Chapter 20

Answering the Critics—Objections to the Divine Presence Model

A. Thesis and Context

Every good idea has to survive tough questions. If the divine presence model of hell is as strong as I believe it is, then it should be able to stand up to the hardest objections its critics can throw at it. And there are some hard objections.

Over the last several chapters, we have built a careful case. We have argued that hell is not a place of separation from God. It is not a torture chamber designed by a vengeful deity. Instead, hell is the experience of God’s inescapable, all-consuming love by those whose hearts are hardened against Him. The same fire that warms and purifies the willing burns those who resist. The difference is not in the fire. The difference is in the human heart.

This model draws on deep roots in Christian tradition—from Saint Isaac the Syrian, who said that those in hell are “scourged by love,” to Saint Basil the Great, who taught that the same fire illuminates the righteous and scorches the wicked.¹ It draws on the philosophical work of R. Zachary Manis, who has shown how the divine presence model solves problems that have plagued every other view of hell.² And it draws on the theological vision of Sharon Baker, who has given us powerful stories of what this model might actually look like on the Day of Judgment.³

But building a case is only half the job. The other half is answering the objections. And there are real ones. Smart, serious Christians have raised concerns about the divine presence model—and they deserve serious answers.

That is what this chapter is about. We are going to look at eight major objections to the divine presence model. For each one, I will present the objection as fairly and strongly as I can. Then I will show why I believe the objection, while understandable, does not succeed. My goal is not to dodge hard questions but to face them head-on. If this model is true, it can take the heat.

And I should be honest: some of these objections troubled me for a long time. A few of them still make me pause. Theology is not math. We are talking about the deepest questions in the universe—the character of God, the destiny of human souls, the meaning of judgment. Humility is the right posture here. But humility does not mean silence. It means giving the best answer we can, holding it with open hands, and trusting that the God who is Love will make all things clear in the end.

B. The Case: Eight Objections and Responses

Objection 1: “Scripture Says God Will Punish the Wicked—That Sounds Retributive, Not Natural Consequence.”

This is the first objection most people raise, and it is a fair one. The Bible is full of language about God punishing the wicked. God “repays with affliction” (2 Thess. 1:6). He “inflicts vengeance” (2 Thess. 1:8). He sentences the wicked to “eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46). Again and again, the Bible uses strong, active language—language that sounds like God is doing something to the wicked, not merely standing by while they self-destruct.

The critic says: “If hell is just a natural consequence of a hardened heart encountering God’s love, why does the Bible talk about God actively punishing people? Why does it say God ‘inflicts vengeance’ and ‘repays’ people for their evil? That sounds like retributive punishment, not a natural consequence.”

This is a legitimate question. And the answer is important.

Manis addresses this head-on. He argues that on the divine presence model, hell functions as something in between a natural punishment and a retributive punishment.⁴ Here is what he means. From the perspective of those who suffer in hell, it feels like retributive punishment. They experience God’s presence as wrath, as judgment, as vengeance. And Scripture often speaks in these terms because Scripture describes how things are experienced, not just how they are intended.⁵ Think of it this way: if a doctor turns on a bright light to examine a patient with sensitive eyes, the patient might say, “That light is attacking me!” But the doctor did not intend the light to cause pain. The light is doing what light does. The problem is in the patient’s damaged eyes.

In the same way, when God fully reveals Himself in Christ at the final judgment, that revelation is not aimed at anyone’s destruction. God’s purpose is the highest good of every person—a reunion of Creator and creature in perfect love. But for those who have spent their lives hardening their hearts against God, that same love is experienced as burning fire. It feels like punishment. It functions as punishment. But it is not intended as punishment.⁶

This distinction between function and intent is crucial. Manis puts it this way: hell has a “retributive function” but not a “retributive intent.”⁷ The suffering of the damned is real. The language of punishment in Scripture is accurate to their experience. But God does not want anyone to suffer. He does not choose suffering for anyone. He does everything in His power to save every person. The suffering that comes is the result of a heart that refuses to receive love—not the result of God deciding to make someone hurt.

This actually makes the divine presence model better at handling the biblical language of punishment than the choice model, which struggles to explain why Scripture speaks so strongly about God actively judging the wicked.⁸ On the choice model, hell is purely self-chosen, and God is essentially passive. But that does not match passages like 2 Thessalonians 1, where God is clearly active in judgment. The divine presence model accounts for this: God is active—He actively reveals Himself. And that revelation is the judgment. It is not that God punishes in addition to revealing Himself. His very presence is the punishment, for those whose hearts cannot bear it.

Manis frames this using what philosophers call the “doctrine of double effect.” This principle says that an action can be morally permissible even if it has a foreseen bad outcome, as long as the bad outcome is not the agent’s purpose and the good outcome is significant enough to justify accepting the bad one. God’s purpose in fully revealing Himself in Christ at the final judgment is the highest good of every creature—the consummation of everything human beings were made for. God foresees that some will experience this as torment rather than joy. But their torment is not His goal. Their flourishing is His goal. The suffering is a foreseen but unintended consequence of an act of supreme love.⁶¹

Think about a surgeon who performs a life-saving operation, knowing it will cause pain during recovery. The surgeon does not intend the pain. The surgeon intends healing. But pain comes anyway, because the body must go through a difficult process to be restored. Would we say the surgeon is “punishing” the patient? No. But the patient might experience the recovery as painful, grueling, even agonizing. The pain is real. The surgeon foresaw it. But the surgeon did not choose to cause pain—the surgeon chose to save a life.

In the same way, God does not choose to cause suffering. God chooses to reveal Himself in love. For some, that revelation is the greatest joy the universe can contain. For others, it is the greatest agony. The difference is not in God. The difference is in the heart.

So when Scripture says God “punishes” or “repays” the wicked, this is exactly what we would expect if the divine presence model is correct. The language describes the experience of the damned truthfully. It just does not mean what the traditional view assumes it means. God is not choosing to inflict suffering the way a judge sentences a criminal. God is revealing Himself in love—and those who hate love experience love as their worst nightmare.

Objection 2: “If Hell Is God’s Presence, Why Do Some Texts Speak of Being ‘Cast Out’ or ‘Separated’ from God?”

This objection goes right to the heart of the model. If hell is the experience of God’s presence, then what do we do with the passages that seem to say the opposite—that the wicked are separated from God?

There are two passages that come up most often. The first is Matthew 25:41, where Jesus says to the wicked, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” The second is 2 Thessalonians 1:9, which in several popular English translations reads, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord.”⁹

If these passages mean what they seem to mean at first glance, the divine presence model is in serious trouble. After all, how can hell be God’s presence if the wicked are “shut out” from it?

Let us take the passages one at a time.

Start with 2 Thessalonians 1:9. This is the big one. And it turns out that the translation “shut out from the presence of the Lord” is not the best reading of the Greek. The key word is the Greek preposition apo. In English, we translate apo as “from.” But just like the English word “from,” apo can mean two very different things. It can mean “away from”—as in, “I walked away from the building.” Or it can mean “caused by”—as in, “The scar on his face is from a car accident.”¹⁰

So which meaning does Paul intend in 2 Thessalonians 1:9? Is the destruction “away from” the presence of the Lord? Or is it destruction “caused by” the presence of the Lord?

There is very strong evidence that Paul means “caused by.” Manis and others have shown that the best way to decide the meaning of apo in any passage is to look at the surrounding grammar.¹¹ When apo means “away from,” it is usually paired with a verb that carries that meaning—a verb like “hide” or “flee.” For example, Revelation 6:16 says, “Hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne.” Isaiah 2:10 says, “Hide in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord.” In both cases, the verb “hide” gives apo its “away from” meaning.¹²

But there is no such verb in 2 Thessalonians 1:9. There is no “hide,” no “flee,” no “cast out.” The verse simply says “destruction apo the presence of the Lord.” And when apo appears without a verb of separation, it naturally means “caused by” or “coming from.”

Here is the clincher. The exact same Greek phrase—apo prosōpou tou kyriou, “from the presence of the Lord”—appears in Acts 3:19: “Repent, therefore, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”¹³ Nobody translates Acts 3:19 as “times of refreshing away from the Lord’s presence.” That would be nonsense. The refreshing comes from the Lord’s presence. So why would we translate the identical phrase differently when it appears in 2 Thessalonians 1:9? We should not. The destruction comes from the Lord’s presence, just as the refreshing comes from the Lord’s presence.¹⁴

Several major English translations get this right. The New King James Version reads, “These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.” The American Standard Version and the English Revised Version translate the verse similarly.¹⁵ Even the English Standard Version includes a footnote offering the alternative rendering: “Or destruction that comes from.”¹⁶

Rightly translated, 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is not a problem for the divine presence model. It is one of the strongest biblical supports for it. The destruction of the wicked is not caused by being away from God. It is caused by being in the presence of God—the very God who is revealed “from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire” (2 Thess. 1:7–8). Jesus’s unveiling in glory is the punishment of the wicked.¹⁷

Now what about Matthew 25:41—“Depart from me, you cursed”? This is more complex, and the full exegesis belongs to Chapter 24, where we will treat the parables of Jesus in detail. But for now, a few observations are in order.

First, notice that the destination of those who depart is “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” This fire is consistently identified in Scripture with God’s own presence. Hebrews 12:29 says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” Deuteronomy 4:24 says the same. Daniel 7:9–10 describes a river of fire flowing from the throne of God. The fire is not away from God. The fire is God’s presence.¹⁸

Second, as we discussed in Chapter 15 on divine omnipresence, no one can actually be separated from an omnipresent God. Psalm 139:7–8 is decisive here: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” The doctrine of divine conservation—the belief that God must actively sustain everything in existence at every moment—means that nothing can exist apart from God’s sustaining power.¹⁹ Even those in hell cannot be metaphysically separated from God. If they were, they would cease to exist.

So what does “Depart from me” mean? It most likely describes a relational separation—not a physical one. The wicked are separated from fellowship with God, from communion with God, from the joy of His presence. They are not separated from God’s existence or God’s sustaining power. They are in God’s presence—but they experience that presence as fire rather than as paradise. As Jerry Walls observes, their misery is like that of a son who hates his father but is nonetheless dependent on him and forced to live under the same roof. The son experiences the presence of his father as oppressive. The father has not changed. The son’s heart has.²⁰

Objection 3: “The Divine Presence Model Makes Hell Sound Too Mild.”

I have heard this objection more than once, and I understand where it comes from. When people hear me say that hell is “the experience of God’s love,” they sometimes imagine something gentle. Soft. Almost pleasant. They picture someone standing in warm sunlight and feeling slightly uncomfortable. That does not sound like the terrifying reality the Bible describes.

But this objection is based on a misunderstanding—a serious one. The divine presence model does not make hell mild. It makes hell worse than most people have ever imagined. Let me explain.

On the traditional view, hell is painful because God decides to hurt you. The punishment comes from outside you—flames, tortures, punishments designed by an angry judge. That is terrible, of course. But on the divine presence model, the suffering of hell comes from inside you. It comes from the deepest parts of your soul being exposed to perfect Truth and perfect Love—and being unable to bear either one.

Imagine the worst guilt you have ever felt. Now multiply it by infinity. Imagine having every lie you ever told, every selfish act you ever committed, every person you ever hurt laid bare before you in the full light of absolute Truth—all at once, with no way to hide, no way to deny, no way to explain it away. That is what the presence of God does to an unrepentant heart.²¹

The presence of God as Truth reveals everything. As Manis argues, one of the most basic effects of God’s unveiled presence is the complete revelation of the inner truth about a person.²² For those who have accepted God’s forgiveness, this is liberating. They already know they are sinners. They have already brought their sin into the light. The process of sanctification has been preparing them for this moment. But for those who have spent their whole lives in self-deception—denying their guilt, rationalizing their sin, convincing themselves they are righteous—the sudden, total exposure of the truth is devastating.

Manis suggests that the sheer magnitude of what is revealed might plunge the damned into hopelessness and despair so deep that repentance becomes psychologically impossible.²³ In this life, God reveals truth to believers gradually, little by little, through the work of the Holy Spirit. There is a reason for the gradual pace: a sudden realization of the full extent of one’s own depravity would be overwhelming. It would make the journey to holiness seem impossible and plunge a person into despair.²⁴ But at the final judgment, the unrepentant are exposed to all of it at once. No gradual process. No gentle disclosure. The full weight of truth, all at once, in the blinding light of God’s unveiled glory.

Add to this the “metaphysical size gap” that Manis describes—the infinite distance between Creator and creature, the overwhelming power of God’s nature, the sheer majesty and holiness that even the angels cover their faces before.²⁵ We are not talking about standing near a campfire. We are talking about being plunged into the center of the sun—if the sun were alive, and conscious, and knew everything about you, and loved you with a love so intense that it could reshape the fabric of your being.

Does that sound mild?

C. S. Lewis caught something of this when he wrote that God is “the only comfort” but also “the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.” He warned that those who talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun “need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it.”²⁶

The divine presence model does not make hell softer. It makes hell more terrifying, more personal, more inescapable than any external torture could ever be. External torture can be endured by going numb, by retreating into the mind, by dissociating from the body. But the torment of the divine presence model is inward. It is the torment of seeing yourself as you truly are in the presence of a Love so perfect that your whole being screams in agony because you cannot receive it.

Consider the biblical testimony. When Isaiah saw God in the temple, he cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips!” (Isa. 6:5). Isaiah was a prophet—a righteous man by any human standard. And the mere glimpse of God’s holiness shattered him. When Peter saw the miraculous catch of fish and recognized Jesus for who He truly was, he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Peter was not in danger. He was in the presence of love. And love terrified him because it showed him the truth about himself.⁶²

If a brief encounter with divine holiness can reduce a prophet to despair and a fisherman to trembling, what would it be like for an unrepentant sinner to be plunged into the full, unveiled, unmediated presence of God—with no way to hide, no way to look away, no mediator to stand between them and the consuming fire? The Bible gives us images of people begging the mountains to fall on them and crush them rather than face the presence of the Lamb (Rev. 6:16). That is not the language of mildness. That is the language of absolute terror.⁶³

Talbott captures this perfectly when he writes that under the right conditions, contact with the divine nature could itself be a source of unbearable torment. He notes that the damned no more choose or anticipate their suffering than a heroin addict chooses or anticipates the suffering of addiction. The torment is not a penalty imposed from outside. It is the natural and devastating result of what sin has done to the human soul.⁶⁴

As the twentieth-century Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky wrote, “The love of God will be an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves.”²⁷ Isaac the Syrian was even more vivid: “Those who understand that they have sinned against love undergo greater sufferings than those produced by the most fearful tortures.”²⁸

Think about that. Greater sufferings than the most fearful tortures. The early Church Fathers—who knew a thing or two about real, physical torture—said that the suffering of sinning against love is worse. Not milder. Worse.

The divine presence model takes the horror of hell with the utmost seriousness. It simply locates the horror in the right place—not in a God who wants to hurt people, but in the devastating reality of what sin does to the human soul when it stands naked before perfect Love.

Objection 4: “Doesn’t This Model Lead Inevitably to Universalism?”

This is an objection I take very seriously, because I can see the logic behind it. The argument goes like this: If God is love, and if God’s love is inescapable, and if the fire of hell is really aimed at purification and restoration, then won’t everyone eventually be restored? Won’t the fire eventually break down every resistance? Won’t God’s love win in the end?

If that were true, the divine presence model would lead inevitably to universalism—the view that every single person will eventually be saved. And some critics worry about this. They say: “Your model has no stopping point. Once you say the fire is purifying, you have committed yourself to saying that purification will eventually succeed for everyone.”

This is a powerful objection. But I do not think it succeeds. Here is why.

The divine presence model does not require that the fire succeed for everyone. It says that God intends the fire for everyone’s good. It says that God wills the salvation of every person. It says that God does everything in His power to save. But it does not say that human free will can be overridden. And that is the crucial difference.²⁹

As we explored in Chapter 18, self-deception has the power to distort perception so deeply that a person can no longer see reality clearly. The soul-making process works in both directions: just as the virtuous become more virtuous through practice, the vicious become more vicious. Character can harden to the point of no return.³⁰ This is not a theory I invented. It is a biblical pattern. Think of Pharaoh, whose heart hardened more with each encounter with God. Think of the religious leaders who saw Jesus raise the dead and still plotted to kill him. Think of Judas, who walked with Jesus for three years and still chose betrayal.

Manis has argued persuasively that the sudden, overwhelming exposure to God’s unveiled presence at the final judgment could make repentance psychologically impossible for those who have already hardened their hearts beyond repair. The gradual disclosure of truth that characterizes this life—the gentle, patient work of the Holy Spirit—is precisely what makes repentance possible. Remove the gradualism, and the result may be not purification but despair.³¹

Manis identifies several possible reasons why the damned might never repent, even in God’s presence. The self-deceived might experience God’s love as hatred, because their moral perceptions are so distorted that they literally cannot recognize love for what it is. The proud might rage against the humiliation of having their true selves exposed and double down on defiance. The despairing might be so overwhelmed by the sudden revelation of their guilt that they lose all hope of ever being made right.³² None of these responses lead to repentance. All of them are tragically consistent with the way sin works in the human heart, even now, in this life.

As Manis puts it, we cannot rule any of these possibilities out. And that is enough to undermine the universalist’s confident claim that everyone must sooner or later turn from their sins and be reconciled to God.³³ Maybe they will. Maybe they will not. Philosophically, we cannot prove it either way. What we can say is that the divine presence model is fully compatible with both outcomes. If everyone is eventually restored, the model explains how: the fire purifies. If some are finally lost, the model explains that too: the fire consumes those who cannot bear it.

As I said in the opening chapters of this book, the CI versus UR question is one I hold with open hands. I lean toward conditional immortality because I take human freedom seriously and because the biblical language of finality seems to rule out post-judgment reversal. But I hold this humbly. What matters most is not which outcome finally prevails. What matters is the character of God: He is love, His fire is aimed at restoration, and He does not torture. The divine presence model affirms all of this whether the final outcome is CI or UR.³⁴

Objection 5: “Is This Model Truly Biblical, or Is It Just Eastern Philosophical Speculation?”

This objection tends to come from fellow evangelicals, and I respect it. As evangelicals, we are rightly suspicious of any doctrine that seems to rest more on philosophy or tradition than on Scripture. And when people hear names like “Kalomiros” and “Isaac the Syrian” and “Gregory of Nyssa,” they sometimes worry that we have drifted away from the Bible and into Eastern mysticism.

Let me address this directly. The divine presence model is deeply biblical. The Eastern Orthodox thinkers help us see what Scripture teaches, but the doctrine does not depend on them. It depends on Scripture.

Consider the biblical evidence we have explored in this book (and will explore further in the exegetical chapters to come). Hebrews 12:29 says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” This is not philosophy. It is Scripture. And it directly states that God Himself is the fire. Deuteronomy 4:24 says the same.³⁵

Daniel 7:9–10 describes a vision of God’s throne with “a river of fire” flowing from it. The fire comes from God—not from a separate torture chamber.³⁶ Isaiah 33:14 asks, “Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?” And the answer in verse 15 is: only the righteous. The fire is not in a separate place. The fire is where God is. The question is who can endure it.³⁷

First Corinthians 3:12–15 describes a fire that tests everyone’s work. Those whose work survives the fire are rewarded. Those whose work is burned up “will suffer loss” but may still be saved, “yet so as through fire.” The fire is the same for everyone. The outcome depends on what the fire encounters.³⁸

As we saw earlier in this chapter, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, rightly translated, says that the destruction of the wicked comes from the presence of the Lord—not away from it. And Revelation 14:10 says that the wicked “will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”³⁹ Notice that—the torment happens in God’s presence, not away from it. This verse alone should give anyone pause who claims that hell is separation from God.

Add to all of this the theme of God’s omnipresence in Psalm 139, the fire that comes from God’s presence in Malachi 3 and 4, the fire that Jesus brings to earth (Luke 12:49), and the Holy Spirit’s baptism with fire (Matt. 3:11)—and you have an overwhelming biblical case for the core idea of the divine presence model: that fire in Scripture is consistently associated with God’s presence, not with a separate chamber of torture.⁴⁰

The Eastern Fathers did not invent this model. They preserved it. They read their Greek New Testaments without the filter of later Latin theology, and they saw what the text actually says. When Kalomiros and the Orthodox tradition point us to these passages, they are not importing Eastern philosophy into the Bible. They are inviting us to read the Bible more carefully than we have been reading it. And when we do, the divine presence model emerges naturally from the text.

Baker makes this point forcefully. She demonstrates passage after passage in which fire “comes from God, surrounds God, and is God.”⁴¹ She does not rely on patristic speculation to make her case. She relies on Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Malachi, Matthew, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, and Revelation. The divine presence model is a biblical model. The Eastern Fathers simply had the good sense to take the biblical language seriously—and we evangelicals should thank them for it.

Objection 6: “What About the Justice of God? Don’t the Wicked Deserve Punishment?”

This objection comes from a deep place in the human heart. It is the cry for justice. We want the world to be fair. We want evil to be punished. We want the rapist, the torturer, the mass murderer to get what they deserve. And if the divine presence model says that God does not punish the wicked—that the suffering of hell is not intended as punishment—then it can feel like we are letting evil off the hook.

I want to honor this impulse. The desire for justice is God-given. It reflects the image of God in us. When we see evil go unpunished, something inside us rebels—and rightly so. God Himself is just, and He has promised that justice will be done.

But here is the question we need to ask: what does divine justice actually look like?

In the Western tradition, justice is usually understood in terms borrowed from Roman law: you break the law, you pay the penalty. Justice is about proportional payback. This is what theologians call retributive justice. And retributive justice assumes that the purpose of punishment is to make the offender pay for what they did.⁴²

But this is not the only way to understand justice—and it is not the Bible’s primary way. The Hebrew word most often translated “justice” or “righteousness” is tsedaka. And tsedaka has a much richer meaning than the Western legal concept. In the Hebrew Bible, tsedaka is not primarily about payback. It is about making things right. It is about restoring relationships, healing the broken, vindicating the oppressed, and setting the world back in order.⁴³ God’s justice is not an abstract legal principle. It is a relational reality. God’s justice is His saving love in action.

Baker makes this point beautifully. She argues that we need to “rethink” our image of God’s justice—not to make God less just, but to make our understanding of justice more biblical.⁴⁴ When God brings justice, He is not satisfying an abstract legal requirement. He is setting the world right. He is healing what sin has broken. He is vindicating the victims and restoring what was stolen.

Now, does the divine presence model provide justice in this sense? Absolutely. In fact, it provides more justice than the traditional view, not less.

On the traditional view, justice means God hurts the offender for eternity. But does that heal anything? Does it restore the victim? Does it undo the damage? No. It simply adds more suffering to the universe. As Baker observes, what victims most often want is not for their offender to be tortured forever. What they want is for the offender to feel remorse and understand the terrible pain he has caused.⁴⁵

And that is exactly what the divine presence model delivers. In Baker’s vivid account of Otto’s encounter with God, Otto does not just receive external punishment. He experiences the pain he caused his victims. He sees his sin as God sees it. He feels the weight of what he has done. That is a far deeper form of justice than any external torture could ever be.⁴⁶

Meanwhile, on the divine presence model, the wicked do not escape judgment. The fire is real. The pain is real. The exposure of truth is complete and devastating. The wicked receive the full consequences of what their sin has made them. They do not get away with anything. They just do not get punished by a God who enjoys inflicting pain. They are judged by a God whose love is so fierce and so pure that it burns away everything false.

And notice this: on the traditional view, the victims of evil get nothing from the punishment of the wicked. The rapist is tortured forever, but his victim is no more healed because of it. The murderer burns in flames, but the family he destroyed gains nothing from his agony. ECT gives us a God who inflicts endless suffering on the wicked, but it does nothing to restore what was lost. It is vengeance without healing. It is retribution without reconciliation.

The divine presence model offers something infinitely better. In Baker’s account of Otto, the fire of God’s presence does not merely punish Otto. It reveals the full truth of what Otto has done. It forces him to see his victims as God sees them. It forces him to feel their pain. And if Otto is purified by the fire, his victims are invited to participate in the process of reconciliation—to see Otto’s remorse, to receive his repentance, to extend grace.⁶⁵ That is justice that actually heals something. That is justice worthy of a God whose name is Love.

Even if Otto is not purified—even if his heart is so corrupted that the fire ultimately destroys him (conditional immortality)—the justice of the divine presence model is still superior to the traditional view. On the traditional view, God tortures Otto forever, and nothing is accomplished. On the divine presence model, God’s fire exposes, tests, purifies where possible, and destroys where necessary. The justice is purposeful. It has a goal: restoration if possible, and merciful destruction if not. It is never arbitrary. It is never vindictive. It is always love.

That is not less justice. That is more.

Objection 7: “If God Is Omnipotent and Loving, Why Doesn’t He Simply Prevent People from Hardening Their Hearts?”

This is one of the hardest questions in all of theology. If God is all-powerful, and if He truly loves every person, and if He truly wants everyone to be saved—then why does He allow anyone to reach the point of final hardness? Why doesn’t He intervene earlier, soften hearts before they calcify, prevent the damage before it is done?

Behind this question is an older, more famous question: the problem of evil. Why does a good God allow evil at all? We cannot solve the entire problem of evil in this chapter, but we can address the specific form it takes in relation to the divine presence model.

The answer lies in the nature of human freedom and the nature of love.

Manis builds his case on what theologians call a “soul-making theodicy.” The basic idea is this: God created human beings for communion with Himself—a relationship of genuine love. But genuine love requires genuine freedom. A love that is forced is not love at all. For love to be real, it must be possible to say “no.”⁴⁷

But here is the deeper point, and it is one Manis develops with great care. The very capacity that makes us able to love God is the same capacity that makes us able to reject Him. You cannot have one without the other. A creature capable of experiencing heaven must also be capable of bringing about its own ruin. These two capacities are inseparable—they are two sides of the same coin. Manis calls this the “freedom-communion principle”: the human capacity for communion with God is directly proportional to the amount of moral freedom we possess.⁴⁸

And there is a corresponding principle that runs alongside it, the “freedom-harm principle”: the extent of our moral freedom is directly proportional to the amount of harm we are capable of causing—including harm to ourselves.⁴⁹ The same freedom that enables us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is the same freedom that enables us to harden our hearts until we become incapable of receiving love.

So can God prevent this? In a certain sense, no—not without destroying the very thing that makes us human. To remove the possibility of hardening would be to remove the possibility of genuine love. To guarantee that every heart would soften would be to override free will. And overridden free will is not free will at all. It is coercion. And coerced love is not love.⁵⁰

Universalists sometimes respond: “Surely God could find a way to win every heart without coercion. An all-powerful God must be able to do anything, including guaranteeing that every free creature freely chooses to love Him.” But this is a misunderstanding of omnipotence. Omnipotence means God can do all things that are logically possible. It does not mean God can do things that are logically contradictory. God cannot make a square circle. And God cannot guarantee the free choice of another being, because a guaranteed free choice is a contradiction in terms.⁵¹

What God can do—and what the divine presence model says He does—is everything in His power to bring every person to salvation. He provides sufficient grace to everyone. He pursues the lost with relentless love. He delays the final judgment to give more time for repentance (2 Pet. 3:9). He may even provide postmortem opportunities for those who never heard the gospel. But He will not override the freedom He has given. To do so would be to un-create us as the kind of beings we are.⁵²

This does not make the reality of hell less tragic. It makes it heartbreaking. On the divine presence model, God does not want anyone in hell. God grieves over every soul that hardens against Him. But He respects the freedom He has given—absolutely, to the end—because without that freedom, there is no love. And without love, there is no heaven.

I sometimes hear people say, “If I were God, I would just save everyone.” I understand the impulse. I feel it myself. But the question is not whether God wants to save everyone. He does. The question is whether saving everyone is possible without destroying the very freedom that makes love—and therefore heaven—real. Manis writes that divine providence is “the ability and intention to cause all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28)—not the power to override every created will.⁶⁶ God is not a dictator who forces compliance. He is a Father who invites love. And an invitation, by its very nature, can be declined.

This is the tragedy of hell on the divine presence model. It is not the tragedy of a cruel God punishing helpless victims. It is the tragedy of a loving God standing with open arms while His children turn their backs. It is the tragedy of a fire that could warm and heal—but is experienced as destruction by those who have made themselves unable to receive warmth.

Objection 8: “This Sounds Like You’re Just Making Hell More Comfortable.”

This last objection is related to Objection 3 but comes from a slightly different angle. The worry here is not that the divine presence model makes hell too mild in its description of suffering, but that it makes hell too dignified. Too respectable. Too palatable. By replacing the image of a torture chamber with the image of a soul encountering divine love, aren’t we just putting a nicer face on a terrible doctrine to make modern people feel better?

I want to be completely clear about something. I did not write this book to make anyone comfortable. I wrote it because I believe the traditional view of hell distorts the character of God—and getting the character of God wrong is the most dangerous thing a Christian can do.

The divine presence model does not exist to make hell more comfortable. It exists to make God more truthful. It exists to tell the truth about who God is and what His judgment actually looks like.

And the truth is this: the divine presence model does not make hell more comfortable. It makes hell more coherent. It explains things the traditional view cannot explain. It explains why the Bible calls God “a consuming fire” and also calls Him “love.” It explains why Revelation 14 says the wicked are tormented “in the presence” of the Lamb while the traditional view says they are tormented away from Him. It explains why the same fire that purifies gold also consumes wood (1 Cor. 3:12–15). It explains why Psalm 139 says there is nowhere in the universe—not even hell—where one can escape God’s presence.

Moreover, the divine presence model takes sin more seriously than the traditional view, not less. On the traditional view, sin is primarily a legal offense—you broke God’s rules, and now you pay the fine. On the divine presence model, sin is something far worse. Sin is the corruption of the human soul itself. Sin distorts your capacity to perceive reality. Sin blinds you to truth. Sin makes you unable to receive love. Sin does not just break a rule—it breaks you.⁵³ And the horrifying consequence is that when you finally stand before perfect Love, you are so broken that Love itself becomes your torment.

That is not comfortable. That is terrifying.

And the divine presence model takes the urgency of the gospel more seriously too. If hell is just a place where God sends bad people to be punished, then the gospel is basically a “get out of jail free” card. Believe in Jesus, and you avoid the penalty. But on the divine presence model, the gospel is about the transformation of the human heart. Salvation is not about escaping a location. It is about being healed of a disease. The disease is sin—the corruption of the heart that makes you unable to bear God’s love. And the cure is Christ, who enters your life through the Holy Spirit and begins the long, patient work of making you into a person who can actually stand in the presence of God and experience it as joy instead of horror.⁵⁴

This gives the gospel more urgency, not less. Every day that you resist the Holy Spirit’s work, your heart hardens a little more. Every act of self-deception makes the truth a little harder to bear. The stakes could not be higher. We are not trying to avoid a penalty. We are trying to be healed before it is too late.

So no, I am not making hell more comfortable. I am making it more honest. And I am making God more faithful to what Scripture actually reveals Him to be: not a cosmic torturer, but a consuming fire of love whose very presence is both the greatest hope and the greatest danger in the universe.

C. Additional Concerns and Responses

A Brief Word on the “Slippery Slope” Concern

Some critics worry that the divine presence model is a stepping stone to a broader erosion of orthodox theology. “First you reject ECT,” they say. “Then you reject the reality of hell. Then you reject the need for the gospel. Then you reject the authority of Scripture. It’s a slippery slope.”

I understand this concern, but I think it misreads what is happening here. The divine presence model does not reject the reality of hell. It affirms it—powerfully and unequivocally. Hell is real. Judgment is real. The fire is real. The suffering is real. What the model rejects is not the reality of hell but a specific interpretation of hell that is not required by Scripture and that distorts the character of God.

I would turn the slippery slope argument around. It is the traditional view that creates the conditions for people to abandon their faith altogether. How many people have walked away from Christianity because they could not worship a God who tortures people forever? How many young believers have lost their faith because the God described by ECT seemed morally worse than the best human beings they knew? I have met these people. I have been one of them. The real slippery slope is not the one that leads from rejecting ECT to rejecting the gospel. The real slippery slope is the one that leads from accepting ECT to rejecting God entirely—because the God of ECT is not a God that a morally serious person can worship without doing violence to their conscience.

The divine presence model is fully compatible with creedal Christianity. The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Definition do not define the mechanics of hell. They affirm the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The divine presence model affirms all of this without qualification.⁵⁵

And the model does not weaken the gospel. It strengthens it. The gospel is not just “believe in Jesus and avoid eternal torture.” The gospel is “believe in Jesus and be transformed by His Spirit so that when you stand in the presence of God, that presence is your everlasting joy.” That is a richer, more beautiful, more compelling gospel than the one most of us were raised with.

A Brief Word on Historical Support

Some critics claim that the divine presence model is a modern invention with no historical pedigree. This is simply incorrect. The model has deep roots in the Eastern Christian tradition going back to the earliest centuries of the church. Saint Basil the Great (fourth century) taught that the fire of God has two capacities—burning and illuminating—and that the wicked experience the burning while the righteous enjoy the light.⁵⁶ Isaac the Syrian (seventh century) taught that the suffering of hell is the “scourge of love”—that those in Gehenna are chastised not by punitive torture but by the love of God itself.⁵⁷ Symeon the New Theologian (tenth/eleventh century) expressed similar ideas.⁵⁸

These are not obscure figures. Basil is one of the three Cappadocian Fathers who shaped the Nicene Creed. Isaac is one of the most beloved saints in both the Eastern and the Oriental Orthodox traditions. These men were reading their Greek New Testaments long before the Western tradition developed the juridical categories that gave rise to ECT as we know it today.

It is not the divine presence model that is a novelty. It is the Western departure from it. As Kalomiros argues in The River of Fire, the West’s image of a wrathful, punishing God is itself a departure from the faith of the early church—a departure shaped more by Augustine’s dependence on Roman legal categories than by the Greek text of the New Testament.⁵⁹ The divine presence model is not an innovation. It is a recovery of the earliest Christian understanding of hell—preserved in the East and now being rediscovered in the West.

D. Conclusion and Connection

We have now walked through eight major objections to the divine presence model, and I believe we have shown that each one, while serious and worth engaging, does not finally succeed in overturning the model.

The Bible’s language of punishment? It describes how the damned experience God’s presence—not how God intends it. The “separation” texts? They either describe relational separation (not metaphysical) or are better translated as describing destruction that comes from God’s presence. The charge that the model is too mild? It is based on a failure to grasp the terrifying reality of what it means for a sin-hardened soul to encounter perfect Love. The slide toward universalism? The model is compatible with both CI and UR and does not require either. The charge of being unbiblical? The model rests on a mountain of Scripture that identifies fire with God’s presence. The justice objection? The model provides deeper justice than the traditional view, not less. The freedom objection? God does everything possible to save everyone but will not override the freedom that makes love possible. The comfort charge? The model makes hell more honest, not more comfortable.

None of this means the divine presence model is without mystery. It is not. We are talking about the fate of human souls before the living God. Some questions remain open. Some mysteries are beyond our reach. But the core claim stands firm: hell is not separation from God. Hell is the experience of God’s inescapable love by those who have made themselves unable to receive it. The fire is real. The love is real. The horror is real. And the God who presides over it all is not a torturer. He is a Father whose heart breaks for every child who refuses to come home.

In the chapters that follow, we will turn to the biblical text itself and walk through the major passages on hell, fire, and judgment one by one. We will see the divine presence model confirmed in passage after passage—from the Hades/Gehenna distinction in Chapter 21, to the fire passages in Chapter 22, to the judgment passages in Chapter 23. The objections have been answered. Now it is time to let Scripture speak for itself.⁶⁰

But before we turn the page, I want to pause and say something from the heart. One of the hardest things about studying hell is that it can become academic—a puzzle to solve, a debate to win. I have to fight this temptation constantly. Because we are not talking about abstractions. We are talking about real people. People whom God created. People whom God loves. People who, if the divine presence model is correct, will one day stand in the overwhelming blaze of perfect Love and either be transformed by it or consumed by it.

That should make us tremble. It should make us pray. And it should drive us to our knees before the God who is a consuming fire—not to run from Him, but to ask Him to do His purifying work in us now, in this life, while there is still time. The fire is coming. It is not a threat. It is a promise. And our job is not to fear the fire but to let it do its work—burning away everything in us that is not love, until all that remains is a heart that can stand before God and call the burning bliss.

For our God is a consuming fire. And His fire is love.