Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 141:564 (Oct 1984)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous

BSac 141:564 (Oct 84) p. 354

Periodical Reviews

“Apocalypse Macabre: Evangelicalism’s Ultimate Obscenity,” Joseph Edward Barnhart, Free Inquiry 4 (Summer 1984): 31-33.

Barnhart’s article is one of a series of seven papers presented at a February, 1984 symposium on “Armageddon and Biblical Apocalyptic” at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, sponsored by the Religion and Biblical Criticism Research Project of Free Inquiry. The published papers of the symposium are introduced by Editor Paul Kurtz’s article, “Introduction: Doomsday Prophecies, Fear-mongering and the Escape from Reason.”

Of the articles, including Kurtz’s, Barnhart’s is chosen for review for three reasons: (1) it equates fundamentalists and evangelicals as belonging to the same camp; (2) it presents the most extreme indictment of Bible-believing Christians on the basis of a caricature of their attitudes and motivations for their beliefs; (3) Barnhart teaches at North Texas State University in Denton, less than 50 miles from Dallas.

What is represented by Barnhart’s title is evangelical Christianity’s belief in the eternal separation from God in torment of the totality of unregenerate humanity, which he calls “a Cosmic Concentration Camp” (p. 31) and “a divinely sanctioned Eternal Concentration Camp” (p. 33). He concludes that such a belief and its proclamation “serves to desensitize the moral conscience, making it more susceptible to aggression and violence” (p. 33). He implies that evangelicalism’s doctrine of hell was fabricated as a device to terrorize people into professing Christianity and that evangelicals take fiendish delight in consigning unbelievers to “a lake of fire” (Rev 19:20; 20:10, 14–15).

Early in his paper Barnhart declares, “The point here is not to engage evangelicals and fundamentalists in a debate as to whether hell really does or does not exist” (p. 31). However, the reality of hell and

BSac 141:564 (Oct 84) p. 355

eternal torment as taught in the Bible is exactly the crux of the issue, and Barnhart’s setting it aside as nonessential is simply begging the question and avoiding the real issue.

Later he says, “It is useful to ask not only how a religion could conceive of such an atrocity, but how it could support it” (p. 31). Biblical Christianity never did “conceive” of the doctrine of eternal torment in the sense of conjuring it up by some process of human reasoning. The doctrine of hell is part of the revelation from God in the Bible which biblical Christians accept and preach becau...