone who has spent their whole life lying, cheating, and using people. They have never truly loved anyone but themselves. Now imagine that person standing face-to-face with a love so pure, so complete, so overwhelming that it exposes every lie they ever told, every person they ever betrayed, every moment they chose selfishness over kindness. That exposure would be unbearable. That is what Isaac means by being “scourged by love.”
Basil of Caesarea, known as Saint Basil the Great, was one of the most important theologians of the fourth century. He was a bishop, a defender of the Nicene Creed, a champion of the poor, and one of the three great Cappadocian Fathers who helped define orthodox Christian teaching about the Trinity.19
Basil wrote something about fire that goes right to the heart of our discussion. He said that he believes the fire prepared for the punishment of the devil and his angels is divided by the voice of the Lord. Since there are two capacities in fire—one of burning and the other of illuminating—the fierce and scorching property of the fire may await those who deserve to burn, while the illuminating and radiant warmth may be reserved for the enjoyment of those who are rejoicing.20
Notice what Basil is saying. He is not saying there are two different fires—one for heaven and one for hell. He is saying there is one fire with two capacities. The same fire illuminates and burns. The same fire gives warmth to some and scorching to others. Basil saw in the biblical language of fire a single divine reality that is experienced in two radically different ways.
This is a fourth-century Church Father, writing in the golden age of Christian theology, teaching what we now call the divine presence model. Basil was no fringe figure. He was one of the architects of Nicene orthodoxy. His liturgy is still used in Orthodox churches around the world. When he writes about the two capacities of fire, he is not speculating. He is passing along what the church received from the beginning.21
Basil also wrote an entire homily titled That God Is Not the Cause of Evils, in which he argues that God never causes evil or suffering. When people suffer, Basil teaches, it is because of their own choices, not because God has decided to hurt them. God is like a physician who prescribes bitter medicine—the bitterness comes from the disease, not from the doctor. Applied to hell, this means that the suffering of the wicked is not caused by God but by the spiritual disease that sin has created in the human heart. God’s fire is the remedy. Whether it heals or destroys depends on the patient, not the physician.64
Basil also described the sword of fire at the gate of paradise (from Genesis 3:24) as a blade that is terrible and burning toward those who are unfaithful, but kindly and welcoming toward those who are faithful. The same sword. The same fire. Two experiences. This image captures perfectly the core of the divine presence model: the fire at the gate of paradise does not distinguish between people by being two different fires. It is one fire, and the difference is in the hearts of those who approach it.65
Fast-forward to the twentieth century. Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, a contemporary Greek Orthodox bishop and theologian, picks up exactly where Basil left off. Hierotheos writes that light has two properties: illuminating and caustic. If a person has good vision, he benefits from the illuminating property of the sun and enjoys all of creation. But if another person has lost his sight, he feels the caustic property of light. And this, says Hierotheos, is exactly what will happen in the future life as well.22
Hierotheos also teaches that God loves sinners no less than He loves the saints. It is impossible for God not to love sinners, he writes. But each person feels God’s love differently, according to his spiritual condition. God will love the sinners, but they will be unable to perceive this love as light. They will perceive it as fire, since they will not have a spiritual eye and spiritual vision.23
Then, echoing Kalomiros, Hierotheos points to the iconography of the Orthodox Church. In the icon of the Second Coming, we see the saints in the light that comes from the throne of God. And from that same throne springs the river of fire, where the unrepentant sinners are.24 Same throne. Same light. Same source. Two experiences.
Saint Symeon the New Theologian, who lived in the tenth and eleventh centuries, was one of the greatest mystics in the history of Christianity. He is one of only three saints in the Orthodox Church to bear the title “Theologian”—a title reserved for those whose knowledge of God came not just from books but from direct, living experience.25
Symeon takes Psalm 139 and turns it into a meditation on judgment. He asks: Where shall we go, brethren? Where shall we flee from His face? If we go up to heaven, there we shall find Him. If we go down to hell, there He is present. If we go to the uttermost part of the sea, we shall not escape His hand, but His right hand will encompass our souls and bodies.26
What strikes me about Symeon’s words is their tone. He is not terrified. He is not cowering. He is taking the inescapable presence of God and turning it into an invitation. Since we cannot escape, he says, let us give ourselves as slaves to Him—our Lord and God, who for our sakes took on the form of a slave and died for us. Let us humble ourselves under His mighty hand, which makes eternal life spring forth for all.27
Symeon understood that the inescapability of God’s presence is either the most comforting truth in the universe or the most terrifying, depending on the state of our hearts. For those who love God, the news that there is nowhere to hide from His love is paradise. For those who hate God, it is the worst news imaginable. Symeon’s response? Run toward the fire, not away from it. Give yourself to the Love that will not let you go.
Gregory of Nyssa, the younger brother of Basil the Great, was one of the most brilliant theologians in the history of the church. He played a key role at the second ecumenical council in 381 and helped solidify the church’s teaching on the Trinity and the full deity of the Holy Spirit.28
Gregory painted a breathtaking picture of what the new creation will look like. In the age to come, he taught, God becomes everything to His creatures—locality, home, clothing, food, drink, light, riches, kingdom, and every concept and name that would mean something blessed for us. The point is total saturation. God does not just dwell with His people. God becomes the environment in which they live, the air they breathe, the light by which they see.29
Now imagine what that means for someone who has rejected God. If God becomes everything—the ground you stand on, the air you breathe, the light you see by—then there is literally no part of reality that does not radiate His presence. For the person who loves God, this is the fulfillment of every longing. For the person who hates God, it is an inescapable horror. Not because God is doing something terrible to them. But because they are drowning in the one reality they have spent their whole life trying to escape.
Gregory also described how God draws the human person into the divine presence. And he taught that it is the reality of sin and guilt in the person that makes this divine attraction painful. The soul suffers not because God takes pleasure in suffering, but because the pain is built into the encounter between holy love and the imperfect human being. The intensity of the pain is proportionate to the evil that remains in the person.30
Insight: Gregory of Nyssa taught that in the new creation, God does not just live with His people—He becomes their entire environment. This means there is no corner of reality free from divine love. For those who love God, this is paradise. For those who have hardened their hearts, it is inescapable torment—not because God is cruel, but because there is nowhere left to hide from Love.
Gregory is also famous for his teaching about the refining work of God’s fire. He wrote that just as those who refine gold from its impurities must melt the pure gold along with the dross, so while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to that evil must be in the fire too, until the impure material is consumed and destroyed by this fire.31 The fire is not vindictive. It is surgical. It burns away what is false and leaves behind what is real.
Maximus the Confessor, a seventh-century monk and theologian, is one of the most important thinkers in the entire Christian tradition. The Orthodox Church calls him “the Confessor” because he suffered for the truth—his tongue was cut out and his right hand was cut off for refusing to compromise on the true nature of Christ.32
Maximus contributed a crucial idea to the discussion of hell. He taught that the same divine energy produces different effects depending on the disposition of the one who receives it. God does one thing. But it is experienced in radically different ways, depending on the state of the human heart.33
This is an important philosophical point. In the Western view, God actively does two different things: He blesses the saved and punishes the lost. But in the Orthodox view, following Maximus, God does one thing—He loves, He shines, He reveals Himself—and the human heart determines whether that one divine action is experienced as blessing or as punishment. The cause of the suffering is not in God. It is in the one who suffers.
Think of it this way. When the sun rises, it does one thing: it shines. But a man with healthy eyes sees beauty everywhere. A man with a terrible hangover pulls the covers over his head and groans. The sun did not do two different things. The sun just shone. The difference was in the person who received the light.
Peter the Damascene, an eighth-century monk whose writings are preserved in the Philokalia (a beloved collection of Orthodox spiritual writings), offers another striking analogy. He compares the effect of God’s fire to the effect of physical fire on different materials. Fire, he says, makes beeswax soft and pliable but makes clay hard like stone.34
The same fire. The same heat. Two opposite effects. Wax becomes gentle and moldable. Clay becomes rigid and brittle. The fire did not choose to be kind to the wax and cruel to the clay. The fire simply was fire. The difference was in the nature of the material.
I love this analogy because it helps answer a question that troubles many people: How can a loving God allow anyone to suffer in His presence? The answer is that God is not doing the causing. God is being Himself—pure, burning, all-consuming love. The heart that has been softened by grace, humbled by repentance, and opened by faith becomes like beeswax in the fire of God’s presence. It melts. It yields. It is reshaped. But the heart that has been hardened by pride, calcified by bitterness, and sealed shut by a lifetime of refusal becomes like clay in the kiln. The fire only makes it harder.
To make sure we understand that these are not just the views of a few eccentric monks, let me share what Fr. Thomas Hopko writes in The Orthodox Faith, a four-volume teaching handbook endorsed by the Orthodox Church in America. This is about as “official” as Orthodox teaching gets for English-speaking Christians.35
Hopko writes that the final coming of Christ will be the judgment of all people. His very presence will be the judgment. All must behold the face of the One whom they have crucified by their sins. For those who love the Lord, His presence will be infinite joy, paradise, and eternal life. For those who hate the Lord, the same presence will be infinite torture, hell, and eternal death. The reality for both the saved and the damned will be exactly the same.36
He continues: according to the saints, the “fire” that will consume sinners at the coming of the Kingdom of God is the same “fire” that will shine with splendor in the saints. It is the fire of God’s love—the fire of God Himself, who is love. For those who love God and who love all creation in Him, the consuming fire of God will be radiant bliss and unspeakable delight. For those who do not love God and who do not love at all, this same consuming fire will be the cause of their weeping and gnashing of teeth.37
Then Hopko sums it up. It is the church’s spiritual teaching that God does not punish human beings by some material fire or physical torment. God simply reveals Himself in the risen Lord Jesus in such a glorious way that no one can fail to behold His glory. It is the presence of God’s splendid glory and love that is the scourge of those who reject its radiant power and light.38
Did you catch that? God does not punish. God reveals. And the revelation itself is the judgment. The glory of God is simultaneously the greatest joy imaginable and the most terrifying exposure. The saints bask in it. The wicked writhe in it. And the fire—the fire—is nothing but love.
Vladimir Lossky, one of the most influential Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, captures this teaching with devastating simplicity. He writes that the love of God will be an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves.39
That sentence repays careful thought. Lossky is not saying that God withholds love from the damned. Exactly the opposite. God pours His love out on everyone without distinction. But the love of God is intolerable—unendurable, excruciating—to the person who has spent a lifetime refusing to love. Why? Because love exposes everything. It shines a light into every dark corner. It calls out every lie, unmasks every pretense, reveals every hidden cruelty. For the person who has been running from the truth, the full revelation of truth is not relief. It is agony.
R. Zachary Manis, whose philosophical work on the divine presence model we will explore in the next chapter, makes a striking observation about this. He notes that from the perspective of the divine presence model, the title of Thomas Talbott’s famous defense of universalism—The Inescapable Love of God—is actually a perfectly apt description of hell.40 On the divine presence model, hell is nothing other than the inescapable love of God, experienced as torment by those who have made themselves incapable of receiving love.
I want to pause here and say something important about my own position. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I am an evangelical Christian, not an Orthodox one. I hold to sola Scriptura—the belief that Scripture alone is the final authority for faith and practice. I affirm justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I differ from Orthodoxy on a number of significant issues.41
So why am I spending an entire chapter on what the Orthodox teach about hell?
Because the Orthodox Church preserved something that the Western church lost. Somewhere along the way—through the influence of Augustine’s legal categories, through the medieval church’s obsession with purgatory and satisfaction theory, through the Reformers’ understandable but sometimes one-sided emphasis on penal substitution—the West developed a picture of God as primarily a judge whose main concern is punishing sin. The God of the Western tradition too often looks like a Roman magistrate with a ledger, tallying up debts and imposing sentences.42
The East never went down that road. The Greek-speaking Fathers who could read Paul and John in the original language kept insisting that God is not primarily a judge. God is primarily a Father. And a Father’s fire is not vindictive—it is purifying. A Father does not torture His children. He disciplines them, He corrects them, He refines them. And when they refuse every correction, it is not the Father who destroys them. It is their own refusal that destroys them, in the presence of a love they can no longer bear.
I am not saying we should become Orthodox. I am saying we should listen to the Orthodox on this point. They have something we lost. And recovering it does not require us to abandon a single evangelical conviction. It only requires us to ask whether the Western picture of hell does justice to the God we meet in Jesus Christ.
The Orthodox understanding is not built on the Fathers alone. It is deeply rooted in Scripture—especially in the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Revelation. Consider Daniel’s vision of the throne of God:
“As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him” (Daniel 7:9–10).43
Now compare that with John’s vision at the end of Revelation:
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).44
Both a river of fire and a river of water flow from the throne. On the divine presence model, as Manis has argued, these two “rivers” are one and the same reality. The fire and the water are two ways of describing the same outpouring of God’s presence. For those in communion with Christ, the experience is like crystal-clear water—refreshing, life-giving, healing. For those who have set themselves against Christ, the same outpouring is experienced as fire—burning, consuming, devastating.45
The Orthodox saw this connection centuries ago. It is why the icon of the Last Judgment always shows the river of fire flowing from the same throne that is the source of blessing. The iconographers were not guessing. They were reading Daniel and Revelation together and drawing the obvious conclusion: the fire and the life come from the same place. They are the same God.
Manis points out something else that is striking about these images. In Daniel’s vision, the river of fire flows out as the books are opened and the court is seated. In Revelation, the book of life is opened at the great white throne judgment. What are these books? On the divine presence model, they are not external records kept in a heavenly filing cabinet. They are the inner realities of human hearts, laid bare by the penetrating light of God’s presence. The judgment is an act of transparency—the opening up of every secret thing to the light of truth. For those who have lived in the light, this is confirmation and joy. For those who have lived in darkness, it is devastating exposure.66
Consider also the image of the “sea of glass glowing with fire” in Revelation 15:2. Here the saints stand on a sea that is simultaneously glass-clear and fire-bright. They stand on it and sing. They are not burned. They are not destroyed. They are victorious. Manis argues that this sea of fire, like the river of fire and the lake of fire, is a reference to the divine presence. The righteous stand in it and worship. The wicked are cast into it and consumed. Same fire. Same God. Two experiences.67
Even the language Jesus uses in the Gospels echoes this pattern. In Luke 12:49, Jesus says, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Jesus is not talking about starting a forest fire. He is talking about the fire of God’s presence, the fire of truth, the fire of love that will purify some and consume others. The same fire He brings to the earth is the fire of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:3), where tongues “as of fire” rest on the disciples—and it is the fire of judgment at the end of the age. One fire. One God. One love.68
Before we move on, let me offer one more image that I think captures the Orthodox insight beautifully—and it comes from the lips of Jesus Himself.
In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), the younger brother runs away, wastes his inheritance, hits bottom, and comes crawling home. The father runs to meet him, embraces him, throws a feast. That is the picture of heaven—the joy of the repentant sinner in the arms of the Father.
But the elder brother refuses to come in. He stands outside the feast, seething with resentment. He says to his father, “All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends” (Luke 15:29).46
The father comes out to the elder son and pleads with him. Everything I have is yours, the father says. But the elder brother is too bitter, too angry, too wrapped up in his own sense of justice to receive the father’s love.
Here is the point that most of us miss. The elder brother is in his father’s house. He is surrounded by his father’s love. The music is playing. The feast is laid out. The father himself comes out to beg him to come in. And yet the elder brother is in hell. Not because the father has sent him there. Not because the father has punished him. But because his own heart has turned the father’s love into an occasion for bitterness.47
That is the divine presence model in a single parable. Paradise and hell are happening in the same house, at the same time, because of the same father’s love. The only difference is in the hearts of the two sons.
What makes this parable so devastating is that the elder brother’s misery is entirely self-inflicted. The father has not locked him out. The father has not punished him. The father has come outside, in the middle of the celebration, to beg his older son to come in. “Everything I have is yours,” the father says (Luke 15:31). The feast is open. The door is unlocked. The elder brother could walk in at any moment and share in the joy. But he will not. He stands in the darkness of his own resentment, surrounded by warmth and music and love, and he calls it unfair.
That is a picture of hell that should haunt us. Not because it is gentle, but because it is so terrifyingly true. We have all met the elder brother. We have all been the elder brother. That moment when someone else receives grace and we feel cheated rather than grateful. That sulking refusal to join the party because someone who does not “deserve” it got invited. That burning resentment that turns a feast into a prison. The father’s love is not diminished. The father’s presence is not withdrawn. The elder brother is in hell because his own heart has become incapable of experiencing his father’s love as love. He experiences it as injustice. He experiences it as offense. He stands in the warmth and feels only cold.69
The tradition we have been tracing is not limited to a handful of famous theologians. It runs through the entire spiritual literature of Eastern Christianity. Anthony the Great, the father of monasticism in the third and fourth centuries, taught that God is good and does only good. Whatever befalls us that seems painful, he said, we should recognize that it arises from our own wickedness, not from God. God does not cause evil. We draw it to ourselves by our own choices.48
This principle—that God causes only good, and that suffering arises from the human heart’s distorted reception of that good—is a thread that runs through the entire Philokalia, the great collection of Orthodox spiritual writings. It is not one voice. It is a chorus. Father after Father, century after century, the same teaching: God is love. His fire is love. And hell is what happens when a human heart encounters perfect love and cannot bear it.
Archbishop John Maximovitch (also known as Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco), a twentieth-century Russian Orthodox bishop, brought this teaching to the modern world with remarkable clarity. He taught that the Last Judgment is not a courtroom trial where God pronounces sentence. It is an unveiling. At the final judgment, the full truth about every person will be revealed in the light of God’s presence. The righteous will see themselves as they truly are—beloved children of God, purified and made whole. The wicked will see themselves as they truly are—hearts twisted by hatred, consumed by pride, enslaved to lies.49
The judgment is not something God does to us. It is what happens in us when we stand in the light. It is the opening of the books of our hearts. And that opening is the most terrifying and the most beautiful moment in the history of creation—terrifying for those who have something to hide, and beautiful for those who have nothing left to fear, because they have already given everything to Love.
Someone might object that this is an internal Orthodox teaching that has nothing to do with evangelical Protestantism. After all, Orthodoxy and Protestantism differ on many things. Why should we give special weight to the Orthodox view of hell?
The answer is that we are not importing Orthodox theology wholesale. We are listening to the oldest Greek-speaking Christian tradition on a question that depends heavily on the meaning of the Greek New Testament. The Church Fathers we have been discussing—Basil, Gregory, Isaac, Maximus, Symeon—were not just Orthodox. They were the church. They were the theologians who hammered out the Nicene Creed, defended the deity of Christ, and established the theological framework that all Christians still depend on.50
If we trust these Fathers on the Trinity, on the deity of Christ, on the two natures of our Lord, then we should at least take seriously what they taught about the nature of God’s fire and judgment. We don’t have to agree on everything to learn from them on this point. Even John Calvin, who disagreed with the Fathers on many things, acknowledged their importance for understanding the faith.51
This is one of the most common objections to the divine presence model. Many Christians have been taught that hell is, above all, separation from God. They point to passages like 2 Thessalonians 1:9, which speaks of “eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord,” or the images of “outer darkness” in the Gospels (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30).
But as we discussed in Chapter 14, the phrase “from the presence of the Lord” in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 can be read as indicating the source of the destruction, not separation from it. The Greek word apo (from) can mean “coming from” or “originating in.” On this reading, the verse says that the destruction of the wicked comes from the presence of the Lord—which is exactly what the divine presence model teaches.52
As for “outer darkness,” the divine presence model can account for this too. As Manis has argued, the “darkness” experienced by the wicked in God’s presence is not a literal absence of light but a subjective experience—the inability to see God’s light as light. Just as a person with severely diseased eyes might experience bright sunlight as painful darkness, the person whose soul has been blinded by sin experiences the brilliant light of God’s presence as a terrible, impenetrable darkness.53
And Revelation 14:10 directly contradicts the separation view: the wicked are tormented “in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” That does not sound like separation.54
Common Objection: “Hell is separation from God—the Bible says so.” But Revelation 14:10 says the wicked are tormented in the presence of the Lamb. And Psalm 139:7–8 says there is nowhere to flee from God’s presence—not even Sheol. The “separation” view is more a product of Western theological assumptions than of careful reading of Scripture.
Some people hear the divine presence model and think it softens the reality of hell. If hell is just “being in God’s presence,” how bad can it really be?
This objection misunderstands the model completely. The divine presence model does not make hell gentler. In some ways, it makes it worse. On the traditional view, hell is being abandoned by God in a dark place. That is terrible, but at least the suffering is external—fire applied from outside. On the divine presence model, the suffering is internal. It comes from within. It is the agony of a heart that has made itself unable to receive the one thing it was created for. It is the anguish of being completely exposed, completely known, completely seen—and being unable to bear what you see about yourself in the mirror of perfect Love.55
Isaac the Syrian said that the sorrow of a heart that has sinned against love is more piercing than any other pain. More piercing than physical torture. More devastating than any external punishment. The divine presence model does not take the sting out of hell. It puts the sting where it actually belongs: in the human heart that has refused love.
This is a fair question. If the divine presence model is the original Christian understanding, how did the West end up with the picture of God as an angry judge torturing sinners?
The short answer is Augustine. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was the most influential theologian in the history of the Western church, and he brought with him a set of assumptions that shaped everything that followed. Augustine’s understanding of divine justice was deeply shaped by Roman legal categories. He saw sin as a crime against God’s honor and hell as the legally required punishment. He also held that God actively predestines some to salvation and passes over others, consigning them to hell as an expression of His justice.56
Augustine’s influence was enormous. The medieval Western church built on his categories. The Reformers, even as they challenged many Catholic teachings, largely accepted Augustine’s view of hell. And so the juridical picture became the default in the West—so deeply embedded that most Western Christians have never heard of any alternative.57
But the East never followed Augustine down that road. The Greek-speaking church kept reading the Bible in its original language, kept listening to the Fathers who came before Augustine, and kept teaching that God’s fire is love—not punishment. Kalomiros, writing in 1980, was not reminding the Western world of something new. He was reminding us of something the East had never forgotten.58
It is worth noting that even within the Western tradition, hints of the divine presence model have never completely disappeared. The great medieval mystics, such as Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart, sometimes spoke of God’s fire in ways that echo the Eastern Fathers. And as we will see in later chapters, C. S. Lewis, Martin Luther, and even some Reformed theologians have said things that sound remarkably similar to what Kalomiros and the Orthodox tradition teach. The divine presence model was suppressed in the West, but it was never fully extinguished. The recovery we are pursuing in this book has allies in surprising places.70
The deeper point here is not that the Orthodox are always right and the West is always wrong. That would be as unhelpful as the opposite claim. The point is that on this particular question—the nature of God’s fire and the mechanics of judgment—the Eastern tradition preserved something that the Western tradition obscured. And when we recover that insight, we do not end up with a weaker doctrine of hell. We end up with a more biblical one, a more coherent one, and—most importantly—one that does justice to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
In this chapter, we have taken a deep dive into the Eastern Orthodox understanding of hell. We have walked through the argument of Alexandre Kalomiros in The River of Fire, listened to the voices of the ancient Church Fathers—Isaac the Syrian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, Peter the Damascene—and heard modern Orthodox teachers like Metropolitan Hierotheos, Vladimir Lossky, Fr. Thomas Hopko, and Archbishop John Maximovitch say the same thing in their own words.
The message is consistent across centuries and continents. Paradise and hell are not two different places. They are two different experiences of the same overwhelming reality: the inescapable presence of God. The same fire that purifies the righteous torments the wicked—not because God changes, but because the human heart determines how divine love is received. God is love. His fire is love. And love is the most powerful force in the universe—powerful enough to save and powerful enough to destroy, depending on what it finds in us.
What we have seen in this chapter is a remarkable unity of witness. A fourth-century bishop like Basil and a twentieth-century metropolitan like Hierotheos are saying the same thing. A seventh-century mystic like Isaac the Syrian and a contemporary philosopher like R. Zachary Manis are building on the same foundation. The thread has never been broken. The East kept it alive when the West forgot it. And now, as Western Christians begin to rediscover it, they are finding not a novelty but a homecoming—a return to the oldest and most coherent understanding of what it means to say that our God is a consuming fire.
This is not a modern innovation. This is not a clever academic theory. This is the faith of the earliest Greek-speaking church, preserved for us by the men and women who built the creeds we still confess, who defended the faith we still hold, and who read the New Testament in the language it was written in. As evangelicals, we do not have to become Orthodox to learn from them. We only have to be humble enough to listen.59
In the next chapter, we will turn from the Orthodox tradition to the philosophical case for the divine presence model, as developed by R. Zachary Manis. If this chapter showed us the heart of the divine presence model, Chapter 16 will show us its mind—the rigorous philosophical framework that makes it not just beautiful but defensible. The Eastern Fathers gave us the vision. Manis gives us the argument.60
↑ 1. This is the central claim of the divine presence model. For a full introduction, see the previous chapter (Chapter 14). The model is developed philosophically in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, Part III, and theologically in Baker, Razing Hell, chap. 9.
↑ 2. As Manis notes, the divine presence model “is not a new or novel view of hell. While mostly absent from the contemporary philosophical discussion in the West, it is arguably an ancient view, and one that is prominent among contemporary Orthodox Christians.” Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 250.
↑ 3. On the relationship between Eastern Orthodoxy and evangelicalism, see Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1993). As evangelicals, we affirm sola Scriptura and justification by faith alone, positions on which we differ from Orthodoxy. But on the nature of hell and God’s fire, the Eastern tradition has much to teach us.
↑ 4. Kalomiros, The River of Fire: A Reply to the Questions: Is God Really Good? Did God Create Hell? (Seattle: St. Nectarios Press, 1980). Available online at https://glory2godforallthings.com/the-river-of-fire-kalomiros/.
↑ 5. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section X. Quoted in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 251–252.
↑ 6. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section X. Kalomiros writes: “So that which will differentiate between one man and another will not be a decision of God, a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one’s heart.”
↑ 7. On the significance of icons in Orthodox theology, see Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, rev. ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982).
↑ 8. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XIV. The icon of the Last Judgment is a standard feature of Orthodox churches and is traditionally painted on the western wall of the nave, so that the congregation faces it as they leave the church.
↑ 9. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XIV. Quoted in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 253.
↑ 10. On divine hiddenness during the present life and the reasons for it, see Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Hiddenness on the divine presence model.” See also Chapter 16 of this book for a fuller discussion.
↑ 11. The phrase “all in all” (panta en pasin) in 1 Corinthians 15:28 suggests a state in which God’s presence permeates all of reality without remainder. On the implications of this for the divine presence model, see Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Heaven and hell on the divine presence model.”
↑ 12. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XIV. Quoted in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 253–254.
↑ 13. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XIV.
↑ 14. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XIV. Quoted in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 254.
↑ 15. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XIV.
↑ 16. Isaac of Nineveh (St. Isaac the Syrian), who lived in the seventh century, served briefly as bishop of Nineveh before retiring to the monastic life. His Ascetical Homilies are among the most treasured spiritual writings in Eastern Christianity. On Isaac’s theology, see Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 2000).
↑ 17. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 84. Quoted in Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section X, and in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 254–255.
↑ 18. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 84. Quoted in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 255. Isaac writes: “It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God. . . . But love acts in two ways, as suffering in the reproved, and as joy in the blessed.”
↑ 19. On Basil’s life and theology, see Stephen Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014). Basil is one of the three Cappadocian Fathers (along with Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa) whose theological contributions were decisive in shaping the Nicene faith.
↑ 20. St. Basil the Great, “Homily on Psalms,” quoted in Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, On the Nature of Heaven and Hell According to the Holy Fathers (Dewdbey, Canada: Synaxis, 1995), 9. Cited in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 254.
↑ 21. The Liturgy of St. Basil is still celebrated in Orthodox churches on certain feast days throughout the year, including all Sundays of Great Lent. Basil’s influence on Orthodox worship and theology cannot be overstated.
↑ 22. Hierotheos, Metropolitan of Nafpaktos (Vlachos), Life after Death, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia-Hellas, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 2000), 14. Cited in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 254.
↑ 23. Hierotheos, Life after Death, 13–14. Cited in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 255.
↑ 24. Hierotheos, Life after Death, 14. Manis notes that Hierotheos “goes on to remark, ‘The Church shows this in the iconography of the Second Coming. There we see the saints in the light that comes from the throne of God; and from the same throne springs the river of fire, where the unrepentant sinners are.’” Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 255.
↑ 25. The three saints bearing the title “Theologian” in the Orthodox Church are John the Evangelist, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Symeon the New Theologian. On Symeon’s life and teachings, see Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses (Classics of Western Spirituality), trans. C. J. de Catanzaro (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980).
↑ 26. St. Symeon the New Theologian, Discourse 78. Quoted in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 255.
↑ 27. St. Symeon the New Theologian, Discourse 78. Symeon’s meditation on Psalm 139 turns the inescapability of God’s presence into an invitation to surrender rather than a threat of punishment.
↑ 28. On Gregory of Nyssa’s life and theology, see Anthony Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa (London: Routledge, 1999). Gregory is also associated with the hope of universal restoration (apokatastasis), though scholars debate the precise nature of his position.
↑ 29. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection. Kalomiros draws on this text extensively in The River of Fire, section XV.
↑ 30. Zachary Hayes, “The Purgatorial View,” in Four Views on Hell, ed. Stanley N. Gundry and William Crockett (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 101. Hayes cites Gregory of Nyssa, Oration on the Dead, in M. J. R. de Journel, Enchiridion Patristicum (Freiburg: Herder, 1962), n1061. Discussed in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 254.
↑ 31. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, 7. Cited in Robin Parry, “A Universalist View,” in Four Views on Hell, 2nd ed., ed. Preston Sprinkle (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016).
↑ 32. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662) is venerated as a saint in both Eastern and Western Christianity. His suffering at the hands of the Monothelite heretics earned him the title “Confessor.” On his theology, see Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996).
↑ 33. On the idea that the same divine energy produces different effects depending on the disposition of the receiver, see Kalomiros, The River of Fire, sections XIV–XV, and Hierotheos, Life after Death, chap. 8. Manis discusses this concept in Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 250–256.
↑ 34. Peter the Damascene, in Philokalia, vol. 3. The Philokalia is a collection of texts on contemplative prayer and the spiritual life, compiled in the eighteenth century from writings spanning the fourth through fifteenth centuries.
↑ 35. Father Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith: An Elementary Handbook on the Orthodox Church, Vol. IV: Spirituality (New York: Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America, 1976), 196–97. Cited in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 251.
↑ 36. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV:196–97. Cited in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 251, and Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Introducing the core idea.”
↑ 37. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV:196–97.
↑ 38. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV:197.
↑ 39. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957), 234. Cited in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 255.
↑ 40. Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, p. 255. Manis writes: “From the perspective of the divine presence model, there is a certain irony in the title of Thomas Talbott’s book in defense of universalism: ‘the inescapable love of God’ is a perfectly apt description of hell.”
↑ 41. Key differences between evangelicalism and Orthodoxy include the authority of tradition alongside Scripture, the role of icons in worship, the understanding of justification, and the doctrine of theosis (deification). These are important differences, but they do not affect the core argument of this chapter.
↑ 42. On the Western church’s development of a juridical understanding of salvation and judgment, see Kalomiros, The River of Fire, sections I–IX. See also Baker, Razing Hell, chaps. 1–5, for a critique of the juridical model from a Western perspective.
↑ 43. Daniel 7:9–10 (NIV). On the significance of the river of fire imagery in Daniel for the divine presence model, see Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 387–388, and Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Apocalyptic visions.”
↑ 44. Revelation 22:1 (ESV). See the fuller discussion of this passage in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 388–389, and Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “The river of fire and the river of life.”
↑ 45. Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 388–389. Manis argues that the river of fire in Daniel 7:10, the lake of fire in Revelation 19–21, and the river of the water of life in Revelation 22:1 are all references to the divine presence, experienced differently by the righteous and the wicked.
↑ 46. Luke 15:29 (NIV).
↑ 47. On the elder brother as an image of hell in the Father’s house, see Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (New York: Doubleday, 1992), esp. chaps. 4–5. Nouwen’s reading of the parable is deeply informed by Orthodox theology.
↑ 48. Anthony the Great, Philokalia, chap. 150. Anthony’s teaching that God is not the cause of evil but only of good is a foundational principle of Orthodox theology. See also Basil the Great, That God Is Not the Cause of Evils (Homily 9).
↑ 49. Archbishop John Maximovitch (St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco), Life after Death. For an accessible introduction, see Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Soul after Death (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1980), which draws extensively on Archbishop John’s teaching.
↑ 50. The first four ecumenical councils (Nicaea I, 325; Constantinople I, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451) were dominated by Greek-speaking Eastern theologians. The creeds we confess were formulated by the same theological tradition that taught the divine presence understanding of God’s fire and judgment.
↑ 51. Calvin frequently cites the Church Fathers, especially Augustine, Chrysostom, and Basil. While Calvin disagreed with the Fathers on many points, he regarded them as important witnesses to the faith. See Anthony N. S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999).
↑ 52. On the translation of apo in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, see the discussion in Chapter 14. The phrase can mean “away from” (indicating separation) or “from” (indicating source). For the argument that it indicates source, see Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Apocalyptic visions,” and G. K. Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, IVP New Testament Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003).
↑ 53. Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 367–369. Manis develops the idea that the “outer darkness” is the subjective experience of the self-deceived person in God’s light: “the greatest possible darkness” experienced by those who cannot receive the light of truth.
↑ 54. Revelation 14:10 (ESV). This verse is one of the strongest biblical supports for the divine presence model, as it explicitly places the torment of the wicked in the presence of Christ, not in His absence.
↑ 55. C. S. Lewis captured this idea memorably: “God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies.” Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 32.
↑ 56. On Augustine’s influence on the Western doctrine of hell, see Kalomiros, The River of Fire, sections I–IX. See also Baker, Razing Hell, chaps. 1–3, and Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, Introduction. Augustine’s legal categories shaped the entire Western tradition, including both Catholic and Protestant approaches to hell.
↑ 57. For a concise history of the development of the doctrine of hell in the West, see the historical surveys in Four Views on Hell, ed. Preston Sprinkle, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), and Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation, chap. 1.
↑ 58. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section XVIII. Kalomiros ends his work with a passionate plea for the West to rediscover the God of the Eastern Fathers—a God who is love and whose fire is love.
↑ 59. On the importance of ecumenical engagement for understanding hell, see also Walls, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, chap. 4, where Walls explicitly draws on the Orthodox tradition in developing his own account of hell and the divine presence.
↑ 60. For the philosophical case for the divine presence model, see Chapter 16, which draws primarily on Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, Parts II–IV, and Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell.
↑ 61. Kalomiros, The River of Fire, sections I–III. Kalomiros opens his work by arguing that the Western distortion of God’s character is a major cause of atheism, writing that Western Christianity has “offered hell to God” and that the picture of a God who tortures people forever has driven millions away from the faith.
↑ 62. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, Homily 73. Isaac insists that concepts like wrath, anger, and hatred should not be attributed to God’s nature. See also Homily 81, where Isaac argues that God’s actions are always motivated by love, even when they appear as punishment to the human eye.
↑ 63. On the anthropomorphic language of the Bible and the early church’s understanding of it, see Robin Parry, “A Universalist View,” in Four Views on Hell, 2nd ed., ed. Preston Sprinkle (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016). Parry notes that the early church “had to wrestle with the very earthy biblical language about God,” including language about wrath, and that “anger was understood to be something of a vice, but God is perfect.”
↑ 64. St. Basil the Great, That God Is Not the Cause of Evils (Homily 9). This homily is a foundational text for the Orthodox understanding that suffering originates in the human condition, not in God’s will. Kalomiros draws on this homily extensively in The River of Fire, sections X–XII.
↑ 65. St. Basil the Great, Homily 13.2. Cited in Kalomiros, The River of Fire, section X. The image of the sword of fire at paradise’s gate being both “terrible” and “kindly accessible” neatly captures the core claim of the divine presence model: the same divine reality is experienced in two radically different ways.
↑ 66. Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Apocalyptic visions.” Manis writes that “the opening of the books marks the beginning of the judgment of transparency,” meaning that “the records of individual consciences will be ‘read’ like open books at the final judgment.” See also Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 387–389.
↑ 67. Revelation 15:2 (ESV). Manis argues that the “sea of glass glowing with fire” is identical to the lake of fire in Revelation 19–21 and the river of fire in Daniel 7:10. See Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 387–388.
↑ 68. On Jesus’s statement in Luke 12:49 and its connection to the divine presence model, see Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Apocalyptic visions.” Manis connects this saying to the broader biblical theme of God’s presence as fire, from the burning bush (Exodus 3:2) to the pillar of fire (Exodus 13:21) to the tongues of fire at Pentecost (Acts 2:3).
↑ 69. On the elder brother as a picture of self-imposed hell in the father’s house, see also Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (New York: Dutton, 2008), chaps. 3–4. Keller argues that the parable is ultimately about the elder brother, who represents the religious person who serves God dutifully but has never understood grace.
↑ 70. On hints of the divine presence model in the Western tradition, see Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pp. 312–320, where Manis traces elements of the model in Lewis, Kvanvig, and Walls. Manis notes that even among defenders of the choice model, “elements of the divine presence model are clearly present.” See also the discussion of Luther and the divine presence model in Manis, Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, “Introducing the core idea.”