Chapter 23A
The Divine Presence Model of Hell — A Philosophical Deep Dive into Manis's Framework

Introduction: A Third Way of Thinking About Hell

What if everything we think we know about hell is built on a flawed assumption? Most Christians picture hell as a place far from God—a dark corner of the universe where sinners are banished, cut off from the Creator, and left to suffer alone. It is, in this common telling, the opposite of heaven. Heaven is God's presence; hell is God's absence. But what if that picture has it exactly backwards?

In 2019, philosopher R. Zachary Manis published a groundbreaking work of analytic philosophy of religion titled Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell. In this remarkably rigorous and carefully argued book, Manis advanced what he calls the "divine presence model" of hell—a view that turns the traditional picture completely on its head. On this model, hell is not the absence of God but the overwhelming, inescapable, unshielded presence of God, experienced by those who have refused to orient their lives toward Him. It is not that God withdraws from the wicked. It is that God draws near—fully, finally, and without any veil—and for those who have hardened their hearts against Him, that nearness is unbearable.

I believe Manis's divine presence model is the most philosophically rigorous and theologically satisfying framework for understanding the nature of hell available in contemporary scholarship. And when we integrate it with the postmortem opportunity thesis and conditional immortality—the theology I have been developing throughout this book—we get something remarkable: a coherent, biblically grounded eschatological vision in which God's love never abandons anyone, God's justice is real and terrifying, and the final outcome for every person depends on their response to the overwhelming fire of divine love.

Chapter 23 provided an overview of the divine presence model, placing it alongside Baker's fire-of-God thesis and the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition. This chapter goes much deeper into Manis's philosophical framework—the arguments, the objections, the nuances. We will walk through his taxonomy of views on hell, his core philosophical case, his treatment of key biblical texts, and his analysis of how the model relates to competing approaches. We will also examine his own remarkable concession that the divine presence model can accommodate postmortem conversion—a concession that, coming from a philosopher who himself leans toward eternal conscious experience, is striking. And we will show where I build on Manis's work, extend it, and diverge from it in significant ways.

This chapter is a philosophical deep dive. But I will do my best to keep the language clear and the argument accessible. The questions at stake could not be more important: What is the nature of the reality that awaits every human being at the end of all things? And does that reality reflect a God of perfect, unrelenting, inescapable love?

The Landscape of Views: Traditionalism, the Choice Model, and the Divine Presence Model

To appreciate the significance of Manis's contribution, we first need to understand the landscape of views he is working within. For centuries, Christians have debated what hell actually is—not just whether it exists, but what kind of reality it represents. Manis identifies three major families of views among those who affirm that hell involves some form of conscious suffering, and he positions the divine presence model as a "third way" between two deeply flawed alternatives.¹

Traditionalism: Hell as Externally Imposed Punishment

The first view is what Manis calls "traditionalism." This is the view most people grew up with in the Western church, both Catholic and Protestant. On this account, hell is a retributive punishment that God imposes on the wicked as a direct and deliberate response to their sins. God, acting as judge, sentences the guilty to punishment, and then carries out that sentence by consigning them to a place of suffering. Hell is, in essence, a divine prison—a place God created specifically for the purpose of punishing sinners.

Manis argues that traditionalism faces three devastating problems. The first is the problem of justice: How can any finite sin deserve an infinite punishment? Even if we grant that rebellion against an infinite God deserves severe consequences, is there any coherent sense in which a creature who lived seventy or eighty years can justly be punished for all eternity? The punishment seems grotesquely disproportionate to the crime.²

The second is the problem of love. If God truly loves every human being—and Scripture teaches that He does—then how can He deliberately inflict eternal suffering on those He loves? A parent who loves a child may discipline that child, but no loving parent would torture a child endlessly. The problem of love is arguably even more devastating than the problem of justice. Manis devotes extensive attention to this issue, examining whether any defender of retributive hell can satisfactorily reconcile the claim that God loves the damned with the claim that He deliberately causes them everlasting torment. He finds every such attempt wanting.³

The third is what Manis calls the doxastic problem—a set of issues that arise not from the doctrine of hell itself but from the psychological and spiritual consequences of believing it. If hell is the worst thing that can possibly happen to anyone, and if belief in hell is required of Christians, then the revelation of hell functions as an enormous threat. But a decision made under threat is coerced, and a coerced decision cannot be a free act of love. The doctrine of hell, on the traditional model, thus seems to undermine the very thing God desires most from human beings: a free, loving response to His grace. Manis also develops what he calls the "problem of neighbor love"—if you truly believe your neighbor might be headed for eternal conscious torment, and yet you continue your daily life without being consumed by desperation to save them, have you really grasped what you claim to believe? The doxastic problem reveals that many who profess belief in the traditional doctrine of hell do not actually believe it in any psychologically meaningful sense.⁴

The Choice Model: Hell as Self-Chosen Separation

In reaction to the deep problems facing traditionalism, many thoughtful Christians have gravitated toward what Manis calls the "choice model" of hell—a view associated especially with C. S. Lewis, Jerry Walls, and more recently Eleonore Stump. On this account, hell is not a punishment God imposes but a state that the damned choose for themselves. Hell is not being cast out of God's presence; it is choosing to walk away from it. As Lewis famously put it in The Great Divorce, the doors of hell are locked from the inside.

The choice model has obvious attractions. It avoids the problem of justice because hell is not a punishment at all—at least not one imposed from outside. It avoids the problem of love because God is not tormenting anyone; He is simply honoring the free choices of His creatures. And it softens the doxastic problem because hell is no longer a threat wielded by an angry deity.

But Manis shows that the choice model has serious weaknesses of its own. Its biggest problem is that it struggles to account for the full biblical picture of judgment. Scripture is replete with language of divine wrath, vengeance, and the fear of the Lord. Jesus speaks of being "cast into outer darkness" and "thrown into the furnace of fire." Paul writes of God "inflicting vengeance" and repaying affliction. None of this language sounds like self-chosen separation. It sounds like something God does to the wicked, not something the wicked do to themselves. The choice model, in trying to rescue God's love, ends up downplaying God's justice—and this creates its own theological distortions.⁵

Manis also raises a second difficulty for the choice model: it struggles to explain why none of the damned are annihilated. If the essence of hell is simply being separated from God, and if God is the source of all being, then why would God sustain creatures in existence forever when they have explicitly rejected Him? Annihilation would seem to be a more natural outcome on the choice model's own terms—yet most choice model defenders resist annihilationism. Manis argues they have no compelling reason to do so.⁶

The Divine Presence Model: A Third Way

This is where Manis's contribution enters the picture. He positions the divine presence model precisely between traditionalism and the choice model, arguing that it achieves a balance between the biblical motifs of retribution and restoration that neither competitor can manage on its own.⁷

On the divine presence model, God's aim is always restoration. His intention is the salvation of every person. But when the damned encounter the culminating act of God's saving work in history—the revealing of Christ in glory at the end of all things—they experience it as retributive punishment. Not because God intends punishment, but because that is how an unrepentant sinner inevitably experiences the full presence of a holy God. The biblical language of wrath, judgment, and vengeance is thus phenomenologically accurate—from the perspective of the damned, hell really does feel like retributive punishment—but it is ontologically misleading if taken as a description of God's intentions or character.⁸

We can think of it this way. Traditionalism says: "God punishes the wicked." The choice model says: "The wicked punish themselves." The divine presence model says something more subtle and, I believe, more truthful: "God loves the wicked, and His love—the same love that is heaven for the righteous—is hell for those who refuse it." Same God. Same love. Radically different experiences, depending entirely on the disposition of the one being loved.

The Core Insight: God's Inescapable Love as the Torment of the Damned

At the heart of Manis's model lies a single, breathtaking insight. It comes from the Eastern Orthodox theological tradition, and Manis draws it out with philosophical precision. The insight is this: heaven and hell share a common source. Both flow from the same reality—the unshielded, unveiled, fully manifested presence of God, who is Love. The difference between heaven and hell is not a difference of location or condition imposed from outside. It is a difference of reception. It is determined entirely by who you are when you encounter the living God face to face.

Manis draws on the influential twentieth-century Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky to articulate this idea. Lossky captures it in one of the most haunting sentences in all of theology: "The love of God will be an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves."⁹ Sit with that for a moment. The love of God does not become something different for the damned. God's love remains exactly what it always was—infinite, perfect, all-encompassing. But for those whose inner being is oriented away from God, for those who have spent a lifetime (or perhaps longer) building walls against His grace, for those who have come to despise what God loves and love what God despises—for such persons, the experience of being enveloped by that love is not warmth. It is torment.

Manis himself captures the profound irony of this situation with a literary flourish, noting that the title of Thomas Talbott's book defending universalism—The Inescapable Love of God—is, from the perspective of the divine presence model, a perfectly apt description of hell.¹⁰ On this model, hell is not the escape from God's love. Hell is God's love—experienced by those who cannot bear it.

Think of it with an analogy Manis uses. Imagine wax brought too close to a raging fire. The fire does not change. It is what it is—intense, powerful, radiant. But the wax cannot survive proximity to it. The fire does not intend to destroy the wax; fire does not have intentions at all. It simply is what it is, and the nature of wax is such that it melts in the presence of great heat. In an analogous way, God does not intend His presence to cause suffering. God is who He is—perfect holiness, perfect love, infinite glory. And the nature of unrepentant sinners is such that they cannot endure His unshielded presence without devastating consequences.¹¹

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, another Orthodox theologian Manis engages, elaborates on the same theme. God loves sinners just as much as He loves the saints, Hierotheos argues. It is not that God's posture toward sinners changes. Rather, each person perceives God's love differently depending on their spiritual condition. The saved, having been formed into the image of Christ, perceive God's love as light, warmth, and joy. The damned, having resisted that transformation, perceive the very same love as fire. They do not possess the "spiritual eye" needed to receive God's love as love.¹²

This is a critically important distinction, and it sets the divine presence model apart from both traditionalism and the choice model. God is not doing something different to the damned than He is doing to the saved. There is no "left hand of God" that punishes while the "right hand" blesses. There is only one God, one love, one fire—and that fire is experienced as heaven or as hell depending entirely on the condition of the creature encountering it.

Divine Omnipresence, Divine Hiddenness, and the Eschatological Unveiling

One of the most philosophically sophisticated aspects of Manis's case involves his treatment of divine omnipresence and divine hiddenness. If God is truly omnipresent—present everywhere at all times—then why do sinners not experience the torment of hell right now? If mere proximity to God is devastating for the unrepentant, why are the wicked not being destroyed in the present moment?

Manis's answer is elegant. In this present age, God partially conceals His presence. This partial concealment is what theologians and philosophers call "divine hiddenness," and Manis argues it serves two crucial purposes.¹³

First, divine hiddenness is necessary for genuine human freedom. If God were fully revealed in all His glory right now—if every human being could see clearly and unmistakably that God exists, that He is infinitely holy and powerful, and that all their sins stand exposed before Him—then genuine free choice in relation to God would be all but impossible. The choice to follow God would be coerced by the sheer overwhelming weight of the evidence. It would be like choosing whether to obey a king who is standing in front of you with a drawn sword. Freedom requires epistemic space—room to doubt, to question, to struggle, to choose. And that epistemic space is precisely what divine hiddenness provides.

This is a profoundly important point, and it connects to a long tradition in Christian thought. Blaise Pascal argued that God is hidden enough that those who seek Him can find Him, but not so obvious that those who wish to avoid Him cannot. Kierkegaard made a similar argument, contending that God's self-concealment is itself an expression of divine love—love that refuses to overwhelm the beloved into submission. Manis stands squarely in this tradition.

Second, divine hiddenness is in part a natural consequence of sin itself. Sin creates a barrier to perceiving God. The more deeply a person is entangled in rebellion against God, the less clearly they perceive His reality. This is the phenomenon Scripture describes as being "blinded by sin"—a darkening of the mind and heart that accompanies willful persistence in wrongdoing. Self-deception plays a crucial role here, as Manis draws extensively from Kierkegaard to show. The person who repeatedly suppresses the truth about God and about themselves gradually forms the kind of character that renders them unable to perceive the deepest truths of existence.¹⁴ The cumulative effect is not merely intellectual error but the corruption of one's entire inner being—emotions, desires, and the capacity to perceive reality rightly.

Now here is the eschatological punch. The eschaton—the final consummation of all things—is the removal of divine hiddenness. When Christ returns in glory, when God is fully revealed at the end of all things, the veil is lifted. There is no more epistemic space. There is no more hiding. Every human being will see God as He truly is—not partially, not through a glass darkly, but face to face.

For the saved, this is the beatific vision—the ultimate fulfillment of every human longing, the experience for which we were created. We will see Him and be transformed by what we see. Paul anticipated this when he wrote, "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor. 3:18, ESV). The blessed have been prepared for this moment. Through the process of sanctification—the gradual removal of the "veil" from their hearts, as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 3—they have been progressively shaped into the kind of beings who can receive God's full presence as joy.¹⁵

But for the unrepentant—for those who have spent their existence building ever-higher walls against God, for those whose self-deception has so thoroughly corrupted their inner life that they cannot receive love as love—the unveiling of Christ in glory is catastrophic. It is not that God attacks them. It is that they encounter Reality itself, unfiltered, and they cannot bear what they find. Like wax too near the fire. Like eyes too long in darkness suddenly flooded with blinding light.

Manis notes that this framework makes intelligible a number of puzzling biblical passages. When God told Moses, "You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live" (Exod. 33:20, ESV), this was not a threat but a warning—a statement about the kind of being God is and the kind of creatures we presently are. Similarly, when the Lord warned Moses that the people must not approach Mount Sinai "lest the Lord break out against them" (Exod. 19:24, ESV), this is not a description of divine rage or bad temper. It is a metaphysical statement: God is warning about what happens when sinful creatures get too close to uncreated holiness. The consequence is not arbitrary punishment. It is the natural result of two incompatible realities meeting without a mediator.¹⁶

The Phenomenology of Hell: Between Natural and Retributive Punishment

One of Manis's most creative and important moves is his analysis of how hell functions on the divine presence model. He argues that hell occupies a unique conceptual space—something "in between" a natural punishment and a retributive punishment. Understanding this distinction is crucial to understanding why the divine presence model succeeds where its competitors fail.¹⁷

A natural punishment is a consequence that flows naturally from an action without any deliberate imposition by an external agent. If you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned. Nobody burned you as a punishment; the burn is simply the natural consequence of contact between flesh and intense heat. A retributive punishment, by contrast, is a consequence deliberately imposed by an external agent in response to wrongdoing. If a judge sentences you to prison, that is a retributive punishment—it does not flow naturally from your crime but is imposed on you by an authority.

On the divine presence model, hell is closer to a natural punishment than to a retributive one. The suffering of the damned is not something God does to them in the way a judge imposes a sentence. It is closer to what naturally happens when a sinful creature encounters the full presence of a holy God without the protection of divine hiddenness. God does not intend His presence to cause suffering. His aim is always salvation. The suffering arises because of what the damned are—not because of what God does.

But here is the nuance that sets the model apart: phenomenologically—that is, from the perspective of the one experiencing it—hell feels like retributive punishment. From the standpoint of the damned, this is divine wrath. This is divine vengeance. This is what it feels like when an infinitely powerful being imposes consequences on you against your will. The biblical language of judgment, wrath, and punishment is thus phenomenologically accurate—it faithfully describes how the damned experience their situation. But ontologically—in terms of what is actually happening—hell is closer to a natural consequence: the inevitable result of being an unrepentant sinner in the unshielded presence of God.¹⁸

This is a stroke of philosophical brilliance, because it solves the problem that plagued both traditionalism and the choice model simultaneously. Traditionalism could account for the biblical language of judgment and wrath but stumbled on God's love. The choice model could account for God's love but struggled with the biblical language of judgment and wrath. The divine presence model accounts for both—because on this model, the very same event (the unveiling of God in glory) is simultaneously an act of supreme love and an experience of devastating judgment. Love and judgment are not competing realities. They are the same reality, experienced differently by different creatures.

Manis makes the theologically important observation that the only feature lacking which would make hell a natural punishment in the full, ordinary sense is divine intent to punish. On the divine presence model, God does not intend His presence to cause suffering to anyone. His will is the highest good of each and every person, both in this life and in the life to come. This is critically important because it means that divine goodness and love for the damned are in no way diminished by the doctrine of hell. God loves the damned with the very same love with which He loves the blessed. The suffering of hell is a tragic consequence of creaturely rebellion, not an expression of divine malice.¹⁹

Think of it with another analogy. Imagine sunlight streaming into a room. For healthy eyes, the light is wonderful—it illuminates everything, makes colors vivid, brings warmth. But for eyes that are severely diseased—imagine a condition where the nerves are so inflamed that any light causes excruciating pain—that same sunlight is agony. The sun has not changed. The light has not changed. The light is not "punishing" the diseased eyes. It is simply being what it is. And the experience of that light is entirely determined by the condition of the one receiving it.

2 Thessalonians 1:9: Destruction FROM God's Presence

Manis devotes careful attention to what may be the single most important biblical text for the divine presence model: 2 Thessalonians 1:9. This verse is found in the context of one of the strongest judgment passages in the Pauline epistles. Paul assures the persecuted Thessalonian church that God will vindicate them when "the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2 Thess. 1:7–8, ESV). Then comes the critical verse:

"They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" (2 Thess. 1:9, ESV).

Most English translations render this verse in a way that implies separation from God—"away from" or "shut out from" the presence of the Lord. The ESV says "away from the presence of the Lord." The RSV reads "exclusion from the presence of the Lord." The NIV says "shut out from the presence of the Lord." Taken at face value in these translations, the verse seems to support the choice model rather than the divine presence model: the damned are banished from God's presence.

But Manis, drawing on the work of Thomas Talbott and a careful analysis of the Greek, argues that these translations are misleading—even theologically biased. The critical Greek preposition is apo (ἀπό), which can mean either "away from" or "from" in the sense of "proceeding from" or "caused by." The ESV itself acknowledges this ambiguity: a footnote to "away from" reads, "Or destruction that comes from."²⁰

Talbott's exegetical argument, which Manis endorses and develops, is incisive. Talbott points out that while apo can certainly mean "away from" in some contexts, those contexts always include a verb of separation—like "to hide" or "to conceal"—that determines the directional meaning. In Isaiah 2:10, for instance, we read about hiding ourselves "from the terror of the Lord." In Revelation 6:16, people cry out for the mountains to fall on them to hide them "from the face of the one seated on the throne." In these passages, the verbs "hide" and "conceal" make the directional meaning of apo clear.²¹

But in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, there is no such verb. There is no "to hide," no "to conceal," no "to exclude," no "to shut out." The Greek simply says: olethron aiōnion apo prosōpou tou kyriou—"destruction age-long from the presence of the Lord." Without a verb of separation, there is no grammatical warrant for injecting the idea of being shut out or excluded. Talbott drives the point home by comparing the identical Greek construction in Acts 3:19, where Peter exhorts his hearers to "repent ... so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (apo prosōpou tou kyriou)." Nobody reads Acts 3:19 as saying that times of refreshing come by being separated from God. Quite the opposite—the refreshing comes from God's presence. It originates in the presence of the Lord. In exactly the same way, the destruction in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 comes from the presence of the Lord. It is caused by, originates in, and proceeds from God's presence.²²

When we substitute this reading, the verse takes on a dramatically different meaning: "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction that comes from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." The destruction is not separation from God. It is God's presence. It is what happens when the Lord Jesus is "revealed from heaven ... in flaming fire" and unrepentant sinners are caught in the full blaze of His glory.

Manis notes that this reading finds support in several English translations. 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 likewise speaks of "eternal destruction from the face of the Lord." Neither of these translations inserts the idea of separation or exclusion. The destruction is simply said to come "from" God's presence and glory.²³

Paul himself reinforces this reading elsewhere. In 2 Corinthians 2:15–16, he writes that Christians are "the aroma of Christ" to God—and then adds this stunning observation: "To one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life." The same aroma—the same reality—is experienced as life-giving by some and death-dealing by others. This is precisely the logic of the divine presence model, stated in olfactory rather than visual terms. The same Christ, fully revealed, is experienced as "death to death" by the unrepentant and "life to life" by the faithful.²⁴

The Aiōnios Question: Quality, Not Just Duration

Another significant contribution from Manis's work—one that reinforces the argument developed at length in Chapter 20 of this book—is his treatment of the Greek adjective aiōnios (αἰώνιος), traditionally translated "eternal" or "everlasting." This word is central to the debate about the duration of hell, appearing in the pivotal text of Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal (aiōnios) punishment, but the righteous into eternal (aiōnios) life."

Manis observes that aiōnios need not—and in many contexts clearly does not—mean "everlasting" in the sense of "lasting forever and ever without end." The word is derived from aiōn (age) and can carry the sense of "pertaining to an age" or "of the age to come." More significantly for our purposes, Manis draws attention to Talbott's argument that the Gospel writers used aiōnios as an eschatological term that functioned as a reference to the realities of the age to come—realities in which God's presence would be fully manifested and His purposes fully realized. In this usage, aiōnios functions as a qualitative descriptor rather than a purely temporal one. It denotes not infinite duration but a divine quality—something that pertains to God, that comes from God, that manifests God's presence in a special way.²⁵

Talbott develops this point by observing that "eternal life" in the Gospel of John is defined not by its duration but by its quality—specifically, by its relational character: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3, ESV). The emphasis here is on the nature of the life, not its length. Eternal life is life in proper relationship with God—life that has its source in the eternal God and manifests His presence in a special way.²⁶

If this understanding of aiōnios is correct—and I find the evidence compelling, as Chapter 20 demonstrates in much greater detail—then "eternal punishment" in Matthew 25:46 can be understood as "punishment of the age to come" or "punishment that pertains to God" or "punishment that comes from God and manifests His presence." The parallelism with "eternal life" is then maintained perfectly: both punishment and life are aiōnios in the same sense—both pertain to God, both originate in God's eschatological activity, both manifest God's presence in the age to come. But the nature of the experience is determined by the disposition of the one experiencing it. For the righteous, the eschatological manifestation of God's presence is life. For the unrepentant, it is devastating punishment.

This reading harmonizes beautifully with the divine presence model. It also removes what has long been the strongest proof-text for the traditional view of eternal conscious torment—without requiring that aiōnios mean something different in the two halves of the verse, which is the concern traditionalists most frequently raise. Both uses of aiōnios carry the same meaning. The difference lies in the noun it modifies and the experience it describes.

Self-Deception, Kierkegaard, and the Psychology of Damnation

A natural question arises at this point: Why would anyone refuse to accept God's love? If God is truly good, truly beautiful, truly loving—if encountering Him is the fulfillment of every longing—then why would anyone persist in rejecting Him, especially when that rejection brings unspeakable suffering?

Manis develops a sophisticated answer drawing extensively on the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard's analysis of the psychology of sin—particularly his concept of self-deception—provides the resources the divine presence model needs to explain how the damned can rationally (or, more precisely, irrationally) reject what is clearly in their best interest.

Kierkegaard, particularly in The Sickness unto Death, describes a form of despair in which the person is not merely passively ignorant of God but actively defiant. This is the person who rebels against all existence, who feels that they have obtained evidence against God—against His goodness, His justice, His love—and who wills to remain in their state of torment as a protest. As Kierkegaard describes it, this person wants to be themselves in their torment, precisely in order to demonstrate that they are in the right and that God is in the wrong.²⁷

This is a perversion of the self-righteousness that all human beings possess to some degree. We all want to be in the right. We all chafe at the suggestion that we are deeply, fundamentally wrong about the most important things. But in the Kierkegaardian model of damnation, this desire for self-vindication becomes all-consuming. The damned are so filled with hatred—the very opposite of love—and so driven by spite and pride that they prefer self-damnation to the humiliation of admitting they were wrong. Their refusal to repent is a declaration of self-righteousness, a prideful insistence that they, not God, have the right understanding of reality. Kierkegaard compares them to an error in an author's manuscript that becomes conscious of itself and refuses to be corrected—that insists on standing as "a witness against" the author, proof that the author is "a second-rate" creator.²⁸

Self-deception plays a crucial role in this process. Manis emphasizes that self-deception is not merely intellectual error. It is the willful suppression of knowledge that conflicts with one's desires—the ability to hide from oneself truths that one does not wish to acknowledge. For creatures who possess this power, belief is not always entirely passive; one's inability to perceive the truth is sometimes due to one's unwillingness to perceive it. And the cumulative effect of repeatedly exercising this power is devastating: it gradually forms in a person the kind of character that is incapable of perceiving the deepest truths of existence—truths about God, about reality, and about oneself.²⁹

The corruption, Manis stresses, extends beyond the intellect to the emotions and desires. It is not merely that self-deceived persons think wrongly about God. They feel wrongly about Him. They hate what they should love. They desire what is destructive and recoil from what is life-giving. Their inner being has been so thoroughly disordered that they genuinely experience God's love as a threat rather than as an invitation. And this is why they cannot repent even in the face of overwhelming evidence that repentance is the only path to happiness: the evidence must be construed, and the construal is tied to acts of the will. A person thoroughly corrupted by self-deception can interpret any piece of evidence in a way that confirms their existing rebellion.

Manis engages with Talbott's counterargument—that surely the experience of suffering in God's presence would eventually "shatter all illusions" and bring even the most hardened sinner to repentance. Talbott is convinced that self-deception is, at most, a temporary barrier. But Manis, drawing on Kvanvig, pushes back. As epistemologists and philosophers of science have recognized, experience alone cannot always teach us where our picture of the world is mistaken. A person can always explain away contrary evidence by introducing further auxiliary hypotheses or by dismissing anomalous experiences as illusory. There is, in principle, no limit to the rationalizations a willfully self-deceived person might employ to preserve their worldview. The pattern may be deeply irrational. But it is possible—and it is willful.³⁰

I find Manis's analysis deeply compelling, and I believe it is consistent with the scriptural testimony about the hardening of the human heart. At the same time, I would add something Manis does not emphasize as strongly: God is not passive in this process. On my view, God does not simply reveal Himself and then wait for the reaction. God actively pursues every soul. He pleads. He reasons. He shows the person the full extent of His love. And as I argued in earlier chapters, He does so not just during the person's earthly life but also after death—during the intermediate state and at the final judgment. The question is whether even God's most intense and persistent love can be resisted indefinitely. Manis leaves this open. Talbott says no. I lean toward the possibility that it can be—and that this is the terrible cost of free will.

Hybrid Views: How the Divine Presence Model Relates to Its Competitors

One of the most valuable aspects of Manis's work for our purposes is his extended analysis of "hybrid views"—positions that combine elements of the divine presence model with elements of other approaches. This analysis reveals that the divine presence model is remarkably versatile. It can be integrated with a variety of different eschatological frameworks—including, significantly, the conditional immortality and postmortem opportunity framework I am defending in this book.

Lewis and Intimations of the Model

Manis begins with C. S. Lewis, the most famous proponent of the choice model. While Lewis is not typically associated with the divine presence model, Manis identifies several passages in Lewis's writings that contain clear intimations of the idea. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis describes both the "fire" and the "comfort" of God's presence: heaven and hell both involve encounter with the same divine reality, but the experience differs depending on one's spiritual condition. More strikingly, in The Great Divorce, Lewis has a character declare that "heaven is reality itself" and that "all that is fully real is Heavenly"—a claim that, while it might seem to reject the divine presence model at first glance, is actually consistent with it. On the divine presence model, heaven and hell are not two different realities. They are two radically different experiences of the same reality: the unveiled presence of God.³¹

Lewis's view is thus best understood as a hybrid—a choice model with significant elements of the divine presence model woven throughout. This is instructive, because it suggests that many thoughtful Christians who formally subscribe to the choice model are actually drawn, perhaps unconsciously, toward the deeper insight that the divine presence model articulates.

Kvanvig and Free Will Annihilationism

Manis also examines the view of philosopher Jonathan Kvanvig, who developed what Manis calls "free will annihilationism" (FWA). On Kvanvig's view, the damned are ultimately annihilated—but not because God destroys them as a punishment. Rather, the damned themselves freely and rationally will to exist no more, and God respects this choice by ceasing to sustain them in being.

Manis shows that Kvanvig's view faces two serious problems that the divine presence model can solve. The first is the question of why the damned would want to cease existing. If hell is merely separation from God—as the choice model suggests—then why not simply continue in existence, separate from God? The divine presence model provides the answer: because the damned are not separated from God. They are in His full, unshielded presence, and they cannot escape it. The suffering is so intense and so inescapable that annihilation seems preferable. The second problem Kvanvig faces is the "arbitrariness problem"—the question of why heaven and annihilation are the only two options, with no intermediate states. Again, the divine presence model provides the answer: once the veil of divine hiddenness is removed, there is no alternative to being in God's presence. There is no neutral zone. There is no "being left alone." The divine presence model thus greatly strengthens Kvanvig's free will annihilationism by providing it with the resources it needs to answer its most pressing objections.³²

Walls and the Misery Paradox

Jerry Walls, another prominent defender of the choice model, has more recently moved significantly in the direction of the divine presence model. In a popular-level book, Walls addresses what he calls "the misery paradox": the puzzle of how the suffering of hell can take place "in the presence of Christ" (as Revelation 14:10 says) if the essence of hell is being separated from God. His resolution draws directly on the core insight of the divine presence model: that fire in the Bible is a common image for the presence of God, not His absence, and that God's presence is experienced very differently by those rightly related to Him than by those who are not. Walls explicitly recognizes the "long theological tradition" of this idea in Eastern Orthodoxy and tentatively endorses the further claim that the images of the lake of fire and the river of the water of life in Revelation 21–22 are connected—both flowing from the same source, the throne of the Lamb.³³

That three of the most prominent defenders of the choice model—Lewis, Kvanvig, and Walls—all incorporate elements of the divine presence model into their own views is, I think, deeply significant. It suggests that the divine presence model captures something true that even its competitors cannot fully avoid.

Talbott and Universalism

The divine presence model also intersects with the universalism of Thomas Talbott. Talbott's view is, in Manis's taxonomy, a "hybrid universalist" version of the divine presence model. Talbott agrees with the core insight that God's presence is inescapable and that the damned suffer in that presence. But he adds two crucial claims: first, that the suffering is always purgative—it always leads to repentance; and second, that this divine intent is never, in any individual case, ultimately thwarted. Everyone eventually repents. Everyone is eventually saved.

Talbott offers a helpful gloss on the divine presence model when he writes about the destruction of the "false self." God, in His love, opposes the false self—the sinful identity with which the unregenerate person identifies. From the perspective of those already crucified in Christ, the destruction of the false self is liberation. But from the perspective of those who cling to the false self, its destruction feels like the destruction of themselves. They encounter their God as a consuming fire and experience His opposition to the false self as wrath and fury.³⁴

Where Manis parts company with Talbott is on whether this purgative process always succeeds. Manis argues—and I agree—that the divine presence model in its "pure" form does not entail universalism. It is consistent with the model that some individuals, through persistent self-deception and willful rebellion, never repent. Their experience of God's presence is unending torment (on Manis's own view) or eventual annihilation (on my view and Baker's). The question of whether universalism is true is a separate question from whether the divine presence model is correct.

Baker and the Hybrid Annihilationist Model

Finally, Manis engages with Sharon Baker's hybrid view, developed in Razing Hell. Baker combines the divine presence model with annihilationism, arguing that the fire of God's presence can have two outcomes: either the person repents and is purified and saved, or—if there is nothing redeemable left in the person—the fire burns away everything and the person is annihilated. This view, as Chapter 23B explores in depth, closely parallels my own. Manis raises a valid critique of Baker's precision on one point: Baker sometimes seems to conflate two different types of annihilation—annihilation as a natural consequence of God's purifying fire consuming all evil in a person, and annihilation as a retributive act of God. The distinction matters philosophically, and I address it in my own framework below.³⁵

Is the Divine Presence Model Biblical? Manis's Appendix and the Scriptural Case

Manis acknowledges with admirable honesty that his primary expertise lies in philosophy, not biblical scholarship. His appendix, titled "Is the Divine Presence Model Biblical?" is self-consciously the work of a layperson in biblical studies, and he explicitly invites biblical scholars to take up and expand the scriptural case he sketches. I view this chapter as, in part, a response to that invitation. But Manis's own preliminary sketch is surprisingly rich, and it deserves careful engagement.³⁶

Close Encounters with God in Scripture

Manis begins with the scriptural record of close encounters with God—theophanies and other moments where human beings experience God revealed to an unusual degree. The pattern he identifies is striking and consistent. When sinful creatures encounter God's presence, the experience is characteristically one of terror, intense self-consciousness of sin, and a sense of being overwhelmed by a reality far greater than themselves.

Consider the examples. When Isaiah finds himself in the presence of the Lord, enthroned in glory with seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy," his immediate reaction is not joy or comfort but devastating self-awareness: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" (Isa. 6:5, ESV). Job's encounter with God produces a similar response: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5–6, ESV). Moses, at the burning bush, "hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God" (Exod. 3:6, ESV). Ezekiel, upon encountering "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord," fell facedown (Ezek. 1:28). The apostle John, seeing the risen Christ in a vision, "fell at his feet as though dead" (Rev. 1:17, ESV). Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration "fell on their faces and were terrified" (Matt. 17:6, ESV). Paul, on the Damascus road, was knocked to the ground by a sudden flash of light (Acts 9:3–4).³⁷

Every one of these encounters involves a partial revelation of God—a temporary lifting of the veil of divine hiddenness. And in every case, the experience is overwhelming. If a partial revelation of God is enough to bring strong men to their knees in terror, what would the full revelation—the complete and permanent removal of the veil—do to someone who has never repented?

Manis is careful to note that the biblical evidence is mixed. There are passages where individuals interact with God without the characteristic elements of terror and self-consciousness—some of Moses's later encounters, for instance, and various prophetic experiences. He does not claim that the scriptural record alone establishes the divine presence model. But he argues that the pattern of terror, self-awareness of sin, and overwhelming awe that characterizes most close encounters with God in Scripture is precisely what the divine presence model predicts—and this constitutes at least indirect support for the model.³⁸

Christ as "the Way" to the Father's Presence

Manis develops a particularly insightful line of argument from 2 Corinthians 3, where Paul writes about a "veil" that covers the hearts of unbelievers. Paul recalls how Moses's face was so radiant after descending from Mount Sinai that the people could not bear to look at it, prompting Moses to wear a veil. Paul then applies this image spiritually: a veil remains on the hearts of those who do not turn to the Lord. "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away" (2 Cor. 3:16, ESV).³⁹

For those who turn to God in repentance, the veil is progressively lifted during this life, and the process of being "transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor. 3:18, ESV) begins. This is sanctification—the gradual preparation of the human soul for the full encounter with God that awaits in the eschaton. Christ is "the Way" to the Father's presence precisely because He is the one through whom this process of inner transformation takes place. By being "yoked" to Christ and "abiding" in Him, believers are gradually formed into the kind of beings who can endure God's full, unshielded presence and experience it as joy rather than torment.⁴⁰

But what of those who refuse this transformation? What of those who persist in hardening their hearts, who never allow the Lord to "circumcise" their hearts—as the Old Testament puts it—so that even unto the Day of Judgment the veil remains? On the divine presence model, such persons will encounter the full presence of God without any preparation, without any inner transformation, without any capacity to receive His love as love. The result is devastating precisely because it is the same encounter that the saints experience as the beatific vision—but received by a soul that has been utterly corrupted by the long practice of self-deception and rebellion.

The Face of God, Light and Darkness, and the Destruction of Hades

Manis further develops several additional biblical motifs that support the divine presence model. He traces the "face of God" motif through Scripture—the repeated theme that seeing God's face is both the ultimate longing of the righteous and the ultimate terror of the wicked. Psalm 34:16 says, "The face of the Lord is against those who do evil." Revelation 6:16 shows the wicked crying out for mountains to fall on them to hide them "from the face of him who is seated on the throne." On the divine presence model, these are not metaphors for something else. They describe exactly what they say: the face of God—His fully revealed presence—is experienced by the wicked as something from which they desperately want to flee but cannot.⁴¹

Manis also connects the divine presence model to the light and darkness motifs that permeate Scripture. God is light (1 John 1:5). Jesus is "the light of the world" (John 8:12). In the New Jerusalem, "the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb" (Rev. 21:23, ESV). Darkness, by contrast, is the realm of those who reject the light—not because the light has been withdrawn, but because they cannot bear it. As Jesus himself said, "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil" (John 3:19, ESV).

Finally, Manis engages with the imagery of the destruction of Hades and Death in Revelation 20:14—"Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire"—and the "river of fire" that flows from God's throne in Daniel 7:10, which Orthodox iconography has traditionally depicted as flowing from the same source as the river of the water of life in Revelation 22:1. On the divine presence model, these are not two different rivers but two different experiences of the same divine reality: the unshielded presence of God, flowing out in love, experienced as life-giving water by those who receive it and as consuming fire by those who resist it.⁴²

Compatibility with Postmortem Salvation: Manis's Remarkable Concession

For the purposes of this book, perhaps the most significant aspect of Manis's work is his explicit acknowledgment that the divine presence model is compatible with postmortem conversion. This concession is all the more striking because Manis himself leans toward the traditional view that the damned suffer eternally—he is not arguing for postmortem salvation. Yet he recognizes that his model is, as he puts it, "flexible enough" to accommodate it.⁴³

Let me quote the relevant passage at some length, because of its importance. In his discussion of hybrid views, Manis writes that the divine presence model "is compatible with all manner of different forms of inclusivism, including those that allow for the possibility of postmortem conversions up to the Day of Judgment." He continues: "The intermediate state, prior to this eschatological milestone, may still be a state of partial divine hiddenness, in which the soul-making process may continue—or even, in some cases, begin."⁴⁴

This is a remarkable set of concessions from a philosopher who is not himself a postmortem opportunity advocate. Let me highlight what Manis is granting here:

First, he acknowledges that the divine presence model is compatible with inclusivism—the view that people can be saved through Christ even without explicit knowledge of Him during their earthly lives. Second, he explicitly allows for postmortem conversions up to the Day of Judgment. Third, he suggests that the intermediate state—the period between physical death and the final judgment—may involve a continuation of the soul-making process, and even its beginning in some cases. This means that on Manis's own terms, a person who never began the process of turning to God during their earthly life could begin that process after death.

Manis further suggests, in a remarkable footnote, that the intermediate state may involve an "ever-increasing divine disclosure"—a progressive lifting of the veil of divine hiddenness as the person approaches the Day of Judgment. The damned, on this picture, are those who "continue in their rebellion through an ever-increasing divine disclosure in the intermediate state, leading up to the Day of Judgment, at which point God is fully revealed and repentance is no longer possible for them."⁴⁵

Think about what this implies. Even on Manis's version of the model—which tends toward eternal conscious suffering rather than conditional immortality—there is a window of opportunity after death during which the unsaved can encounter God in increasing measure and respond in faith. The divine presence model does not merely allow for postmortem opportunity. It naturally suggests it. If the problem of the unsaved is that they have never encountered God's presence in its fullness, and if the intermediate state involves a progressive revelation of that presence, then the intermediate state is precisely the kind of context in which the unsaved could be drawn to repentance.

Where I Build On, Extend, and Diverge from Manis

Having laid out the essential contours of Manis's divine presence model, I now want to show where I agree with Manis, where I extend his work, and where I diverge from it. My view represents what Manis would call a "hybrid"—a combination of the divine presence model with conditional immortality and a universal postmortem offer. I believe this hybrid form is not only consistent with Manis's core insight but actually represents its most coherent and theologically satisfying development.

Where I Agree

I agree with Manis's core insight without reservation: hell is not separation from God but the devastating experience of being in God's full, unshielded presence as an unrepentant sinner. I agree that this model achieves the balance between retribution and restoration that neither traditionalism nor the choice model can manage. I agree that the biblical language of judgment, wrath, and punishment is phenomenologically accurate—it describes how the damned experience God's presence—without reflecting God's intentions or character. I agree that divine hiddenness in this present age serves to preserve human freedom and that the eschaton is the removal of this hiddenness. I agree that self-deception is a powerful explanatory resource for understanding how the damned can persist in rejecting what is clearly in their best interest. And I agree that 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is better read as "destruction from the presence of the Lord" (destruction caused by God's presence) rather than "destruction away from the presence of the Lord" (separation from God).

Where I Extend Manis's Work

I extend Manis's work in three directions that he does not pursue but that his framework naturally supports.

First, I integrate the divine presence model with the postmortem opportunity thesis far more explicitly and comprehensively than Manis does. Manis notes that the model is "flexible enough" to accommodate postmortem conversion. I take this much further. I argue that the divine presence model actually supports and enriches the postmortem opportunity thesis. If the fundamental problem of the unsaved is that they have not yet encountered God in His fullness—either because they lived before Christ, or never heard the gospel, or heard a distorted version of it, or simply were never given a genuine, life-changing encounter with the living God—then the divine presence model provides the perfect framework for understanding how God could continue to pursue them after death. The intermediate state, on this model, is a period of increasing revelation, in which God progressively lifts the veil and draws the unsaved into ever-deeper encounter with Himself. Those who respond to this increasing disclosure in faith can be saved. Those who harden their hearts through ever-increasing self-deception move toward their final confrontation with the fully revealed God at the Day of Judgment.

Second, I draw the connection to near-death experience (NDE) research that I developed in Chapter 5 of this book. NDE experiencers consistently report encounters with a Being of Light whose love is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and inescapable. Some experiencers describe this love as the most beautiful and glorious experience of their existence—they never want it to end. But others describe the encounter as deeply uncomfortable, even agonizing, precisely because the light exposes everything. Every sin, every act of cruelty, every moment of selfishness is laid bare in the presence of this Being of perfect love. The "life review" that many experiencers report—in which they relive their actions from the perspective of those they affected—is experienced as profoundly painful for those who have much to account for. This NDE testimony is remarkably consistent with the divine presence model. The Being of Light does not condemn or attack. The Being simply is—and the experience of being in that presence is determined by who the experiencer is and how they have lived.⁴⁶

Third, I extend Manis's biblical case. As noted above, Manis himself acknowledges that his discussion of the biblical evidence is that of a layperson and invites biblical scholars to develop it further. I have attempted to do so throughout this book—particularly in Chapters 23B (which develops the biblical fire motifs in far greater detail than Baker does) and 23C (which engages the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition in depth). My aim is to provide the scriptural foundation that Manis's philosophical framework needs.

Where I Diverge

My most significant divergence from Manis is on the duration of the suffering of the damned. Manis tends toward eternal conscious suffering—the "pure" form of the divine presence model, in which those who are finally unrepentant experience God's presence as torment forever. I reject this. I hold to conditional immortality: those who finally and irrevocably reject Christ, even after every possible opportunity for repentance—during life, during the dying process, during the intermediate state, and at the final judgment—will be destroyed. They will cease to exist.

On my view, this annihilation is the natural consequence of the purifying fire of God's presence. The fire of God's love destroys evil. In those who repent, the evil within them is burned away and they are saved—"yet so as through fire," as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 3:15. But in those who refuse to repent—those whose entire being has become so thoroughly bound up with their rejection of God that there is nothing left to save—the fire consumes everything. This is not God vindictively destroying them. It is not a retributive act. It is the natural consequence of what happens when unshielded divine love encounters a being constituted entirely by rebellion. The evil is destroyed, and when a person is their evil—when they have so thoroughly identified with their sin that there is no "self" separable from it—then the destruction of the evil is the destruction of the person.

I believe this view resolves the ambiguity that Manis identifies in Baker's hybrid annihilationism. Baker sometimes seems to conflate natural-consequence annihilation with retributive annihilation. On my view, the annihilation is entirely a natural consequence—analogous to wax being consumed by fire. God does not decide to annihilate anyone. He desperately does not want anyone to be annihilated. He pursues every soul with relentless, unfailing love, giving them every possible opportunity to turn to Him. But He will not override free will. And if a person persists in clinging to their "false self"—to use Talbott's helpful phrase—then the fire that would have purified and restored them instead consumes them entirely.⁴⁷

My second divergence from Manis is on the scope of the postmortem offer. Manis merely notes that the model is compatible with postmortem conversion. I argue for something far stronger: that God provides a genuine, meaningful, potentially extended encounter with every unsaved person—not just those who "happen" to encounter Him before death. This encounter may occur during the dying process, during the intermediate state in Hades, or at the final judgment itself. As I argued in Chapter 2, this is who God is—a God of relentless, never-ending love who leaves no one behind without a genuine opportunity to respond to His grace. The divine presence model gives us the philosophical framework for understanding what this encounter looks like: a progressive unveiling of God's presence, calibrated to give each person the maximum opportunity to respond in faith.

Answering Objections to the Divine Presence Model

No serious theological proposal escapes scrutiny, and the divine presence model—particularly as I have adapted it—faces several important objections. Let me address the most significant ones.

Objection 1: "This Is Too Speculative"

Some readers will object that the divine presence model is speculative. We cannot know with certainty what hell is "really like," and constructing elaborate philosophical models about the phenomenology of the afterlife goes beyond what Scripture warrants.

I acknowledge the speculative element. Manis himself is transparent about this, characterizing his project as a "weak theodicy"—a model that shows all the relevant constraints (scriptural, traditional, theological) to be reconcilable under a plausible framework, without claiming certainty that this framework describes exactly what will happen. That is an honest and appropriate level of confidence for a topic where our knowledge is necessarily limited.⁴⁸

However, I would push back against the suggestion that the divine presence model is more speculative than its competitors. Traditionalism speculates about the nature of hell too—it imagines a special place God created for the purpose of punishing sinners, a place somehow outside God's presence, sustained by God's power yet reflecting His wrath rather than His love. The choice model speculates about the psychology of the damned—imagining that they freely and rationally choose eternal separation from God, which is itself a highly speculative claim. Every view of hell involves speculation. The question is which model best accounts for the full range of biblical data, best coheres with God's revealed character, and best satisfies our deepest theological intuitions. On all three counts, I believe the divine presence model excels.

Objection 2: "Where Does Scripture Teach That the Lake of Fire Is God's Presence?"

This objection demands a specific proof-text. Where does the Bible say, in so many words, that the Lake of Fire is God's presence?

The most direct text is Revelation 14:10, which says that those who worship the beast "will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb" (ESV, emphasis added). The torment of the wicked occurs in God's presence—not away from it. This single verse is difficult to reconcile with the choice model's insistence on hell as separation from God, but it fits the divine presence model perfectly.

Beyond this, the biblical evidence is cumulative rather than contained in a single verse. As we have seen: 2 Thessalonians 1:9 teaches that destruction comes from God's presence. The Old Testament repeatedly depicts God as a "consuming fire" (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29). Daniel 7:9–10 describes a "stream of fire" flowing from God's throne. Isaiah 33:14–15 asks, "Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?"—and the answer is the righteous. The pattern of Scripture consistently associates fire with God's presence, not His absence. Chapter 23B develops this biblical theology of fire at length.

Objection 3: "This Sounds Like Purgatory"

If the fire of God's presence can lead to repentance and purification, is this not simply the Catholic doctrine of purgatory by another name?

There are similarities, but the differences are substantial. Catholic purgatory is reserved for those who are already saved—those who die in a state of grace but have not yet been fully purified. On my view, the purifying fire of God's presence is available to the unsaved—those who have not yet accepted Christ. Catholic purgatory involves temporal punishment for sins already forgiven. On my view, the experience is not punishment imposed by God but the natural consequence of encountering divine love as an unrepentant sinner. Catholic purgatory guarantees that everyone who enters it eventually exits. On my view, there is no guarantee—some may persist in rejection and be annihilated. Chapter 29 develops these distinctions at much greater length.

Objection 4: "Doesn't This Undermine Divine Justice?"

If God does not intend hell as a punishment, some will object, then where is divine justice? Does God simply shrug at sin?

Not at all. On the divine presence model, justice is not eliminated—it is reconceived. God's justice is not an attribute that competes with His love. It is an expression of His love. When God's presence exposes the truth about every human life—when every act of cruelty, every lie, every betrayal is laid bare in the light of perfect holiness—that is justice. The wicked do not "get away with" anything. They are confronted with the full reality of who they are and what they have done. For some, that confrontation leads to repentance, which leads to restoration. For others, it leads to deeper entrenchment in self-deception and rebellion, which leads ultimately to destruction. But in either case, justice is done—not by an external imposition of punishment but by the inexorable reality of God's holy presence, which lets nothing remain hidden.

Conclusion: The Inescapable Love of God

We have covered an enormous amount of ground in this chapter. Let me draw the threads together.

R. Zachary Manis's divine presence model offers the most philosophically rigorous and theologically satisfying framework for understanding the nature of hell available in contemporary scholarship. By positioning hell not as separation from God but as the devastating experience of God's unshielded presence by those who have refused to orient their lives toward Him, Manis achieves what neither traditionalism nor the choice model could manage: a balance between the biblical motifs of divine judgment and divine love, in which both are fully and unreservedly affirmed.

On this model, heaven and hell share a common source—the unveiled presence of God, who is Love. The fire of God's presence is the same fire for all. What differs is the experience—and the experience is determined not by God's posture toward the creature but by the creature's posture toward God. The saved, prepared by the process of sanctification, receive God's presence as the beatific vision. The unsaved, corrupted by the long practice of self-deception and rebellion, experience the same presence as consuming judgment.

The model elegantly explains why divine hiddenness exists in this present age (to preserve human freedom), what happens when that hiddenness is removed in the eschaton (full confrontation with divine reality), why the damned persist in their rebellion (self-deception and the corruption of the will), and how the biblical language of judgment and wrath can be reconciled with the claim that God loves every person without exception (the language is phenomenologically accurate from the perspective of the damned, but ontologically, the suffering is a natural consequence of sin encountering holiness, not a punishment God inflicts).

Most importantly for the purposes of this book, Manis himself acknowledges that the divine presence model is compatible with postmortem salvation. The intermediate state may be a period of continuing or even beginning soul-making. The model naturally supports the idea that God progressively unveils Himself to the unsaved after death, giving them genuine opportunity to respond in faith.

I have taken Manis's framework and integrated it with conditional immortality and a universal postmortem offer. The result, I believe, is a coherent and powerful eschatological vision. God loves every person He has ever created. He pursues every person after death with that same love. He gives every person—the unevangelized, the pseudoevangelized, the apostate, the infant who died before understanding—a genuine, meaningful encounter with the fire of His love. Those who respond in faith are purified and saved. Those who persist in rejecting God, even after the fullest possible revelation of His love, are not tortured forever but are consumed by the very fire that would have saved them—annihilated, not out of divine spite but as the natural consequence of sin being destroyed by holiness.

God's love is inescapable. And that—whether it leads to salvation or to destruction—is the most beautiful and the most terrifying truth in all of theology.

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