Eli Ayala Is Hell a Problem for Apologetics

Introduction of Eli Ayala and Conference Context

Well, getting us launched out today is Eli Ayala, and he has an M .Div. and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Liberty University. That's right, I said it, Liberty University, so take that. He teaches Bible and logic classes, and they're Christian middle school students.

I was talking to him, and I said, can you explain some of this to, like, normal people? And he said, I teach middle school. I was like, okay, you can probably pull this off of teaching thick topics to people in the streets.

He teaches Bible, I'm sorry, he's the creator of PresuppU, short for Presuppositional University, an online resource for learning presuppositional apologetics. He maintains the website revealedapologetics .com, and he's the host of Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel.

I love it when guys get out there and dare to be out in the real public square on YouTube. I love that more and more people are doing that, so Ayala, please take the stage, and everybody give him a hand.

Opening Remarks and Personal Introduction

All right, everybody.

All right, everyone can hear me okay? I'm very impressed. Most people butcher my name. My full name is Elias Ayala. If you say it five times fast, it sounds like you're speaking in tongues. If you say it 10 times fast, it sounds like a Muslim war cry, so that's what I've been told.

So yeah, my name is Eli Ayala. I just want to first express that it is a pleasure and an honor to be able to be speaking at this conference and sharing the platform with such awesome apologists, theologians, and speakers, and I've just been greatly enjoying the talks as well as the fellowship.

I'm very happy. Brother Mark almost didn't make it. How many people enjoyed Mark's talk? Okay, yeah. Well, he almost didn't make it. Braxton Hunter had picked us up from the hotel, and out of his great excitement for seeing some of us, he was like, man, this is so exciting, and he drives away, and Brother Mark is not even all the way in the car yet.

So he basically almost died. It was terrible, but by God's grace, he was spared, and by God's mercy, Braxton was forgiven, and everything was able to move along just very nicely. All right, well, with that out of the way, I just want to tell you a little bit about myself.

Why Hell Matters for Apologetics

My primary focus in my study is apologetic methodology. I love theology. I love apologetics, and there are certain areas of theology that I'm very well-versed in and other areas where I want to be well-versed in because I understand that it's very important, okay?

Some people might think of the topic of hell as like, well, what's the big deal? Well, listen, if theology finds its root in the soil out of which it springs out as the Word of God, it's important, right?

And so whether we are holding to a traditional view or a non-traditional view, these are important issues, and I always try to encourage my students and those who I speak with to make the very important distinction between what we call essential doctrine and non-essential doctrine, and there's often a common misunderstanding that non-essential doctrine is kind of like calling the doctrine unimportant, and we know that that's not necessarily the case, right?

Non-essential doctrine is important. It's just not definitional as to what makes us a Christian, and unfortunately, people will divide over these non-essentials and define people out of the kingdom because they don't hold to the conventional views of the church, and I think that is completely ridiculous and inappropriate, and I think being here with such a wide variety of views, I think this is an excellent step in opening up lines of communication, arguing rigorously and vigorously, but in the spirit of Christian unity, and so it is a great honor and a pleasure to be able to be speaking to such a diverse audience over this very, very interesting topic.

Now, at heart, I am a Christian apologist, and so I really like to connect things with apologetics because apologetics and evangelism is a very practical thing for the church. The church needs it. It deals with our everyday interactions as we are existing in the world and trying to fulfill the mandate of the Great Commission, that we are to go out and preach the gospel, and as 1 Peter 3, verse 15 famously says, we're to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's within us, and so when we're talking about theology, doctrine, or any difficult concept to talk about, both internally within the church and externally without the church, we need to always be ready to engage those topics with gentleness and respect, but with vigor, intellectual skill, and maneuvering as we're arguing our points and building our case.

I think this is very, very important. So the specific question that I'm going to be dealing with today is, is hell a problem for apologetics? Now, I'm just going to show my hand real quick, both my hands.

I actually, I don't know if you guys know this, I actually used to be a magician, so I'm very good at being deceptive, but not when we're talking about theology. I won't be deceptive with you guys here.

I hold it to the traditional view, okay? I hold to the view eternal, conscious, torment, and I am very, very open to hearing other perspectives. As I said before, this is not an area that I've dived in as deep as I would like.

So I hold to the traditional view, and I'm very open to hearing other perspectives. But to show my hand, this is my view. But the question that I'm going to be asking and addressing today, I think all views can benefit from.

So for example, the title of my talk is, is hell a problem for apologetics? Defending the faith in light of difficult doctrines, you could just as well replace hell with some other theological concept.

We could title this talk, is predestination a problem for apologetics? Is Calvinism a problem for apologetics? I'm a low-down, dirty Calvinist, right? Sometimes when someone hears that I'm a Calvinist, if it's a theologically informed atheist, his ears perk up, and he's like, oh, I've got a whole set of questions that I'm going to ask you, you low-down, dirty Calvinist.

So theological topics can be very difficult and really, in some sense, problematic when we're defending the faith. There just are certain topics that are difficult to talk about. But because we hold to the scriptures as the authoritative word of God, 2 Timothy 3 .16 tells us that all scripture is inspired, we should embrace those difficult doctrines, stand firm on the authority of God's word, and to the best of our ability, represent what God is telling us, and speak boldly out into the world with no apologies.

Defining Hell and the Traditional View

So to that end, let me begin by defining my position. Again, I hold to the ECT perspective. Chris Date, being an editor, has pointed out some deficiencies in my spacing. I do apologize. But that's the position I hold.

The traditional view of hell is a view of the nature of the eternal state. And for me, hell is a place of eternal conscious torment for the unregenerate. And hell involves final separation, spiritual death, as I understand it, as a separation from God's mercy, from God's people, an unending experience of divine judgment, and just retribution for sin.

Now again, there are different perspectives, as we obviously know. And here's what I want to point out. Whether you hold to a traditional view, or the conditional immortality view, or annihilational view, it's very easy to conclude that regardless of the nature of hell, it's terrible.

Okay? Whether I'm speaking with an unbeliever about eternal punishment from a traditional perspective, or a non-traditional perspective, either way, it can be very, very uncomfortable to talk about these topics.

Okay? So I'm just going to define my view. I've defined my view there. And so I want to kind of define a couple of terms. Many terms you guys are going to be familiar with. But for those who are listening, I want to make it very simple.

So when we ask the question, is hell a problem for apologetics, we need to define our terms. So by hell, I include both my own position, and any position that can be very uncomfortable to talk about with unbelievers, and with believers.

And by apologetics, I mean a couple of things. So I want to define apologetics simply, and then kind of give a different definition that I think captures the apologetical situation, which does, I think, a very important job in informing us how to navigate conversations about hell, about predestination, or any other theological topic that we might have to deal with.

All right? So apologetics, the very dumbed down, simple definition, is simply it's a rational defense of the Christian faith. Okay? Christians believe that the Christian worldview is a defensible worldview.

Right? Anyone who is doing apologetics, you know that the Christian faith is not something that is based upon a blind commitment that is not grounded in reality. So from a very simple and basic perspective, we believe that we are to rationally defend the faith.

Okay? 1 Peter 3, verse 15, very popular verse that anyone who does apologetics, you hear ad nauseum. But I don't care. It's there, and it's a super helpful verse to inform us as to the basics, as to what God has commanded us to do as we interact with the unbelieving world.

And not just the unbelieving world. You have the believing world, in which you have to also sometimes do internal apologetics and correcting false teachings. So it's very applicable both internally and externally.

So 1 Peter 3, verse 15 tells us to set apart Christ, always being ready to make a defense, always being ready to give an answer. And one of my favorite verses on apologetics is Jude chapter 1, verse 3, where Jude tells us that he found it necessary that we contend earnestly for the faith.

Check this out. Once for all delivered. Okay? So we are defending something. We are defending a body of Christian truth that includes a wide range of theological teachings. Okay? Some of which are clear-cut, and I will die for these specific doctrines.

And some of those doctrines are not as clear-cut, maybe somewhat clear-cut, but debatable. And we have these interesting and fun internal arguments with each other about. But they still are incorporated within that body of Christian truth.

And so we are called to contend earnestly for those. So within the context of hell, if you hold to a traditional view and you are convinced that this is what the Bible teaches, then you need to be ready to contend earnestly for that position when called upon to defend the faith, especially within the context of defending theological positions.

You have to understand apologetics is not always just done with atheists. Right? Apologetics is going to require us also to know our theology. And so you're going to have to be able to defend your theological positions.

And those theological positions sometimes are black and white. Others, you have some differences there. And so you really need to count the cost in which positions you affirm, because you're going to have to speak up for them when they come up in certain various contexts.

Apologetic Methodologies: Classical, Evidential, and Presuppositional

All right? Well, what is apologetics? More specifically, I really enjoy this definition that was given by the Christian theologian and philosopher Cornelius Van Til. He says this with respect to what apologetics is.

He says, apologetics is the vindication of the Christian worldview over against the non-Christian worldview. Now, the reason why I like this definition is that it places the dispute between the believer and the unbeliever within the context of antithesis of worldview systems so that we're not simply defending the faith based upon individual data points or individual pieces of evidence or facts.

Rather, we are defending an entire system of thought, a system that gives meaning and context to the individual data points and facts that we discuss. For example, when we speak of things like righteousness, or justice, or good, evil, heaven, or hell, these topics are not floating out there in some platonic abstract realm in which they have no broader worldview context.

We understand these categories of heaven, hell, righteousness, justice, and sin within a broader worldview perspective. And it is vitally important that when we're engaging in apologetics, we have one foot in the individual facts and another foot in the worldview context in which those facts are given their meaning.

And when we talk about, say, the topic of hell, it's no different. So we need to understand and have contact with the broader worldview perspective in which we are coming from, in which we're arguing for our specific positions.

Now, you do have different flavors of apologetics, and I'm going to go really quickly through this, but I think it's important. Apologetics is sort of like ice cream. You can get your strawberry flavor, your vanilla flavor.

There are different traditions. And unlike some presuppositional brothers, I'm a presuppositionalist, but unlike some of them, I actually really appreciate the wide tradition within the church history in terms of how apologetics has been done.

I definitely have my specific commitments, but I have learned so much from people who hold to a different tradition than myself. I've spent hours talking with Dr. Hunter there about apologetic methodology, and I have to say that while I'm firm in my convictions, I've appreciated the strength and power of, say, a classical approach or an evidential approach or anything along those lines.

So be that as it may, I'm just going to kind of run through this. Well, first, let's talk a little bit about the classical approach. Then we're going to talk a little bit about the evidential and presuppositional, and then I want to make the connection between worldview context and the idea of hell and whether or not it's actually a problem when we're doing apologetics.

Now, when I think of classical apologetics, I think of an old man with a sweater vest, someone that looks like William Lane Craig or someone that's bald and looks like James White but definitely is not James White.

So I kind of have these caricatures in my mind, but in terms of just a method of doing apologetics, I define the classical approach as kind of a one-two punch approach, okay? I'm black belt in karate movies, and while I don't actually fight, I do know a little bit about self-defense and things like that.

There's this one-two punch in boxing where you kind of, you know, you jab, you follow with a hook. Classical apologetics is very much like that. It follows a two-step approach. The first approach is to demonstrate the truth of theism, that God exists, and this is typically done through various arguments and the traditional arguments, they're wide-ranging and they have various applications to different fields, but you have arguments like the cosmological argument, or the teleological argument, or the moral argument, or the argument from religious experience, or the ontological argument, all of these fancy philosophical and theological arguments that have a very strong basis in rational deductive forms of argumentation.

These are meant to demonstrate that a God exists, and then the hook, so to speak, of the classical approach is to narrow down that focus from theism to Christian theism, and that's typically done through a presentation of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, which as a presuppositionalist, I wholeheartedly agree there's crazy evidence for the resurrection, okay?

So this is the traditional approach of the classical method, and of course you have variation within that. Now there's something I want you to keep in mind about the classical method, and it's very similar with the evidential method that you'll see in just a moment.

I would define or categorize the classical approach as a bottom-up approach. It's an approach that seeks to argue for Christian theism from the ground up, giving arguments that lead to a conclusion, therefore God exists, okay?

So I want you to keep that in mind. It is a bottom-up approach. Now we come to the evidential methodology, and the evidential approach tends to present positive evidence in favor of Christianity through fields like archaeology, a very, very important field.

It's definitely not an area of my focus, but this requires us to have a lot of historical background in ancient Near East or in the Second Temple Judaism and things like that, evidence for the Old Testament events and people and the New Testament events and people, and so this approach typically gives us evidences from fields of archaeology.

Another aspect of apologetics that I think is very, very, I think we need to make more use of this. If you take a look, for example, apologetics in the New Testament really dealt heavily with fulfilled prophecy.

What did the Apostle Paul do when he went to a new city? He would go into the synagogues, and he would reason with the religious leaders there, showing that the Christ, what? He fulfilled the scriptures, right?

So the evidential apologetic approach will often make use of fulfilled messianic prophecies. Of course, we have arguments from miracles, and of course, we have the centerpiece of the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus himself.

Again, like the classical approach, I would say that the evidential approach is a bottom-up approach, okay? Working your way up to the conclusion that God exists. And then you have the wonderful, highly unpopular view, okay?

The presuppositional approach. Admittedly, this approach to apologetics is not widely held. It's typically held within reform circles for reasons that I can't go into, but the presuppositional approach is very different than some of those other approaches, but I think have a lot to learn and benefit from those other approaches.

So presuppositional approach begins with the truth of the Christian position and argues down from there, and something along the lines of, if one does not begin with God and his revelation, one loses the foundation for things like science, history, philosophy, logic, knowledge, and intelligible experience itself.

And to use the technical terminology to kind of summarize that line of reasoning, presuppositionalists tend to use an argument along transcendental lines. We use something called a transcendental argument, in which you try to prove the truth of something by the impossibility of the contrary.

Now, this is not the point of my talk. I just wanted to kind of survey the playing field, so to speak, but what I appreciate about the presuppositional approach is that it is not a bottom-up approach.

It is a top-down approach. We begin with the self-attesting authority of God and his revelation, and we argue from that authority. But relevant to our talk here and the topic for today, whether you are a presuppositionalist, or you're a classicalist, or you're an evidentialist, I think all of us can agree that the discussion of our worldviews is very important.

This, I think, is one of the good aspects of a presuppositional approach. It tends to emphasize worldview issues, I think, a little more than some of those other perspectives, although it's a mixed bag, depending on who we're talking about.

So worldview discussion is vitally important, okay? And they allow us to address the attacks that are coming from the outside. There are various and sundry challenges to apologetics that come in the form of scientific objections.

We all know the famous creation-evolution debates, both between believers and unbelievers, and believers versus believers of different stripes, right? You have the young earth creationist, the old earth creationist, the progressive creationist, the theistic creationist, and it's just a fun time, right?

You want to start a fight, talk about eschatology, Calvinism, and creation, and politics, and then you're off running, someone is going to die, okay? So that's normally how these things go, and we do it lovingly, right?

We stomp on the theological throats of our opponents while smiling and saying, gentleness and respect, but you don't agree with me, so that's there. And again, I'm joking, but I'm not. I think Christians need to do a better job in talking about their differences, okay?

And not equating our opponent's position with other positions that they don't hold, okay? So for example, when I used to hear the word annihilationism, I automatically thought of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And so I automatically thought that if you were an annihilationist, you were either a Jehovah's Witness, or you were very sympathetic to those sorts of arguments. And then of course, when you bring this topic to your friend who's theologically inclined, and he says, well, you know, they're not really Jehovah's Witnesses, but we need to be careful that if you adopt this view, all of these other things must necessarily follow.

And that's not necessarily true too. We don't want to commit the slippery slope fallacy, right? And we want to understand that in its proper light, there are important implications of our views, but we want to be careful what we say about what is necessitated from a specific view.

I get this all the time as a Calvinist. You're a Calvinist, well, you believe A, B, and C, and then I look at A, B, and C, and I'm just like, I don't believe any of that, right? I'm not properly represented when we try to draw those connections when there isn't a necessary connection there.

And I think that's still relevant to our discussion on hell. Now, we have these various challenges to the apologetic task coming from science, coming from history. This is why I very much appreciate Michael Jones' ministry.

If you haven't subscribed, I highly recommend you do. He covers a lot of topics regarding the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. And I think this is a very, very important topic that we all need to be aware of.

Regardless of the positions you hold, we must understand the historical context of our texts. Not only does that inform and give a more robust understanding of the text for our own personal study, but with respect to defending the faith, it's vitally important to know that context.

So we have challenges from science, history, philosophy, and of course we have challenges from theology. When there is an attempted criticism of the Christian faith, we get the famous questions, if God is all loving, why does he send people to hell?

If God is all loving, why is there evil in the world? These are questions that in order to adequately and apologetically respond to them, it is going to require both philosophical astuteness and a firm grounding in biblical theology.

What saith the Bible? We need to know what the Bible says. And so apologetics requires us to know what our faith is. And that includes the black and white issues, and that includes the issues under which Christians differ.

Now, all of that out of the way, let's get to our question. Is hell, my view specifically, but views in general, is hell a problem for apologetics? Now I want you to remember what I said at the beginning.

You could have replaced this with any doctrine. You could talk about creationism or whatever view that you hold. Is it a problem? And we need to kind of define what we mean by a problem. Things could be a problem in many senses, some senses that aren't that important, and other senses in which they're pretty darn important.

And so we need to ask the question, in what sense is hell specifically, regardless of the view, in what engaging in apologetics? And I've identified two ways in which that can feasibly be a problem. Number one, we have an intellectual problem.

And if I remember correctly, I think, Michael, you're going to cover the question of how can a loving God send people to hell. And I think he could address it from this logical approach as well as the next version of the problem as well.

But I think it's relevant here. Is there an intellectual problem with the belief that there is a loving God who sends people to hell, whether it's for eternity or annihilation? Both are terrible, right?

People might find both of those a hard pill to swallow. Maybe one of those pills are harder to swallow than the other, but they're hard pills to swallow nonetheless. Is there an intellectual problem? Is there a logical inconsistency within the Christian perspective between these ideas?

And then we have the emotional problem, the existential problem. And that, I don't know about you, if anyone has shared their faith before, you often have to find that balance between identifying whether the objection that's being raised to you is an intellectual objection or an emotional objection.

And guess what? When you find it's not an intellectual objection, you're like, whoo, well, it's just an emotional problem. That's still a really difficult hurdle to jump over when you're sharing your faith.

So we need to be very careful. When we think of the intellectual problem of a theological position, I think that's a more difficult, and it will not so much difficult, I think it's the more important version of the problem, in that logical problems try to do a refutation on our position.

For if the idea of a loving God, which the Bible teaches, and the idea of eternal punishment in some sense is true, and there's a logical incompatibility with what the Bible teaches, then that would be a successful, what we would call an internal critique of our position.

So one aspect of the problem is dealing with the truth of our position, while another is dealing with the emotion surrounding the question. And both can be very, very difficult to navigate. So how might we respond to, sorry, there we go.

Okay, how might we respond to the intellectual problem? Okay, there are many ways we could respond to this, and I want to remind you of what I've discussed at the beginning. Remember, when someone brings up hell, or predestination, or creation, or eschatology, or whatever, you want to keep in mind that you are not discussing an isolated theological topic, disconnected from the broader system of Christian truth.

And that's just a fancy way of saying, remember, when we're talking with unbelievers, or with anyone, we are talking about worldviews. Okay, Christianity is a worldview. It is not simply a conglomeration of individual, not necessarily connected beliefs.

Okay, a worldview, if I can define my terms real quick, there is a super easy definition, which is like rocket science. It's like, what's a worldview? And I'm like, it is a view of the world. They're like, ah, okay, yeah, that's the simple definition.

But then we could define worldview in the more technical definition, which I actually think is, while more complicated, is actually much more helpful and useful in understanding what, in fact, a worldview is.

A worldview can be defined as a network of presuppositions, in terms of which all reality is interpreted. Notice that a worldview is a network of presuppositions. And that highlights the interconnectedness of our beliefs.

What I about data point over here is connected with what I believe about other things over here. When I teach worldview to my students, I say, close your eyes, and I want you to think of something. Think of an ice cream cone.

And they close their eye, and I say, you got the ice cream cone? Do you got the color of the ice cream cone? Is there sprinkles? What color are the sprinkles? Put some whipped cream on that bad boy. Now, I challenge anyone in this class to tell me something meaningful about an ice cream cone without assuming other ideas that you have.

Now, of course, that's impossible. The very moment they open their mouth, they're assuming the connection between the idea in their mind and the fact that language is an adequate mechanism to communicate.

So, in other words, all of our beliefs, all of our presuppositions are networks. They are connected with one another. And all that to say, our theological beliefs are connected to other beliefs. And that relationship gives meaning and context to those individual data points of theology, of which hell is one of them.

So, we want to remember our worldview. We want to remember that the nature of the dispute between the unbeliever is one of worldview systems. Also, if the idea of worldview is key here, I would also point out from my perspective that there are no neutral facts or ideas.

As I said before, the idea of justice, the idea of righteousness, the idea of sin, the idea of heaven, the idea of hell is not a neutral category. Those ideas have meanings given their context. Now, this is very important because if you forget the context in which your idea of hell exists, if you forget the context in which your idea of justice exists, you might run into the problem of talking about these categories independent of that broader context.

And the unbeliever can often sneak in their subjective opinions of what justice should be, critique your view of justice, and fault it for not meeting the standard that he has created in his mind. Does that make sense?

Okay, that's very important. And when that happens, you talk past each other. That's why when we define these categories, we want to be consistent with our presuppositions. So there are no neutral facts or ideas, and that includes there are no neutral concepts of heaven or hell.

They are existing within a broader context. Now, there are two things I want to mention here that I think are helpful with whoever we might be, whatever position we hold, when we're navigating the discussion of hell as to whether it's a problem, whether intellectually or emotionally.

And this is the idea of internal versus external critiques of worldviews. So if we define worldviews as kind of like a pair of shades, okay? Some of us have really weird worldviews. That's why even when we put the shades on, things look very strange, right?

We have a worldview. These are the lens through which we filter reality. They inform our views of metaphysics, our theory of reality. They inform our epistemology, our theory of knowledge, or our ethics, our theory of how we should live our lives.

And everyone is wearing these specific shades. I have my fundamental commitments. You have your fundamental commitments. The unbeliever has his fundamental commitments. And if they're consistent with their fundamental commitments, every data point you throw at them will be filtered through their lens.

I know Braxton. I know Michael. I know Chris. When you've spoken with atheists or unbelievers, you realize very quick that they will often throw over their shoulder very good arguments and evidences that you give for your position.

And much of the time, it could be due to the fact that maybe they're bad arguments, right? That could be it. Or it could also be that they're rejecting your data points, your arguments, because they're viewing them through a different lens.

Isn't that right? They often view what you're giving them from a different presuppositional starting point. And oftentimes when they critique your view, they engage in what we call an external critique.

So before I expand on that, let's define our terms. An internal critique is when we hypothetically grant the truth of a position that we're critiquing to show that on its own basis, it has logical incoherencies.

There are problems with the perspective given the truth of the perspective. And that's the kind of critique I think is appropriate. For example, if someone were to ask the question, how could a loving God send people to hell?

Right? I often hear apologists respond, well, you know, or let's do this. I don't want to piggyback on your topic. Someone says, how can a loving God permit evil in the world? And of course, many apologists might respond, and maybe this is coming to your mind.

Well, if atheism is true, evil doesn't even exist, right? There's no objective standard of evil. But that's a terrible answer to that question. And the reason why it's a terrible answer is because the question is coming from an appropriate foundation.

Namely, if I hypothetically grant the truth of your own position, how can the loving God that you tell me about in your word allow evil in the world? You don't do anything by saying, well, if God didn't exist, evil doesn't exist.

The atheist can say, okay, but that doesn't, that doesn't solve the problem for you. Let's say God does exist. How can a loving God be such a jerk from their perspective, right? Allowing these things to happen.

Okay. And that is an appropriate internal critique. And as Christians, we need to know what the Bible says about God, how he relates to evil and how we navigate all of those questions. Some of us come from different theological perspectives.

You might be a Molinist and answer it from a Molinist perspective. You might be a Calvinist and answer it from a Calvinist perspective. But if you're convinced that the Bible teaches one or the other, you need to know your position.

You need to understand your system and answer in a way that is consistent with those foundations. Okay. Very important. Then we have the external critique. And an external critique is when we critique a view, not on the basis of the worldview or the position we're critiquing, but on the basis of the other person's presuppositions.

So sometimes I'll have atheists criticize my view with their presuppositions that I already reject. Okay. And that's a problem as well. So every time someone brings an external critique, I'm like, actually, I hold to a Christian worldview that believes A, B, and C.

I reject the presuppositions and the foundation of your question. Right. Now he can continue to critique my perspective externally, but it's really not going to touch my position because he's not really dealing with my worldview.

Okay. Now this is important because criticisms of our beliefs about hell, right, given that broader context in which we're believing it, we have to defend our position consistent with our worldview and the unbeliever must critique our perspective while properly representing what we believe about hell.

And in as much as they don't do that, then their counter arguments to our position are going to fall flat. Now, why is this important? This is not just relevant to the topic of hell. This is relevant to every belief that we have as Christians.

If we hold to a theological belief, right, we want to be able to defend it consistently with our foundations and also point out when our beliefs are not being properly represented. So we want to make a distinction, navigate that relationship between internal critiques and external critiques.

If you're going to give me an external critique of my view of hell, it's not going to work because I have a whole system of a worldview system in which I make sense of my position and you need to deal with that position.

So we want to make a distinction between whether we're getting an external critique of our view of hell or an appropriate internal critique of our view of hell. Now, what about the emotional problem? I think the emotional problem is not as important as the intellectual problem, but it can be more difficult sometimes to navigate the emotional problem.

And one of the reasons for that is, I think we resonate with the emotional problem, don't we? Right? I can talk about hell and eternal conscious torment. It's like, listen, you know, you don't want to experience the wrath of God, the judgment of God.

And when someone's like, well, how can your God do this? And they can bring up various examples. And even as Christians, sometimes we have a difficult time swallowing that pill, right? Right. Why does God do what he does?

It seems so harsh. It seems so unfair. Okay. People ask various questions. How will I enjoy heaven? Knowing my spouse, my child, family member, a friend is experiencing eternal conscious torment in hell.

Okay. That's an emotionally loaded question. It's very difficult to grapple with. How can I worship and love a God who sends people to hell in the first place? And are you saying that my grandmother, the nicest lady in the...

How many people have a nice grandmother? Yeah, I have nice grandmothers. My grandmother on my mother's side, she was nice, but got a little saucy sometimes. But the other grandmother, an angel. Okay. Now, someone says, are you saying that my grandmother, the nicest lady in the world, is in hell because she didn't believe in Jesus?

Okay. Now, we have apologetic answers to this that are from the Bible. We have consistent answers. But it's difficult emotionally, right? You can't just spit out like a computer, this dry, emotionalist response.

When you're doing apologetics and you're speaking about theological topics such as hell, we need to deal with the person's mind and the person, right? We want to be careful how we navigate these issues.