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

Introduction

In the previous chapter, we surveyed the broad landscape of what I have been calling the "divine presence model" of hell—the idea that hell is not separation from God but rather the devastating experience of being in God's full, unshielded presence as an unrepentant sinner. We saw how this idea weaves together threads from Eastern Orthodox theology, from Scripture, and from the author's own framework of conditional immortality with postmortem opportunity. Now it is time to go deeper. In this chapter, we turn to the most philosophically rigorous defense of the divine presence model available today: R. Zachary Manis's remarkable book, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell.¹

Manis is a philosopher, not a biblical scholar or a systematic theologian, and he is honest about that throughout his work. But his philosophical precision is exactly what the divine presence model has needed. Before Manis, the idea that hell might be the experience of God's own presence was scattered across Orthodox homilies, occasional remarks in C. S. Lewis, and popular-level treatments like Sharon Baker's Razing Hell. No one had sat down and built a careful, sustained philosophical argument for the view, examined every objection, and shown how it compares with its rivals. Manis did exactly that. And the result is, in my judgment, the single most important contribution to the philosophical discussion of hell in recent decades.

My thesis in this chapter is straightforward: Manis's divine presence model provides the most philosophically rigorous and theologically satisfying framework for understanding the nature of hell. And when we integrate it with the conditional immortality and postmortem opportunity theology that I have been developing throughout this book, it yields a powerful and coherent eschatological vision—one that honors the full witness of Scripture, the best of the Christian tradition, and the character of a God who is, above all, love.

Let me be clear about what this chapter does and does not do. Chapter 23 provided the overview and synthesis. Chapter 23B will develop Sharon Baker's biblical theology of fire as God's presence. Chapter 23C will trace the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition through Alexandre Kalomiros's "River of Fire." This chapter does the philosophical heavy lifting. We will walk through the architecture of Manis's argument step by step, examining his key insights, exploring his treatment of difficult questions, and then showing where I build on his work and where I respectfully diverge.

Situating the Model: Why We Need a New Approach

To understand why Manis develops the divine presence model, we need to understand the problem he is trying to solve. Manis surveys the existing options for understanding hell and finds each one deeply unsatisfying. His analysis is organized around what he calls a "tripartite structure" of views, categorized by the final destiny of the damned: eternal suffering, annihilation, or universal reconciliation.² Within the "eternal suffering" category, he identifies two very different approaches: traditionalism and the "choice model."

Traditionalism—the view most Christians grew up hearing—says that hell is a retributive punishment that God imposes on sinners for their earthly wickedness. God is the Judge, the verdict is guilty, and the sentence is eternal conscious torment. The problem, as Manis painstakingly demonstrates in the first half of his book, is that this view faces devastating philosophical and theological objections. He identifies three major problems that plague traditionalism.³

The first is the problem of justice. How can any finite sin—no matter how terrible—deserve infinite punishment? If I steal a candy bar, no just court would sentence me to life in prison. The punishment must somehow be proportional to the crime. But eternal conscious torment is infinitely disproportionate to anything a finite human being could do in a finite lifetime. The second is the problem of love. If God truly loves every human being and desires their highest good (as Scripture repeatedly affirms), how can He consign anyone to endless suffering? A loving parent does not torture a rebellious child forever. The third is what Manis calls the doxastic problem—a set of difficulties that arise from actually believing the doctrine of eternal torment. If I genuinely believe that rejecting God leads to infinite suffering, then my decision to follow God is essentially coerced. A threat of that magnitude leaves no room for free choice. It is like someone holding a gun to your head and demanding that you love them.⁴

But Manis presses further into the doxastic problem. Beyond coercion, he identifies what he calls the "problem of neighbor love." If I genuinely believe my neighbor is heading for eternal torment, how can I live a normal life? How can I enjoy a sunset, eat a meal, play with my children—knowing that the person next door may be heading for unimaginable, never-ending agony? The sheer psychological weight of truly believing in eternal conscious torment should, Manis argues, be paralyzing. There is also the "problem of worship": how can the redeemed in heaven worship God joyfully while knowing that millions of people—including, perhaps, their own loved ones—are being tormented forever? As Manis demonstrates, these are not minor quibbles. They represent deep tensions within any view that holds to eternal conscious torment as an arbitrary, divinely imposed punishment.

The choice model, championed most famously by C. S. Lewis and developed philosophically by Jerry Walls, avoids many of these problems. On this view, hell is not a punishment God imposes but a state that people freely choose. The damned want to be separated from God. God simply respects their freedom. Lewis captured this beautifully: the doors of hell are locked from the inside.⁵ This is an attractive view. It preserves human freedom, avoids making God look like a tyrant, and explains hell without making God the torturer. But Manis shows that the choice model has its own serious problems. It struggles to account for the strong biblical themes of divine wrath, judgment, and the fear of the Lord. The Bible does not describe the Day of Judgment as a quiet moment where people politely choose to walk away from God. It describes fire, terror, weeping, and the wrath of the Lamb.⁶ The choice model tends to smooth over these uncomfortable themes—and in doing so, it fails to do justice to the full scriptural witness.

There is another problem with the choice model that Manis identifies—one that is often overlooked. If hell is simply self-chosen separation from God, and if the damned prefer their miserable independence to the joy of God's presence, then why doesn't God simply annihilate them? If someone genuinely and irrevocably prefers nonexistence to being with God, what reason would a loving God have for keeping them in existence against their wishes? The choice model, in its pure form, struggles to explain why the damned are not simply annihilated. As Manis shows, the most prominent defenders of the choice model—including Lewis and Jonathan Kvanvig—end up blurring the line between the choice model and annihilationism in ways that undermine the choice model's claim to preserve the traditional doctrine of eternal suffering.

Universalism, of course, solves the problem of love beautifully: everyone is eventually saved. But as I have argued throughout this book (see Chapter 30), universalism faces its own serious problems with the weight of Christian tradition and with certain scriptural texts. And annihilationism—the view I hold regarding the final fate of the impenitent—shares some of the strengths and weaknesses of the other views, depending on how it is developed (as we discussed in Chapter 31).

Manis's conclusion after surveying this landscape is striking. He writes that traditionalism "compromises the doctrines of divine goodness and love," universalism "diverges too far from Christian tradition," the choice model "fails to do justice to the full scriptural account," and annihilationism shares various weaknesses of the other views.⁷ What is needed, he argues, is an entirely new approach—one that combines the best features of each view while avoiding their worst problems. That new approach is the divine presence model.

The Core Insight: Hell as God's Unshielded Presence

The central claim of the divine presence model is breathtaking in its simplicity: heaven and hell are not different places. They are different experiences of the same reality—the full, unveiled presence of God. For the saved, being in God's unshielded presence is heaven: warmth, glory, joy, the fulfillment of every longing. For the damned, that very same presence is hell: torment, anguish, and devastation. Not because God wants to torment anyone, but because sinful creatures simply cannot be in the full presence of a holy God without devastating consequences.⁸

Manis uses a powerful analogy. Think of a piece of wax brought too close to a raging fire. The fire does not intend to destroy the wax. The fire is simply being what it is—hot, radiant, blazing with energy. But the wax, by its very nature, cannot survive proximity to that kind of heat. It melts. It is consumed. The destruction is not an act of malice on the part of the fire. It is simply what happens when something as fragile as wax encounters something as powerful as flame.⁹

Now, God is not literally a fire (though Scripture often describes Him that way, as we will explore in detail in Chapter 23B). The analogy is meant to capture a key idea: the destruction that sinners experience in God's presence is not arbitrary. It is not something God chooses to inflict, the way a judge might choose a prison sentence from a menu of options. It is the natural, inevitable result of what happens when a sinful creature encounters the infinite holiness and love of God without any barrier of protection. The doctrine of hell, on this view, is not about God threatening humans with artificial punishments for noncompliance. It is a divine warning about what it will be like for the unrighteous when God's presence becomes inescapable.¹⁰

This is where the divine presence model achieves something remarkable. It preserves the biblical themes of divine wrath and judgment (which the choice model struggles with) without making God into a tyrant who arbitrarily tortures people (which is the problem with traditionalism). On this model, God's "wrath" is real—the damned genuinely experience it as wrath, as punishment, as vengeance. But it is not something God chooses to do. It is the natural consequence of being a sinful creature in the full presence of an infinitely holy God. As Manis puts it, God's aim is always toward restoration, and His intention is the salvation of every person. But the damned experience the great climactic act of God's saving work—the revealing of Christ in glory at the end of the age—as a retributive punishment instead.¹¹

This is a subtle and important distinction. Think of it this way. The same sun that makes flowers bloom will scorch a plant that has no roots. The sun is not being malicious toward the rootless plant. The sun is simply doing what the sun does—shining. But the effect on the plant depends entirely on the plant's condition. In the same way, God's presence—which is His love, His holiness, His glory—produces radically different effects depending on the spiritual condition of the person who encounters it.

Roots in Eastern Orthodoxy

Manis is careful to point out that the divine presence model is not a new invention. Though it has been "largely—and, in my judgment, lamentably—absent from the contemporary philosophical discussion of the problem of hell," it is an ancient idea, prominent in Eastern Orthodox Christianity for centuries.¹² He cites two succinct descriptions from contemporary Orthodox theologians. Andrew Louth writes that the ultimate state of all human beings after final judgment is to behold God's glorious love. For those whose deepest desire is longing for God, this is ultimate bliss. But for those whose deepest desire opposes God, their inmost longing will be eternally frustrated—and they will experience eternal torment.¹³ And Wendy Paula Nicholson notes that fire in Orthodox theology is nothing other than the uncreated Light of God—experienced as love and blessedness by those rightly related to Him, and as bitterness and torment by those who are not.¹⁴

Manis traces intimations of the divine presence model through several towering figures of church history. St. Isaac of Syria (also known as Isaac of Nineveh), the seventh-century mystic who will feature prominently in Chapter 23C, wrote that the sorrow caused by sin against love is more piercing than any torment, and that it is wrong to say that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of God's love. Rather, love acts on them in two ways: it becomes a source of suffering for the condemned and a source of joy for the blessed.¹⁵ Symeon the New Theologian urged believers to surrender to the Lord because they cannot withstand Him or flee from His face.¹⁶ Even Martin Luther, commenting on the Psalms, wrote that the "fiery oven is ignited merely by the unbearable appearance of God and endures eternally"—the ungodly will "feel the power of His presence, which they will not be able to bear, and yet will be forced to bear."¹⁷

What Manis has given us, then, is not the creation of a new idea but the philosophical articulation and defense of an ancient one. As he puts it, his goal is to lay the philosophical foundation for a view that is "the echo of an ancient" tradition "in a contemporary discussion."¹⁸ And he does so with remarkable skill. (We will explore the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition in much greater depth in Chapter 23C, through the lens of Alexandre Kalomiros's groundbreaking essay "The River of Fire.")

Divine Omnipresence and Divine Hiddenness

One of Manis's most brilliant moves is to connect the divine presence model to the well-known philosophical problem of divine hiddenness. If God exists, why does He seem so hidden? Why don't we all experience His presence clearly and unmistakably? Skeptics have long used divine hiddenness as an argument against God's existence. But Manis turns this problem into evidence for the divine presence model.

Here is his argument. On the divine presence model, to be in the full, unshielded presence of God as a sinner would be devastating. It would be hell. So God, in His mercy and grace, partially conceals His presence during our earthly lives. He does this not because He does not care about us, but precisely because He does care. Divine hiddenness is not a sign of God's absence. It is a sign of His loving restraint.¹⁹

Think of it this way. If you had a terrible disease that could only be cured by gradually increasing doses of a powerful medicine, a good doctor would not inject you with the full dose on day one. That would kill you. The doctor would start small, increasing the dosage as your body adapted. In the same way, God reveals Himself gradually. He meets each person where they are, revealing Himself to the degree appropriate to that person's spiritual condition. Too much revelation too soon would overwhelm us. As Manis observes, knowledge of God is inextricably tied to self-knowledge: to truly know God is to see ourselves as we really are in relation to Him. And Scripture warns that the human heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). If we were faced with too much truth about ourselves all at once, the result would very likely be despair.²⁰

This explanation of divine hiddenness is, in my view, far more satisfying than anything offered by the standard views of hell. Traditionalism cannot adequately explain why God hides, because on that view, God wants people to know about hell (it is the threatened punishment that motivates obedience). The choice model can explain hiddenness in terms of preserving freedom, but it cannot explain the biblical descriptions of God's presence as terrifying and overwhelming. The divine presence model explains both: God is hidden because full disclosure of His presence would be devastating to sinful creatures, and the eschaton—the end of the age—is the removal of this hiddenness, the moment when God is fully revealed to all.²¹

There is a further dimension to this that Manis develops beautifully. On the divine presence model, salvation itself can be understood as the process by which we are changed from creatures who would experience God's unshielded presence as torment into creatures who experience it as joy. Salvation is not merely a legal declaration (though it includes that). It is not merely a ticket to heaven. It is a transformation of our entire being—what the Orthodox tradition calls theosis, or divinization—so that we become the kind of creatures who can stand in God's full presence and thrive. The process of sanctification in this life is the beginning of that transformation. And divine hiddenness during our earthly existence is what makes this gradual transformation possible. If God revealed Himself fully to us from the start, we would be destroyed before we ever had the chance to be healed. God hides Himself so that He can save us. It is an act of mercy, not indifference.

This has profound implications for how we think about the process of coming to know God. Many Christians have experienced periods of spiritual dryness—times when God feels distant, silent, absent. On the divine presence model, these experiences can be understood not as God abandoning us but as God carefully calibrating the degree of His self-revelation to what we can bear at that stage of our spiritual growth. Just as a good surgeon does not expose a wound to full sunlight until it has begun to heal, God does not expose our souls to the full intensity of His presence until we are ready. The gradual increase in our awareness of God's presence—what the mystics call the "spiritual life"—is the process of our souls being prepared for the day when God will be "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).

Manis cites a stunning passage from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity that, despite Lewis's usual allegiance to the choice model, veers remarkably close to the divine presence model:

God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. . . . For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.²²

Lewis's language here—"irresistible love" for some and "irresistible horror" for others, produced by the same encounter with "God without disguise"—is precisely the logic of the divine presence model. And notice Lewis's explanation of why God has not yet done this: He tarries, giving people time to come to Him voluntarily before the unveiling that will make voluntary choice impossible. This is exactly what the divine presence model predicts.

The Phenomenology of Encountering God: Rudolf Otto and the Numinous

One of the most fascinating sections of Manis's book is his engagement with the phenomenology of religious experience—that is, the question of what it actually feels like to encounter God. Here he draws on Rudolf Otto's classic work, The Idea of the Holy, as explained through the lens of philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams.²³

Otto identified several characteristic feelings that accompany encounters with the "numinous"—the holy, the sacred, the divine. Adams helpfully organized these feelings into a schema. First, there is the tremendum—the experience of trembling, dread, and awe. When human beings encounter God, they feel a paralyzing fear, a sense of being radically weak and impotent in relation to something overwhelmingly powerful. In Anselm's words, we are "almost nothing" before an infinite ocean of being. In biblical language, "hearts melt" and "strength drains out." We feel ourselves on the verge of being ruined or annihilated.²⁴

Second, there is the mysterium—a combination of anxiety and stupor on the one hand, and powerful attraction on the other. We feel at a loss for words, overwhelmed by the "wholly other." And yet we are drawn toward it like moths to a flame. Third, there is the augustus—the experience of our own profaneness, uncleanness, and sinfulness in the presence of the pure and holy.²⁵

Manis argues that this phenomenology fits the divine presence model like a glove. If the model is correct, then encounters with God in this life—even partial, veiled encounters—should produce exactly these feelings: fear, dread, overwhelming awe, a sense of one's own unworthiness and sinfulness, and yet also a powerful attraction. And that is precisely what we find, both in Scripture and in the reports of countless mystics and ordinary believers throughout history. The biblical record is replete with examples: Moses hiding his face at the burning bush (Exod. 3:6), Isaiah crying out "Woe is me! For I am lost" when he sees the Lord (Isa. 6:5), the Israelites at Sinai begging Moses to speak to them rather than God, "lest we die" (Exod. 20:19), Peter falling at Jesus' feet and saying "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8). These are not the reactions of people who find God absent. These are the reactions of people who have come too close to a fire they are not yet ready to fully endure.²⁶

There is also a deeper, metaphysical dimension here that Manis is careful to preserve. The choice model tends to explain hell in purely psychological terms—the damned feel bad because of relational dynamics, like the way you might feel terrible at a party where everyone you have hurt is present. But Manis insists that the suffering of hell involves something beyond mere psychology. The metaphysical realities can only be "grasped dimly and expressed only analogically, being for the most part beyond our ken." Hence the biblical language of fire, unapproachable light, wax melting, the righteous shining like the sun—these are metaphors pointing to realities that are partly familiar (like guilt and shame) and partly utterly mysterious.²⁷

Between Natural Punishment and Retributive Punishment

One of Manis's most important contributions is his careful analysis of the phenomenology of hell—that is, what hell feels like versus what hell is. On the divine presence model, hell functions as something "in between" a natural punishment and a retributive punishment.²⁸

Let me explain this distinction. A natural punishment is a consequence that flows inevitably from the nature of the act itself. If you stick your hand in a fire, you get burned—not because someone decided that fire-touching should be punished with burns, but because that is simply what fire does to flesh. A retributive punishment, by contrast, is artificially imposed by an authority. If you steal something, a judge sentences you to prison—but the connection between stealing and prison is not natural or inevitable. The judge chose that punishment from a range of options.

Here is where it gets interesting. On the divine presence model, hell is ontologically (in terms of what it really is) closer to a natural punishment. The suffering of the damned flows inevitably from the nature of what it means to be a sinful creature in the full presence of a holy God. God did not choose this particular form of suffering from a menu of options. It is simply what happens, by metaphysical necessity, when wax meets fire. God does not intend His presence to cause suffering. His aim is always salvation.²⁹

But phenomenologically—that is, from the perspective of those who experience it—hell feels like retributive punishment. The damned experience it as divine wrath, as judgment, as vengeance. From their point of view, it is punishment being inflicted on them. And this is why the Bible uses the language of wrath and judgment to describe hell. The biblical descriptions are phenomenologically accurate. They describe what hell feels like from the inside.³⁰

This distinction allows the divine presence model to thread the needle between traditionalism and the choice model. It preserves the biblical language of wrath and judgment (which traditionalism rightly emphasizes) without making God the arbitrary inflicter of suffering (which is traditionalism's fatal flaw). And it preserves the idea that hell is fundamentally a consequence rather than an imposed punishment (which the choice model rightly emphasizes) without denying that the damned experience it as imposed (which is the choice model's weakness). The divine presence model achieves a balance that neither rival can.

The Fear of the Lord Reconsidered

This brings us to one of the most important biblical themes that Manis's model illuminates: the fear of the Lord. Scripture repeatedly tells us that "the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 9:10). But what does it mean to "fear" God? Traditionalists interpret this as fear of retributive punishment—we should be terrified of what God will do to us if we disobey. Proponents of the choice model tend to downplay or redefine the fear of the Lord entirely, sometimes reducing it to mere "reverence" or "respect," because on their view, hell is not something God inflicts. Manis argues that both approaches are inadequate.

On the divine presence model, the fear of the Lord is something far more profound than either option suggests. It is the proper response of a sinful creature who recognizes what it would mean to stand in God's full, unshielded presence while still carrying the corruption of sin. It is the kind of fear you would feel standing at the edge of a blazing furnace—not because the furnace is malicious, but because you know what fire does to flesh. The fear is real. The danger is real. But the danger does not come from God's hostility. It comes from the mismatch between our fallen condition and God's overwhelming holiness.⁵⁵

This understanding of the fear of the Lord preserves what is right in the traditional reading—the fear is genuine, not merely metaphorical respect—while avoiding the theological distortions that come from picturing God as a tyrant issuing threats. God is not threatening us when He tells us to fear Him. He is warning us. He is telling us the truth about what His unshielded presence will mean for those who remain in their sin. It is the warning of a loving parent who says, "Don't touch the stove—it will burn you." The stove is not angry. The stove is not vindictive. The stove is simply hot. And you are simply fragile.

Manis draws an illuminating connection here to the passage in 2 Corinthians 2:15–16, where Paul writes that "we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life." The same aroma—the fragrance of Christ—produces opposite effects in different people. This is the logic of the divine presence model in miniature. The same reality (God's presence) produces opposite experiences (life and death, joy and torment) depending on the spiritual condition of the person encountering it.⁵⁶

2 Thessalonians 1:9: Destruction from the Presence of the Lord

One of the most exegetically important moments in Manis's book is his treatment of 2 Thessalonians 1:9. This verse is often cited as a proof text for the traditional view that hell involves separation from God. The ESV renders it: "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." On the traditional reading, the damned are banished away from God's presence. But Manis argues—following Thomas Talbott's careful exegetical work—that this translation is deeply misleading.³¹

The key Greek phrase is apo prosōpou tou kyriou (ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ κυρίου). The preposition apo (ἀπό) can mean either "away from" or "from" in the causal sense—that is, "proceeding from" or "caused by." Talbott demonstrates that the context strongly favors the causal reading. He points to Acts 3:19, which uses identical Greek wording: "Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord" (apo prosōpou tou kyriou). Here, apo clearly means "proceeding from"—the refreshing comes from God's presence. No one would translate Acts 3:19 as "refreshing that comes from being away from God's presence." That would make no sense.³²

The parallel is powerful. Just as God's presence is the causal source of refreshment for the obedient (Acts 3:19), God's presence is the causal source of destruction for the disobedient (2 Thess. 1:9). The destruction comes from the Lord's presence, not from being excluded from it. As Talbott observes, translations like the RSV's "eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord" inject an idea into the text that is simply not there in the Greek. The idea of being "excluded" or "shut out" is added by translators who already assume that hell means separation from God. But the text itself says no such thing.³³

Manis considers Talbott's treatment of this verse "astute" and concludes that it "demonstrates that there is significant biblical support for the divine presence model."³⁴ The implication is striking: arguably the clearest reference to hell in the Pauline epistles does not teach that hell is separation from God. It teaches that hell is destruction caused by God's presence. This is precisely what the divine presence model claims. (For a fuller treatment of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 in context, see the discussion in Chapter 23 and the broader analysis of aiōnios in Chapter 20.)

The Aiōnios Question

Manis also makes an important contribution to the discussion of aiōnios (αἰώνιος), the Greek word traditionally translated "eternal" in passages like Matthew 25:46 ("these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life"). As I argued at length in Chapter 20, the word aiōnios does not inherently mean "everlasting" or "without end." Its root meaning relates to an aiōn (αἰών)—an age or era—and it can denote something that pertains to an age, belongs to the age to come, or has the quality of the divine.³⁵

Manis approaches this question from a philosophical angle rather than a strictly lexical one, but his contribution is valuable nonetheless. He observes that aiōnios in Matthew 25:46 can be read as denoting a divine quality—something "pertaining to God" or "of the age to come"—rather than a temporal duration. On this reading, the "eternal punishment" and "eternal life" of Matthew 25:46 are both aiōnios not because they are both literally endless but because they both belong to the eschatological age, the age when God is fully revealed. The punishment is aiōnios because it is divine punishment—punishment that flows from the age to come, from God's unveiled presence. The life is aiōnios because it is divine life—life in the full presence of God.³⁶

This reading supports the author's broader argument (developed in Chapter 20) that the traditional translation of "eternal" in these passages is misleading. The focus of aiōnios is on the quality and source of the life and the punishment (both are divine, both belong to the coming age), not necessarily on their temporal duration. This is significant because it means that the divine presence model is not committed to the claim that hell lasts literally forever. It is compatible with conditional immortality (the impenitent are eventually annihilated) as well as with the traditional view of eternal suffering.

Compatibility with Postmortem Salvation

Now we come to what I consider the most important section of this chapter for our purposes. One of the most remarkable features of Manis's divine presence model is its explicit compatibility with postmortem conversion. This is not something I am reading into his work. Manis himself says it clearly.

After discussing the question of whether fates are permanently sealed at the Day of Judgment, Manis acknowledges that the divine presence model is "flexible enough to be able to take advantage of either" option. It can accommodate the idea that divine disclosure permanently fixes people in their trajectories—or it can "be developed as an account of purgatory, as well as an account of heaven and hell, holding that divine disclosure produces in sinners a kind of suffering that can possibly lead to repentance and sanctification, if only they will receive it as such."³⁷

Manis goes further. He 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 then offers a striking description of the intermediate state—the period between death and the final judgment:

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.³⁸

Let the significance of that sink in. A philosopher writing from within the framework of eternal conscious experience (not conditional immortality, not universalism) explicitly acknowledges that the divine presence model can accommodate postmortem conversion. The intermediate state between death and the Day of Judgment could be a time when God continues to work in the souls of the departed—gradually revealing Himself, calling them to repentance, pursuing them with the same love He showed during their earthly lives. For some, the soul-making process that should have begun on earth might even begin after death.

Consider what this means for the framework I have been developing throughout this book. If hell is the experience of God's unshielded presence, and if God's desire is always the salvation of every person, and if the intermediate state is a time of partial divine hiddenness where soul-making can continue—then the postmortem opportunity falls naturally out of the model. God gradually reveals Himself to the departed, giving them time and space to respond. Those who are receptive to His love are progressively healed and drawn closer. Those who resist are given further opportunities—during the intermediate state, at the judgment, even (on my view) in the Lake of Fire itself. The divine presence model provides the philosophical scaffolding for exactly the kind of postmortem pursuit of the lost that I have been arguing God undertakes.

Manis also offers a fascinating suggestion about why God maintains divine hiddenness in the first place. On the divine presence model, God's intention in remaining partially hidden in this life is to cultivate conditions that are maximally conducive to the success of the soul-making process. God meets a person where he or she is, revealing Himself to the degree appropriate to that person's condition, "in a gradual way that does not overwhelm or undermine creaturely freedom."³⁹ If this is true of earthly life, I see no reason why it would not also be true of the intermediate state. The same God who carefully calibrates His self-revelation during our time on earth would surely do the same after death—gradually increasing the disclosure of His presence, giving each soul the time and grace it needs to respond.

Manis even speculates about what this gradual disclosure might look like. In a remarkably suggestive footnote, he writes that "perhaps the damned 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."⁴⁰ This picture of progressive revelation in the intermediate state—with God slowly, lovingly, patiently increasing the degree of His self-disclosure—is deeply consistent with the view I have been arguing throughout this book. God does not give up on people when they die. He continues to reveal Himself, continues to call, continues to love.

Hybrid Views: How the Model Relates to Baker, Lewis, Walls, and Talbott

One of the most valuable sections of Manis's book is his careful analysis of what he calls "hybrid views"—positions that combine elements of the divine presence model with other views of hell. This taxonomy is extraordinarily useful for understanding the landscape of options, and it helps clarify where my own position fits.

Sharon Baker's Hybrid (Divine Presence + Annihilationism). Baker develops a view in Razing Hell that combines the divine presence model with annihilationism. She argues that fire in Scripture "comes from God, surrounds God, and is God," so that entering God's full presence is like entering a fiery furnace. The fire purifies by burning away wickedness. For those who repent, this leads to restoration. For those who have nothing good left—whose entire being is bound up with their rejection of God—the fire burns away everything and they are annihilated.⁴¹ Manis classifies Baker's view as a hybrid of non-retributive annihilationism and the divine presence model, and he finds it largely compelling, though he notes that Baker conflates two different types of annihilation: the natural consequence of purification (nothing is left) and retributive destruction (God destroys the person as punishment).⁴² I agree with Manis's critique here. My own view resolves this ambiguity clearly: annihilation is the natural consequence of God's purifying fire removing all evil from a person whose entire being was bound up with their rejection of God. It is not retributive. It is simply what happens. (We will examine Baker's work in full detail in Chapter 23B.)

C. S. Lewis's Intimations. As we saw above, Lewis's description of "God without disguise" striking "irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature" veers close to the divine presence model. Manis also notes Lewis's famous remark in The Great Divorce that the damned experience reality as "solid" and painful, while for the blessed it is glorious. Though Lewis is typically classified as a choice-model proponent, Manis shows that elements of the divine presence model surface repeatedly in Lewis's writings, particularly when Lewis discusses divine hiddenness.⁴³

Jerry Walls's Purgatorial View. Among defenders of the choice model, Walls offers what Manis calls "perhaps the clearest endorsement of key elements of the divine presence model." Walls explicitly recognizes the long Orthodox tradition of this idea and tentatively endorses the claim that the lake of fire and the river of the water of life (from Revelation 21–22) are linked—both flowing from the same source, the throne of the Lamb. As Walls writes, our freedom allows us to refuse God's love, but "if that is our choice, his glorious love will be experienced like a burning fire rather than 'the spring of the water of life' that will deeply quench our thirst."⁴⁴

Thomas Talbott's Universalist Hybrid. Talbott develops a hybrid of universalism and the divine presence model. He fully appreciates the implications of his exegesis of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (discussed above) and embraces the idea that the lake of fire represents the experience of God's presence. But as a universalist, Talbott insists that this experience is always ultimately purgatorial—everyone eventually repents. Manis agrees with much of Talbott's analysis but parts company on universalism. What is inconsistent with the "pure" divine presence model, Manis argues, is the claim that God's intent to bring sinners to repentance can never, in any individual case, be finally thwarted.⁴⁵

The fact that elements of the divine presence model appear in the works of Lewis, Walls, Talbott, and Baker—thinkers who otherwise hold very different views of hell—is striking evidence of the model's explanatory power. As Manis observes, the divine presence model seems to be an idea that many careful thinkers are drawn toward, even when their explicit theological commitments point in other directions.⁴⁶

Self-Deception, the Pharisees, and Why Some Reject God's Love

A natural question arises at this point: if God's presence is so powerful, so overwhelmingly real, why would anyone continue to reject Him? Why wouldn't every sinner, upon encountering the full reality of God's love, simply collapse in repentance?

Manis addresses this question at length, and his answer draws on the concept of self-deception—a theme he develops in conversation with Søren Kierkegaard.⁴⁷ The key insight is that a person's descent into evil shapes their beliefs and desires in such a way that repentance becomes increasingly undesirable, and eventually psychologically impossible, for those who willfully persist in it. Self-deception entrenches over time. The person who consistently chooses evil gradually loses the ability to see it as evil. They reinterpret reality to justify their choices. They construct elaborate internal narratives that cast themselves as the hero and God as the villain.

Manis offers several possibilities for why the divine presence might not lead to universal repentance. Perhaps the level of suffering is so great that it renders any attempt at repentance coerced rather than free. Perhaps the damned cannot come to love and trust a God whose presence they experience as tormenting. Perhaps the presence of God, in some mysterious way, "inflames" whatever vice remains in a person's soul, exacerbating rather than resolving their rebellion.⁴⁸

Manis draws a powerful illustration from the Gospels: Jesus's encounters with the Pharisees. It is a striking feature of the gospel narratives that Jesus's words and presence elicit such wildly different reactions. "Sinners"—prostitutes, tax collectors, the morally broken—are drawn to Jesus, convicted, and transformed. The Pharisees—who consider themselves righteous—are repelled, offended, and driven to murderous rage.⁴⁹ The same Jesus who draws the sinner to repentance drives the self-righteous into deeper self-deception. The same light that heals the humble blinds the proud. This, Manis suggests, is a preview of the final judgment: the same presence of God that is eternal joy for the saved is eternal torment for those who refuse to see themselves as they truly are.

I find this analysis deeply compelling, though I would add an important nuance from my own framework. I believe that God's postmortem pursuit of the lost is far more extensive and patient than Manis himself suggests. Even those who are deeply self-deceived—those whose lives have been built on layers upon layers of denial—will encounter God's love in the intermediate state and at the final judgment. And God, who knows every heart perfectly, will know exactly how to reach each person. He will strip away the layers of self-deception gently, lovingly, persistently. Many who seemed hopelessly hardened on earth may respond to the overwhelming reality of God's love when it is revealed without any earthly distraction or deception. But I also agree with Manis—and against the universalists—that some may persist in their rejection even then. The capacity for self-deception may, in some cases, be bottomless. And God will not override free will.

The Kierkegaardian dimension of Manis's analysis deserves special attention here. Kierkegaard understood that self-deception is not a simple intellectual error that can be corrected with better information. It is a deep, structural orientation of the will—a determined refusal to see what is plainly before one's eyes. The self-deceived person does not merely lack knowledge. They resist knowledge. They build an elaborate interior fortress against the truth, and each time the truth threatens to break through, they reinforce the walls. This is why Kierkegaard described the ultimate form of despair as the "despair of defiance"—the state of a person who knows, at some level, that they are living in opposition to God, but who refuses to surrender. They would rather be miserable on their own terms than joyful on God's terms. As Kierkegaard puts it, the self "in despair wills to be itself" rather than allowing God to remake it.⁵⁷

On the divine presence model, this Kierkegaardian insight is given cosmic significance. The final judgment is the moment when all self-deception is stripped away—not by an act of divine force, but by the sheer reality of God's presence. In God's light, we see ourselves as we truly are. The comfortable lies we have told ourselves about our own goodness, our justifications for cruelty and indifference, our rationalizations for rejecting love—all of these dissolve in the presence of the One who is Truth itself. For those who are willing to face what they see, this is the beginning of healing. The shame and sorrow they feel are the birth pangs of repentance. But for those who have so thoroughly identified themselves with their rebellion that they cannot bear to see the truth, the experience is unbearable. They cannot face themselves. They cannot face God. And yet God's presence is inescapable. This is hell.

Manis's Biblical Appendix: An Invitation We Accept

Manis closes his book with an extended appendix titled "Is the Divine Presence Model Biblical?" He is refreshingly honest about his limitations here: he is a philosopher, not a biblical scholar, and he explicitly invites those with biblical training to develop the scriptural case further.⁵⁰ This book is, in part, an answer to that invitation.

Nevertheless, Manis's biblical survey is suggestive and valuable. He highlights the scriptural record of close encounters with God—Moses at the burning bush, Isaiah in the temple, the Israelites at Sinai—all of which produce the characteristic phenomenology of terror, awe, and overwhelming power that the divine presence model predicts. He notes that Christ is presented as "the Way" to the Father's presence (John 14:6)—suggesting that without Christ as mediator, the Father's presence would be unbearable. He observes that the unveiling of hearts at judgment (1 Cor. 4:5) fits naturally with the idea that God's presence exposes the inner contents of each person's soul. He connects the river of fire in Daniel 7:9–10 with the river of the water of life in Revelation 22:1–5, arguing that both flow from the same source—the throne of the Lamb—and represent the same reality experienced differently by the righteous and the wicked.⁵¹

Manis also highlights the Orthodox liturgical tradition. The Paschal troparion—the great Easter hymn of the Orthodox church—incorporates Psalm 68:2, which in the NKJV reads: "As wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God."⁵² This is not a verse about the wicked perishing away from God. It is about the wicked perishing at God's presence—exactly as wax melts before a flame. The same presence that is life and joy for the redeemed is destruction for the impenitent.

The river of fire and the river of life deserve special attention. Daniel 7:9–10 describes God's throne as "fiery flames" with "a stream of fire" issuing from before Him. Revelation 22:1–5 describes "the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb." On the divine presence model, these two rivers are identical. They are one and the same reality—the glory and presence of God flowing from His throne—experienced as refreshment, peace, and life by those in communion with Christ, and as fire, torment, and destruction by those in rebellion against Him.⁵⁸ This juxtaposition is a central theme in the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition, as we will see in Chapter 23C. It is also, as Manis notes, routinely depicted in Orthodox iconography, where the river of fire and the river of life are shown flowing from the same source.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Manis develops an argument about divine omnipresence that has significant implications for the final state. On this model, God's presence is not something that can ultimately be escaped. Psalm 139:7–10 asks, "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 omnipresence means that there is no location—physical or spiritual—where God is not present. In the eschaton, when God is fully revealed, this omnipresence becomes inescapable experience. Manis argues that the state of affairs of God's being "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28) and the state of affairs of some persons being permanently annihilated are incompatible. To the degree that God is fully present, death is "of metaphysical necessity, absent." The presence of God is life—and in the eschaton, that presence is everywhere and inescapable.⁵⁹

This argument actually cuts in an interesting direction for my own framework. If God's omnipresence means that where God is fully present, annihilation is impossible, then what happens to those who refuse to repent? On the "pure" divine presence model that Manis tends to prefer, they suffer eternally in God's presence. On my conditional immortality framework, however, I suggest a different resolution. The annihilation of the impenitent occurs not by God withdrawing His presence but by the fire of that presence consuming everything in a person that is opposed to God. If a person's entire being has become identified with their rebellion—if there is nothing left in them that is oriented toward God—then the purifying fire leaves nothing behind. This is not God killing someone. It is the natural result of sin's corruption being fully and finally burned away in a soul that refused to let go of it. The person does not survive because there was nothing in them left to survive. Their annihilation is, in a sense, self-inflicted—the final, terrible consequence of having fused one's identity with one's sin so completely that destroying the sin destroys the person.

Manis also draws an intriguing connection to substance dualism. He suggests that death—including death caused by exposure to God's presence—results not in annihilation but in a separation of body and soul. The soul is consigned to Sheol or Hades, a spiritual realm where those not yet fully reconciled to God experience a degree of divine absence comparable to their earthly lives. Hades may be, in fact, a mercy: it postpones the full encounter with God's presence that is the final judgment.⁵³ This insight beautifully supports the case I made in Chapters 6–9 for substance dualism and a conscious intermediate state. If the soul survives death and is conscious in Hades, then there is both a capacity for postmortem experience and a context for God's continued pursuit of the lost.

Building on Manis: Where the Author Agrees, Extends, and Diverges

Having walked through the architecture of Manis's argument, it is time to be explicit about where my own view relates to his. I want to identify three areas: where I wholeheartedly agree, where I extend his work in directions he did not go, and where I respectfully diverge.

Where I agree. I agree with the core insight of the divine presence model: hell is the experience of God's unshielded presence as an unrepentant sinner, not separation from God. I agree with Manis's analysis of the problems with traditionalism and the choice model. I agree with the wax-and-fire analogy as a powerful way of understanding why hell is natural rather than arbitrary. I agree with his reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 as describing destruction from God's presence. I agree with his phenomenological analysis drawing on Rudolf Otto. I agree that divine hiddenness is best explained as God's merciful restraint. And I agree with his assessment that the divine presence model achieves a balance between retribution and non-retribution that its rivals cannot match.

Where I extend his work. Manis, as a philosopher, does not develop the biblical case for the divine presence model in scholarly depth. He explicitly invites biblical scholars to do so, and this book answers that invitation—particularly in Chapter 23 (overview), Chapter 23B (Baker and biblical fire motifs), and Chapter 23C (the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition). I also extend Manis's model by connecting it to near-death experience research (Chapter 5). The NDE literature is replete with accounts of encountering an overwhelming Being of Light whose presence is experienced as either rapturous or agonizing depending on the experiencer's spiritual condition—a striking empirical parallel to the divine presence model. Additionally, I extend Manis's acknowledgment of the model's compatibility with postmortem conversion into a full-blown theology of postmortem opportunity. Manis opens the door; I walk through it.

Where I diverge. My divergence from Manis is primarily on two points. First, Manis himself tends toward a view of eternal conscious experience—the traditional position that the damned suffer forever in God's presence. He acknowledges that the divine presence model is compatible with annihilationism (through hybrid views like Baker's), but his own preference leans toward eternal suffering, in part because he gives the weight of Christian tradition a decisive role.⁵⁴ I, by contrast, integrate the model with conditional immortality. On my view, those who finally and irrevocably reject Christ in the Lake of Fire are annihilated—not because God chooses to destroy them but because there is nothing left of them once God's purifying fire burns away all the evil that constituted their being. The annihilation is a natural consequence, not a retributive act. This is essentially Baker's hybrid view, refined and clarified.

Second, I go further than Manis on the postmortem opportunity. Manis acknowledges that the model is "flexible enough" to accommodate postmortem conversion and that the intermediate state may involve continued soul-making. But he does not develop this into a robust theology of universal postmortem opportunity. I do. On my view, every person who dies without Christ—without exception—will receive a genuine, personal, extended encounter with God's love. This encounter may begin during the dying process, continue in the intermediate state, and culminate at the final judgment. God pursues every soul with the same relentless, never-ending love. The divine presence model provides the philosophical framework for understanding how this works: God gradually increases the disclosure of His presence, lovingly and patiently, giving each person the time and grace they need to respond.

Conclusion

R. Zachary Manis has given the church an extraordinary gift. In Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, he has taken an ancient and beautiful idea—an idea long cherished in Eastern Orthodox Christianity but largely neglected in Western philosophical theology—and given it the rigorous philosophical defense it has always deserved. The divine presence model of hell is not a soft or sentimental view. It takes sin seriously. It takes God's holiness seriously. It takes the biblical language of wrath and judgment seriously. But it does all of this without turning God into a torturer or making hell an arbitrary punishment. On this model, hell is the natural, inevitable consequence of being a sinful creature in the full presence of an infinitely holy and infinitely loving God.

We should pause and appreciate just how much this model changes the conversation about hell. For centuries, Western Christianity has been trapped in a false dilemma. On one side stands traditionalism, which preserves the seriousness of divine judgment but at the cost of making God appear unjust and unloving. On the other side stand the various alternatives—the choice model, annihilationism, universalism—which each preserve some aspect of God's goodness but at the cost of downplaying or distorting the biblical witness about judgment. Manis has shown us a way out of this impasse. The divine presence model does not ask us to choose between a God of love and a God of judgment. It shows us that love is the judgment. God's love, fully revealed, is the very thing that the unrepentant experience as wrath. The fire that warms the righteous is the same fire that consumes the wicked. There is only one fire. There is only one God. The difference lies entirely in how that God is received.

I want to emphasize something that may get lost in the philosophical details. The divine presence model is not merely an intellectual exercise. It is a profoundly pastoral vision. It tells us that God does not change His disposition toward the wicked. He does not love the saved and hate the damned. He loves everyone with the same infinite, burning, relentless love. The tragedy of hell is not that God stops loving—it is that some cannot receive His love as love. Their rebellion has so warped their perception, so corrupted their capacity for trust and surrender, that the most beautiful reality in the universe becomes for them the most painful. This means that every time we sin, every time we harden our hearts, every time we turn away from the light—we are not moving closer to some external punishment that God has prepared for the disobedient. We are making ourselves more vulnerable to the fire that God is. We are becoming more like wax and less like gold. And what we most need is not less of God's presence, but more—received gradually, gently, through the process of sanctification that begins in this life and continues, I believe, beyond the grave.

What Manis has built, I believe we can build further. By integrating his philosophical framework with conditional immortality and a robust theology of postmortem opportunity, we arrive at a vision of the afterlife that is—I believe—more faithful to Scripture, more consistent with God's character, and more pastorally hopeful than any of the standard options. It is a vision in which God never gives up on anyone. A vision in which His love is, indeed, inescapable. A vision in which the same fire that purifies the repentant and welcomes them into glory also, with infinite sadness, consumes those who refuse to be loved. It is not a vision without sorrow. But it is a vision without cruelty. And it is a vision in which the last word belongs not to death, not to judgment, not to destruction—but to love.

In the next chapter, we will turn to Sharon Baker's Razing Hell and develop a comprehensive biblical theology of fire as God's presence—answering the invitation that Manis himself extended for biblical scholars to develop the scriptural case for the divine presence model.