Protestantism

A.W. Tozer, a Protestant pastor, wrote in The Tozer Pulpit that God will eventually stop loving people whom He condemns to hell fire so He can punish them forever.  Tozer reasoned that God cannot punish people forever whom He still loves, since God hates sin but loves sinners.  The late John Gerstner, in his book Repent or Perish, went even further than Tozer stating that God not only hates sin, as almost Christians believe, but God also hates sinners.  That is why, according to Gerstner, that God will burn people in hell fire forever.  It is absurd to believe that God’s love will cease so that He can torture people in hell forever.  It is also absurd to believe that God hates sinners.  But it is equally absurd to believe that God will torture people in hell forever even though He loves them, as most Christians who believe in eternal punishment contend.  However, one of these three absurd views is true if hell is eternal!

The late John Gerstner believed in the view of John Calvin (1509-1564) and, of course, wrote from that perspective.  Tozer wrote from the viewpoint of “Arminianism,” named for Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) another Protestant reformer, who wrote in opposition to Calvinism.  But these theological views predated Arminius and Calvin by centuries.  John Wesley was influenced by Arminianism and through Wesley’s “Methodist” movement, much of Protestantism has so been influenced.  Though they may or may not give it a name, these theological schools of thought, on the atonement of Christ, are present in Anglicanism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy as well as Protestantism.

True, mainline Protestant Churches as well as Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox Churches teach that fire of hell may not be or is not literal and that there are degrees of punishment.  But Fundamental and most Evangelical Protestants believe that hell fire is literal and do not believe that there are degrees of punishment and teach that “a sin is a sin.”  Therefore, the good moral person who told one lie and did not confess it before dying will suffer the same as a mass murderer.  That makes no sense logically or spiritually.  It is a good example of spiritual insanity due to spiritual terrorism!