“If God is all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful, why do bad things happen?”
This question (popularly called “the problem of evil”) is one of the most difficult questions for Christians to answer convincingly. But this question can take an even more difficult form: “How can an all-good, all-loving, all-powerful God send anyone to hell to suffer for eternity?” This is known as the “problem of hell.” The difficulty of this problem is increased since many Christians seem to embrace the existence of this problem as “gospel truth”1—chalking it up to a mystery—without offering a satisfactory explanation for it.
It’s a problem for every reflective Christian, because it poses a serious challenge to the internal coherence of the Christian worldview, and an even more serious challenge to the practical task of trusting—that is, believing in—the God whom Christians profess. The problem of hell is no mere philosophical puzzle. It’s a hindrance to many who are contemplating coming to the faith, and a source of doubt for many who profess it.2
But Dr. R. Zachary Manis is not content with unsatisfactory answers to difficult questions. In his book, Thinking through the Problem of Hell, he offers a philosophically sound, biblically faithful, and tradition-upholding answer to the problem of hell: “Heaven and hell are the various ways that the righteous and the wicked will experience the presence of God after the final judgment.”3 Manis approaches this problem from a more Orthodox than Protestant perspective, which—while likely unfamiliar to many potential readers—should be especially appreciated by those Protestant students and scholars who are interested in theological retrieval and ressourcement.
Manis begins his argument by examining three problems with the traditional4 understanding of hell as the place where God justly punishes sinners (the retribution model). First, the “problem of justice.” Manis explains, “Justice requires that the severity of the punishment not exceed (or at least not egregiously exceed) the severity of the wrongdoing.”5 Hell is infinite punishment for a finite number of sins, and thus—on the traditional model—would be unjust. Second, the “problem of love.” Manis explains, “To love someone is to will their good, insofar as one is able.”6 The traditional understanding of hell does not understand hell as promoting the good of those who are punished. Third, the “problem of coercion.” The woman whose stalker is holding a gun to her head demanding she love him or die cannot truly obey: “She may say that she now loves him, or try to act as if she loves him, in order to increase her chances of surviving this ordeal, but she certainly cannot begin to genuinely love him under these circumstances.”7 Because the traditional understanding presents hell as the “death penalty” for failing to love God, it actually makes it impossible for people to truly love God.
Manis then discusses four8 non-solutions to the problem of hell: the Calvinist appeal to divine sovereignty;9 annihilation;10 ignoring Scripture’s revelation;11 and ignoring Church tradition.12
A successful solution to the problem of hell would be a demonstration that all of the required components—the proposition that God is maximally good and loving, the proposition that hell is a state of eternal suffering, the proposition that some are finally lost, etc.—are reconcilable under a certain model, and that the model itself is possibly true.13
The model he paints in the rest of the book avoids each of the above-mentioned problems (justice, love, coercion), and it does so without appealing to the other non-solutions: The last three chapters focus on Scripture’s witness to his model,14 and he has several chapters rebutting the universalist theory,15 which fits his model squarely within Christian orthodoxy (Church tradition).
So what is Manis’s theory?
Manis argues for a divine presence model: sinners in the presence of a loving God.16 The declarations “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and “God is life”17 are the biblical bases for his model. Additionally, it is dependent on the concept of soul-making,18 which implies that “the natural psychological and spiritual consequences of [decisions in this life] extend into the next life.”19 For this reason, being perfected in love—growing in love and selflessness toward others in this life—is how we are remade throughout this life (sanctification) to be able to survive the Final Judgment, when the love of God is finally revealed in all its purity of force. In the future age, because believers will have been perfected in the image of the God of love, unbelievers will naturally try to separate themselves from the presence of believers.20
Calvinists will likely struggle with this book.21 I have been trained in that theological system since 2010, and my view of God going into this book was essentially that of a God who does what he wants, regardless of peoples’ free will (if free will even exists). I was committed to a more extreme form of this presupposition when I was sitting in Dr. Manis’s Intro to Philosophy course during the spring of 2014—a presupposition that rendered me unteachable. I have since backed away from some of my Calvinist proclivities, but I still naturally think of God as all-powerful.22
Thus, when I think of God’s love willing good as far as it is able, I am naturally led to think that God will ultimately save everybody (or at least potentially could).23 He is omnipotent, right? Manis’s glossary notes that omnipotence “is traditionally considered to be an attribute of God.”24 The model that Manis builds in these pages seems to portray God not as omnipotent (at least according to my preunderstanding), but as doing “everything in His power to save everyone.”25 This (to me) screams of less than omnipotence, and I would be very interested to know how the traditional view of omnipotence can be squared with Manis’s conception of hell.26 However, in Manis’s model, “the unfathomable dignity and the terrifying responsibility of being human” is “to be a creature who is made for eternal communion with God, a creature who is divinely intended for this end, but who also possesses the power to thwart this end.”27 It is almost as if—in creating humanity in his image—God shared some of his omnipotence with us in the form of free will. To override our free will is to coerce and render salvation impossible.
Manis’s careful and thorough logic successfully makes his model possible,28 but even if one is not ultimately convinced, it deserves careful consideration by all students of eschatology (and more broadly: theology). It is a model that results in a much more practical, sociable vision of Christianity—a vision of Christianity that can give the world a better answer for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15) than the prevailing models do.
Notes and References
- The “gospel truth” of the problem of hell is connected to the evangelical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture and the existence of texts like Matthew 25:41, 46; Revelation 20:15; Isaiah 66:24. In addition, the doctrine of eternal punishment arises from early creedal language of “to judge the quick and the dead” (Apostles Creed; Nicene Creed) and “they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire” (Athanasian Creed). Thus, “Scripture says it; tradition upholds it,” and lamentably to many believers, it is “only a problem for those who are in hell.” ↩︎
- R. Zachary Manis, Thinking through the Problem of Hell: The Divine Presence Model (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024), 3. Emphasis in original. He connects the problem of hell as a specific form of the problem of evil on page 4, though he formulates the problem of hell primarily apart from God’s omnipotence (cf. his glossary entries for the problems of evil and hell on page 213). ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 68. ↩︎
- “Traditional” should be distinguished from “Tradition.” The former refers to popular understanding, whereas the latter refers to the historic teaching of the Church from ages past. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 9. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 16. Emphasis in original. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 25. This is one example of many such thought-experiments in the book that helpfully highlight the practical, logical nature of Manis’s argument. ↩︎
- He labels a section in chapter 7, “Misguided approach #3: Conceiving of hell as an artificial and arbitrary punishment” (pp. 45–47), but it reads more like an expanded rebuttal of the first three problems (discussed in the prior paragraph—especially “justice”) than it does its own potential solution to the problem itself. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 31–42. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 43–45. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 47–53. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 54–60. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 61. Emphasis in original. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking,167–204. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 113–131. ↩︎
- This was the title of the original edition of this book. R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). ↩︎
- This is not a direct Scripture reference, but the idea can be drawn from texts such as John 11:25; Romans 4:17; Ephesians 4:18; and Revelation 20:12–13. Manis writes, “The very presence of God is life-giving” (Thinking, 86). ↩︎
- “The process of moral and spiritual formation whereby a person’s character and self-identity are formed” (Thinking, 214). ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 78. ↩︎
- This makes sense of the simultaneous images of the perpetually open gate in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:25) and the lack of unbelievers inside the city (22:15). ↩︎
- Manis wrote this book in the hope that “Calvinists in particular will read and consider these arguments carefully” (Manis, Thinking, x). ↩︎
- The Calvinist conception of God has been hard-wired into my understanding of my testimony (especially since it revolves around the “problem of evil”), so reading this book has surely hurt my brain as I process through it all. Perhaps I will write a future post applying the ideas of this book to my understanding of testimony; there are several other posts I could also write based on ideas from this book. ↩︎
- I would love to be able to ascribe to a universalist or annihilationist view of hell, but the logic of Manis’s book does not allow me to make this move. For his discussion of God’s omnipotent love willing the ultimate good for all, but some still being damned, see especially pages 160–163. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 212. This is an exception to footnote 4’s discussion of “traditional” vs. “tradition.” ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, ix. Emphasis added. ↩︎
- This could be another potential future study. I am thinking Augustine, the Cappadocians, and Aquinas (and maybe Anselm) would be especially helpful here at highlighting Church Tradition’s understanding of omnipotence. ↩︎
- Manis, Thinking, 130. ↩︎
- This is his modest goal for the book (see page 61, quoted above at footnote 13). I think it is fair to say he has successfully shown it to be more than merely possible. ↩︎
Hi Josh,
First off, let me express my appreciation for this thoughtful review. I really appreciate the way that you’ve approached the book with a careful eye to detail, an open mind, and a charitable spirit—everything I could ask from my reader! I would like to respond to one worry you’ve raised, and also to ask a question.
I take it that your main worry with the divine presence model is this:
“The model that Manis builds in these pages seems to portray God not as omnipotent (at least according to my preunderstanding), but as doing ‘everything in His power to save everyone.’ This (to me) screams of less than omnipotence, and I would be very interested to know how the traditional view of omnipotence can be squared with Manis’s conception of hell.”
I’m happy for the invitation to explain how the two can be squared! I fully accept the doctrine of divine omnipotence in its traditional form, and this is, in fact, an essential component of the divine presence model. The key to understanding why omnipotence doesn’t enable God to save everyone is this: it’s logically impossible to make someone repent of their sins. Repentance is, of its very nature, an act of freedom, so any act that God forces a person to do wouldn’t qualify as an act of repentance. But repentance is a necessary condition of salvation, which means that a person cannot be saved without repenting of their sins. God provides grace to every person to enable them to repent, but He doesn’t make them repent, and in fact He cannot do so—not because of a lack of power, but because it’s logically impossible to do so.
“But wait a minute,” someone might object, “if God is omnipotent, then He can do anything—even the impossible!” Unfortunately, this is not the case—at least not if we’re talking about logical impossibility, the kind of impossibility that would be involved in making a self-contradiction true. In fact, the traditional Christian view of divine omnipotence rejects the idea that God can do the logically impossible. And for very good reason. There’s a footnote in chapter 9 that attempts to explain why:
“It’s within God’s power to violate or suspend the laws of nature—this is a common understanding of what miracles are—but not the laws of logic. To think otherwise is to become immediately entangled in manifest absurdities—and even worse. The claim that God can do the logically impossible ends up entailing that God doesn’t have a nature, which is heretical. To see why, notice that if God can do absolutely anything, including the logically impossible, then He could do all of the following: He could forget your name; He could do something evil; He could create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it; He could bring it about that He no longer exists. But if it’s even possible for God to do these things, then He is not of His very nature omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, or self-existent (respectively). Similar considerations would lead one to reject all the other attributes that are, according to Christian orthodoxy, part of God’s nature as well. Clearly, this conclusion is unacceptable. The way to avoid it is to reject the assumption that leads to it: namely, that omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically impossible.” (Thinking Through the Problem of Hell, p. 74, footnote 7)
If omnipotence doesn’t include the ability to do the logically impossible, and if it’s impossible to make someone repent and impossible to save someone who refuses to repent, then there’s a clear reason why an omnipotent God won’t be able to save everyone: namely, because some people refuse to repent! This is why I use the language of God “doing everything in His power” to save everyone: it’s not a rejection of omnipotence, but rather a recognition that omnipotence does not enable God to save a person against their will, because doing so is logically impossible.
Now for the question: What did you think of the arguments that aim to prove that the problem of hell is unsolvable on the assumption of Calvinism? You mention your Calvinist roots in the post, but also express some more recent reservations. You rightly noted in one of your footnotes that one of my hopes for the book is that “Calvinists in particular will read and consider these arguments carefully.” I can tell that you did, in fact, read and consider the arguments of the book carefully. But you never reveal to us, your readers, whether you found the critiques of Calvinism to be compelling. I would love to hear your thoughts on these anti-Calvinism arguments—whether sympathetic or critical!
Thanks again for taking the time to carefully read and review this book. Looking forward to continuing the discussion!
In Christ,
Zach Manis
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I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for your reply. It actually serves to fill in a gap that I admittedly recognize in my review. So thank you.
My summarization of your book took more words than I would have liked, but be that as it may, I’d originally noted three “weaknesses” with the book. As a previous Facebook post had mentioned, “I thought I could poke a couple holes in [your] argument, but this book is tightly argued and logically sound.” Those potential holes were related to God’s omnipotence (discussed further below), God’s love as willing the good (which is connected to omnipotence), and a question related to deathbed conversions (which was satisfied for me in the last paragraph on page 193). However, the more I wrestled with the book, the more I intuited that love doesn’t coerce, so somehow omnipotence must be compatible with a love that doesn’t ultimately save everybody.
As such, my last two paragraphs prior to my conclusion were an attempt to demonstrate my wrestling with your book. I was trying to show that you invite your readers to wrestle with your ideas, and that the logic of the book truly does stand up for anyone who wrestles honestly with the work. The fact that this was not made clear as my intention means that my writing could have and should have been clearer on that point.
One of the things I realized as I was wrestling with the book (I lamentably missed footnote 7 on page 74 while reading, which begins with the words “Surprising as it might be to some readers, this is the traditional view of omnipotence”) was that omnipotence can’t do the logically impossible. God can’t create a rock so big he can’t lift it. So if it’s logically impossible for someone who’s been coerced to love God, than God can’t force people to love him–and he’s still omnipotent.
I realize this is mostly a reiteration of what you wrote in your reply. I say all this to simply say, “I agree with you, and your book has done a lot to reframe my thinking.”
My main contention was not that I’m worried about accepting the divine presence model, but that my Calvinism-formed mind understood omnipotence differently prior to reading, and I was still struggling to process an alternative understanding of the term. The seedbed had been laid, but the sprouts were only barely starting to grow. I tried to make it clear in what I wrote that the problem with understanding was on my end, not with your presentation (and any failure to make that clear is fully my own responsibility). I would still like to look into what the writers I mentioned in footnote 26 have to say about the topic–especially Augustine, as the “founder” of Calvinism.
Ever since I saw the title for the Oxford University Press version of this book, I’ve been an adherent to the position (even though I didn’t know the specifics at the time). Psalm 139 says that Yahweh is present even in Sheol, and despite the lexical debates that occur over that term, it’s clear that God is present with the dead to some extent; why would this not be the case after the resurrection too? I’m very glad to have read this book and been better able to understand exactly what the divine presence model entails. It’s an even better model than I initially thought.
Now to answer your question: My Calvinist reservations started at college, where I discovered that non-Calvinists are just as serious about their faith as Calvinists. My reservations grew as I noticed more and more just how problematic many (not all) Calvinist’s attitudes are toward non-Calvinists (including Calvinists who are questioning Calvinism). As I read your book though, I was reminded of one of my first reservations (a reservation I constantly had to quiet in my own heart): “Reasonable faith isn’t possible for a Calvinist who sincerely believes and deeply internalizes Calvinist theology” (p. 39). The question I always found myself asking was, “How can I know I’m elect?” And you hit the nail on the head (Calvinists unwittingly give this answer themselves, though with a spin that implies the person they’re talking to is the exception): “There’s no state you could observe in yourself that would count as good evidence of election. … Regardless of your past or present experiences, for all you know God is setting you up for future apostasy and judgment” (p. 40). The lingering Calvinist in me could try to argue against some of your other anti-Calvinism arguments, though you did a fantastic job anticipating those arguments. But Chapter 6 really convinced me that there’s no need to argue.
A Lutheran I listen to (Christian rapper Flame) pointed out that Calvinism ultimately becomes about introspection and works: “Did I do enough to make myself sure I’m elect?” But in reality, works might be good to satisfy my conscience today, but if I get lazy tomorrow, how can I be certain of my election? I can’t be. I could have fallen off like 1 John 2:19 says (or at least is quoted by Calvinists as teaching). This roller coaster of “assurance” is terrible for spiritual health.
Thanks again for your reply.
In Christ,
Joshua Wingerd
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