The Christian Vanguard

There is good reason to believe that Judas is in hell. Our Lord says of him that it would have been better for him to have never been born. If Judas was finally saved, it would make no sense to say that it was better for Judas to have never been born. So Judas was not finally saved.  A common pious sounding counter argument goes like this. Since the Church does not definitively declare who is in hell, we cannot know whether Judas is in hell or not. There are a few problems with this response. First, it seems as though Our Lord does declare it, so even if the Church has not declared it, a credible witness, God Himself, has, and that is sufficient reason.  Second, there is a more serious problem with the argument, namely, the argument is self refuting. The argument rests on an assumption that if the Church has not declared some article of faith, then we cannot know it. But that statement is itself an article of faith. So the question should be asked, when did the Church declare ...

I had a guy ask me, "Will I go to hell because I don't believe in Jesus?"  Not really, and I want to put emphasis on the word "because." We do not go to hell because we do not put our trust in Jesus, as though we were perfectly innocent and our refusal to believe in Jesus is what sent us to hell. If we were perfectly innocent, Jesus wouldn't be necessary. But why is Jesus necessary for salvation? Because we have sinned, and it is our sin that sends us to hell, not the refusal to believe in Jesus.  Here is an analogy. You don't know how to swim, and you're in a pool of water. You will die. Why? Because you can't swim to safety. If you die, it is because you can't swim. Say I throw you a life raft to save you. Will you die because you didn't grab the life raft or because you didn't know how to swim? Clearly, you still died because you didn't know how to swim. It wasn't because of your refusal to grab the life raft. 

I was talking to one of my Calvinist friend after some St. Patrick's Day drinks on some points of theology, and not being a Calvinist myself, we found ourselves disagreeing on some important issues. I claimed that God loved everyone, while my Calvinist friend denied that God loves everyone. He said, "So you're telling me that God loves both the saint in heaven praising him and glorifying him and the damned in hell who hate him?"  Why is that controversial? Of course he does. As I have said a thousand times on this blog, love is the willing of the good for the other. For those in heaven, it is uncontroversial that they experience some good, and so it is no surprise that God loves them. But what about those in hell? Can God love those in hell? Well, to translate, or to plug in a definition, does God will the good for those in hell? I don't see why not, and I certainly don't see why hell isn't precisely that good. Hell is good? Yes, hell is a good becaus...

At first, this may seem like the common question of the unevangelized, which asks, what happens to those who have never heard of Jesus? What is their fate? However, this question actually takes a side, that they go to hell, and it is because of their absence of knowing about Jesus that they are going to hell for.