In an 1892 Sherlock Holmes story called Silver Blaze, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has his famous detective solve a mystery based on a clue's absence rather than its presence.
The crime - a murder and the theft of a racehorse - occurs late at night. There are no witnesses, of course.
In all of the testimonies given by the household staff, Holmes notices something that is not there.
There is no report of the dog barking.
And thus, Holmes correctly reasons, the perpetrator was not a stranger.
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Those who want to prove that the Bible teaches that unbelievers suffer eternal punishment in Hell have a handful of verses to point to. But it is "the dog not barking" that has me leaning the other direction - towards annihilationism.
I have hinted at this in some of my other posts on this topic, but let me state it plainly: It seems to me that justice exacted by a holy God through torment of billions of human souls over millions upon trillions of years in a lake of fire is such a horrifying and weighty idea that it deserves to be introduced early in the Bible and then repeated often.
If it is indeed reality, Hell - and how to avoid it - should be woven into every step of the Bible narrative.
But take a look at the Old Testament.
Scripture begins with God warning Adam and Eve that if they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they will surely ... die.
Funny not to mention the eternal torment thing at this point. Seems like a logical place to introduce the fact that the vast majority of humanity is now doomed to everlasting torture and suffering.
By Genesis 6, we have God regretting making man.
God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth."
It's a safe bet that the Lord judged these people as deserving of Hell, so it seems like another good place to introduce the concept. But I suppose we can't fault God for not including a little diatribe on Hell here.
It might have come across a little hypocritical for him to judge humans for their violence to each other by subjecting them all to eternal pain and torment.
And so it goes. Story after story in the Old Testament, but no time to develop any doctrines regarding the afterlife?
It's not for lack of various characters dying. We're told repeatedly where their bodies get buried. But that is typically the end of the story.
Then a new story begins.
So ... why is the Hell dog not barking?
Perhaps when humans sinned in the garden they lost their shot at immortality?
Maybe the only way for humans to have immortality is if God goes out of his way to provide a new path to eternal life?
Couldn't this argument be applied to Scripture's progressive revelation of eternal life as well?
ReplyDelete"If there really is a place as good as heaven - a motivation as strong for choosing God and living a virtuous life - one would expect God to just come right out and say it from the get-go. But when we survey the OT, what do we find?
The Lord calls Abraham to leave his country and follow him into the desert and promises him...what? Eternal life? No, he promises him descendants on this earth.
The Lord brings Israel out of Egypt and exhorts them to keep his covenant. If they do so, he promises to reward them abundantly. How? With eternal life? No! With temporal happiness and the ability to retain control of a piece of land on this planet.
Funny not to mention the eternal happiness thing at this point. Seems like a logical place to introduce the fact that their ancestors are living eternally with God and they can join them forever if they will just obey the Lord faithfully rather than turning to other gods.
So...why is the Heaven dog not barking?
Maybe God has reasons for revealing these truths progressively. The OT does mention "Sheol" quite a bit and there are passages (such as Saul's summoning of Samuel through a medium) that indicate a certain level of belief in an afterlife, but it certainly isn't as clearly revealed as it is in the NT.
I don't know exactly the right answer to the question of why the Lord wouldn't warn people about punishment in the afterlife from the get-go, but I think it might be connected to what Jesus' parable about hell in Luke 16. Listen to this exchange carefully:
27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
It seems to me there's a good reason for the Heaven dog not barking in the Old Testament. Or 2 good reasons:
ReplyDelete1) Heaven is mentioned a lot in the Old Testament. As God's abode. The place where blessings originate. God's storehouses. Heaven's existence is evident.
2) What is not evident is a way for man to spend eternity with God in Heaven. But that dog is not barking because that mystery had not been revealed. They couldn't satisfy the requirements through their imperfect obedience to the Law.
You don't have to go past Genesis 11 to find man's first efforts to work his way to God's abode in Heaven with the Tower of Babel!
We certainly find HOPE that being fully in God's presence in Heaven is possible - especially in the Psalms. And we find a desire that God would come down from Heaven, as when Isaiah says "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!" (64:1)
And ultimately, Jesus does come down from Heaven and says, "Good news!"