How is God present in hell?

One of our Community Group leaders was confused by some comments I made in the Q &A at the end of Saturday's UpClose service.

Here's the Saturday night question: "If God is omnipresent, then is God in Hell?"

Our leader wrote, "Maybe I heard wrong, but [Rick] said. 'Yes. God is omnipresent, not only outside the box [the box being the universe] but everywhere inside the box. So, [God] is in Hell.'"

Our leader continued, "I thought the definition of hell was 'the absence of God'."

***

Here are my efforts to clarify:

Hi ____,

I was trying to be very specific in my wording on Saturday evening. Perhaps, I wasn’t as clear as I hoped to be.

1. The omnipresence of God means by definition that He must be present everywhere in the universe. There is no place where He is not. Since hell is in the universe, then we must conceive of a way in which He must be present there while not violating the awful, horrifying nature of hell.

2. Theologians have said that we might think of God as present in at least 3 ways.

a. God is present to sustain. Every person in the world experiences the presence of God to sustain. We all breathe His air. He makes our hearts beat. We eat His food. In that sense, He is present to sustain.

b. God is present to bless. Many people in the world experience the presence of God to bless. He brings good, joy, hope into our lives. Usually, when we say, “I feel close to God” we are expressing this sense of being blessed in either tangible or intangible ways. When the Bible speaks of God being present, it’s a brief way of stating that He is present to bless. When the Bible speaks of God being far away, it usually means He is “not present to bless.” (See Isaiah 59:2, Proverbs 15:29.)

c. God is present to judge. Because of the doctrine of the omnipresence of God, it is not theologically or technically accurate to say that hell is literally the absence of God. (Although I myself have spoken of hell in those terms.) It would perhaps be more accurate to say that hell is the absence of the presence of God to bless. It’s terrifying to think of this, but hell is the presence of God to judge. Theologians have said that heaven exists to the praise of the glory of His grace and that hell exists to the praise of the glory of His justice.

The theologian, Wayne Grudem, who has spoken with and co-edited a book with John Piper, wrote on this topic in his book, “Systematic Theology.”

Grudem writes, “God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with His whole being, yet God acts differently in every space” (p. 173).

Grudem continues, “The idea of God’s omnipresence has sometimes troubled people who wonder how God can be present, for example, in hell. In fact, isn’t hell the opposite of God’s presence, or the absence of God? [No.] This difficulty can be resolved by realizing that God is present in different ways in different places, or that God acts differently in different places in His creation. Sometimes God is present to punish” (p. 175).

This should serve to motivate us even more to do whatever we can do to share the gospel of Jesus with the lost, to be used by God to “depopulate hell” and to “populate heaven.”

I hope this clarifies what I was seeking to express on Saturday evening.

I highly recommend Grudem’s Systematic Theology. I wish that every family in our church would own and use a copy regularly.

Thanks for the question. And thanks for being part of our Community Group ministry.

May God be present to bless you!