Optional or Imposed Soter?:
Now, to the issue of the “optional.” The issue is salvation and the concept of it being voluntary and entirely optional. Christopher Hitchens stated that God “doesn’t offer one,” a solution, “because no one’s demanded it.” Yet, the fact is that billions of people, regardless of chronology, geography or theology have “demanded” or more accurately cried out for, prayed for, longed for assistance, forgiveness and salvation.
Next the argument becomes very contrived in claiming that “There’s no problem that has so far been identified in the human species that demands a human sacrifice,” the problem here being Christopher Hitchens’ confused concept of “human sacrifice.”
We are then told “it’s imposed upon you – I’m doing this because the prophets said I would and I’m going to have the boy tortured to death in public to fulfill ancient screeds of bronze age Judaism.” This is where the conflict between Dr. Alister McGrath’s claim that it is voluntary and entirely optional conflicts with Christopher Hitchens’ claim that it is imposed.
But let us first note that Christopher Hitchens has it backwards: God did not do it because the prophets said He would. Rather, the prophets said that God would do it because God told them ahead of time that He would.
Back to the concept of imposition versus option:
Christopher Hitchens considers it imposed because “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it.” Yet, this is somewhat tantamount to a very backwards third-world country person who is very, very ill with a disease being given first-world country medicine and instantly stating, “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it.” The doctor may very well say, “You may not want it because you think that you do not need it and do not feel better for it but the problem is that you do not realize that you need it and you have not given the medicine enough time to work through your system. When it does, you will feel better and then come to realize that you did need it and that you did want it.”
It is like someone who sees that you are about to cross a street but you do not see a semi-truck coming down the street at a high rate of speed. The person knocks you out of the way while falling to the street and getting killed by the truck. And then you reaction is to say, “Hey, that was imposed! I didn’t want it. I didn’t need it and I don’t feel better for it.”
But the bottom line to the voluntary and entirely optional versus imposition conflict is that Christopher Hitchens considers the option to be strictly one sided or not offering equally attractive options. Thus, he concludes that it is imposed. Why, “because then,” if you reject God’s offer of salvation, “you’re going to be cast into eternal fire.”
This is obviously a very, very difficult issue but I do not state, “obviously” or “difficult” for the reasons that you may think. The difficulty is that some people’s ideas of what hell is all about are influenced by creepy medieval paintings and fire and brimstone preaching; whose concept of hell is about as antiquated as the concept of abiogenesis. In my essays On Hell and Why Would Your Lord Send You to Hell? I detailed this issue; here I will succinctly state that the bottom line is this:
Hell appears to be described as eternal fire due to metaphoric and contemporaneous references to the Valley of Gehenna where refuse was constantly being burned. However, since hell is also described as a place of darkness the flames cannot be literal fire.
Christopher Hitchens has spent a large portion of his life expressing his hatred towards the God of the Bible, he is a self-professed “antitheist.” If Christopher Hitchens dies and finds that there is a God and that God is the God of the Bible it would be hellish for him to be dragged into heaven to spend eternity with the God whom he hates. It would be unjust of God to force someone like that to be incarcerated in heaven eternally enduring His presence. Thus, God allows those who hate Him to have their heart’s deepest desire: to be done with Him once and for all.
Thus, there is a place where they can choose to go and be away from God forever.1