by Matthew Raley Ross Douthat made a trenchant observation in his New York Times column on Easter Sunday. "The doctrine of hell . . . assumes that our choices are real, and, indeed, that we are the choices that we make. The miser can become his greed, the murder can lose himself inside his violence, and their freedom to turn and be forgiven is inseparable from their freedom not to do so."

The idea of divine justice, that God renders a verdict on our choices and that a guilty verdict demands punishment, is being revised.

Many evangelicals are now saying that we must discard such old notions. They argue that God's every action is redemptive. Because the doctrine of eternal, conscious punishment in hell assumes a punitive wrath in God that has no redemptive motivation, the doctrine is inconsistent with God's nature.

Gregory Boyd (discussing annihilationism) says, "Consider that in the traditional view, the wicked are not being punished to learn something. There’s nothing remedial about their torment. Rather, God keeps them in existence for the sole purpose of having them experience pain."

Modernists made similar arguments more than a century ago. Old notions of justice as payback are barbaric, and Western civilization has outgrown such primitive ideas. Hell thus belongs to the lower rungs of humanity's evolution.

Is it the case that redemptive mercy is central to God's character, and does this characteristic invalidate the idea of hell?

Let's probe the word redemption. The Greek word is lutron, which refers to the ransom price for slaves or captives. There will be no release until the price is paid. Jesus, speaking about the key to his Lordship, says that he came to serve by giving his life as the redemption price for many (Mark 10.35-45).

Another word that expresses a similar idea is propitiation. Paul teaches that God made Christ's blood to be the "propitiation," the appeasement of God's justice, that sinners receive by faith (Romans 3.21-26). Paul also states the reason God made this appeasement in blood: "It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." That is, God's justice is demonstrated by his paying the price incurred by sin.

Redemptive mercy is indeed central to God's nature. But to call God's nature redemptive without reference to the purchase price is to talk nonsense. God does not do "remedial" sentences as a way to satisfy his justice. When he shows mercy to a sinner, he purchases the individual out of death into life.

In other words, Christ's death on the cross was redemptive because the death was entirely punitive. In God's plan the cross was not a sympathy-generating symbol or an attention-getting drama. It was the final propitiation of God's wrath. It paid the ransom.

No payment, no mercy. Full payment, full pardon.

The argument from God's mercy that many evangelicals are now using against the traditional doctrine of hell can also be used -- indeed, has been used -- to attack Christ's atonement for sin. Modernist theological liberals have long preached that the cross couldn't have been about something so primitive as payment. The cross is tragic blood-poetry to them.

I have never been impressed with modernism's treasured fantasy of cultural progress. Today's notion of remedial justice is founded on the lie that sin is not truly destructive of human life. Believing lies like this is not a sign of evolutionary refinement, but of degradation. Sin is destructive, and its deadly consequences cry out for recompense. The fact that we are all under sentence only makes the urgency of the cross more intense.

Douthat cites a contemporary story of sin, the fictional life of Tony Soprano, who rejects one opportunity after another to turn from his life of violence. "'The Sopranos' never suggested that Tony was beyond forgiveness. But, by the end, it suggested that he was beyond ever genuinely asking for it."

Rob Bell's notorious question about whether Gandhi is in hell is fair enough, says Douthat. "But there’s a question that should be asked in turn: Is Tony Soprano really in heaven?"

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 233 pp. by Matthew Raley

I have followed the incisive writing of these men in National Review for several years, and have regretted taking so long to get to their book. Their version of recent political history, their analysis of the working class and the new stratification of American society, and their road map to Republican success are compelling.

But my interest in their book is focused less on their political acumen than on their revealing picture of evangelicals.

Religious, socially conservative voters have been a base of the Republican party for several decades. These voters come from all classes, but they are disproportionately working class and southern. They have pushed the party to adopt pro-family, pro-life, and anti-gay marriage positions, and to side with them against the sexual mores of Hollywood.

When Douthat and Salam show these voters' problems as part of the larger working class in America, a disturbing portrait emerges.

The authors assert (p 133), "The most important thing to understand about today's stratification -- economic, social, and cultural -- is that it starts at home, where working-class Americans are far less likely than their better-educated peers to enjoy the benefits of stable families."

Come again?

Better-educated Americans are liberals. They're the ones who don't have stable families, who don't even believe stable families are important. So what's this about the working class not enjoying stable families?

Douthat and Salam explain (p 133), "The divorce rate exploded across all classes in the late 1960s, but among the college educated it leveled off quickly and then began to drop." Here are the numbers (pp 133-134):

In the period from 1970 to '74, 24 percent of all first marriages among Americans with college degrees ended in divorce within ten years; two decades later, that figure had fallen to just 17 percent. During the same period, by contrast, the divorced-within-ten-years rate crept up among Americans without a college degree, from 34 to 36 percent. As late as 1980, the divorce rate for women without a four-year college degree was just three percentage points higher than the divorce rate for women with a four-year degree; by 2000, this "divorce divide" stood at nine percentage points.

Or take illegitimacy (p 134):

In the early 1960s, the rate of out-of-wedlock births was 5 percent among the best-educated third of the population and just 7 percent among the least-educated third. Over the next forty years, the illegitimacy rate would triple for the least-educated third, while barely budging among the best-educated segment of the population.

For Douthat and Salam, the social conservatism of so-called Red states is directly related to the working class's economic interests.

They quote Garance Franke-Ruta of the American Prospect (p 140): "People in states like Massachusetts, for example, which has very high per capita incomes and the lowest divorce rate in the country, are relatively unconcerned about gay marriage, while those in Southern states with much higher poverty, divorce, and single-parenthood rates feel the family to be threatened because family life is, in fact, much less stable in their communities."

The authors' point that social conservatism is not, as many liberals argue, a distraction from the real problems of the working class, is needed.

But the disconnect between the voting passions of evangelicals and the way their families live has bothered me since the late nineties, when it became increasingly obvious that the loud, beefy Rush fans were just as, if not more, immoral than their NPR nemeses, and that Red-state church attendance was not having much impact on this hypocrisy.

I read Douthat and Salam's policy recommendations with enthusiasm. I hope a talented politician is studying this book.

But when I finished it, my thoughts went back to evangelicals. Their sexual morality is more an aspiration than a fact, which puts them in a poor position to lecture the rest of the country about righteousness. The out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the Palin family is all too typical of evangelical households right now, and protests that we believe a gospel of grace are not going to gain us sympathy.

Evangelicals need to recall that the kindness of God should lead us to repentance.