What about Hell? In Memory of Jitsuo Morikawa

Most of you likely have never heard of Jitsuo Morikawa, a Japanese American who was born 110 years ago and died on July 20, 1987.

It was about 25 years before his death that I heard Morikawa speak for the first time—and the main thing I remember from that occasion is what he said about hell. 

Jitsuo Morikawa was born in British Columbia, Canada, in 1912. His Japanese parents were Buddhists, but when he was 16, Jitsuo became a Christian. After graduating from UCLA, he enrolled in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS).

The year after graduating from SBTS in 1940, he was interned in a relocation center for Americans of Japanese ancestry. From 1944 to 1956 he was a pastor of the First Baptist Church in Chicago and then served for 19 years in the headquarters of the American Baptist Churches.

In 1976-77 Morikawa was the interim pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church in New York City, and I had the privilege of attending a Sunday morning service there and hearing him preach during that time.

Morikawa came back to SBTS to speak when I was a graduate student there. I don’t remember what his talk was about, but during the discussion that followed he was asked a question, or perhaps questioned, about hell.

I have never forgotten his response. He said that it was strange to him that so many Christians seemed to be disappointed and disapproving whenever he or anyone suggested that perhaps there was not a literal hell where non-Christians are punished forever.

Morikawa was questioned, and his views on hell were opposed, by many who heard him that evening, for, as was included in the revised Baptist Faith and Message in 1963, Southern Baptists generally believed that after death, “The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment.”

I have dealt with the issue of hell in two previous blog posts. The most recent was on Jan. 20, 2019. In that article, I raised a question that was similar to what I heard Morikawa say in the early 1960s:

Here is the biggest question of all: Why do conservative Christians get so upset with the idea that most of the people of the world—that is, all who do not trust in Jesus as their Savior—might not be punished in Hell for all eternity?

Then back in 2011, I made a blog post titled “Bell on Hell.” It was related to Rob Bell’s controversial book titled Love Wins. I encourage you to read that article (again).

Brian McLaren writes briefly about hell on pages 193-4 of his new book Do I Stay Christian? Hell, however, is the underlying theme of The Last Word and the Word After That (2005), the third volume of McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian trilogy.⁺⁺

The 17^th chapter of that book is called “Deconstructing Hell.” That chapter, and that book, and that trilogy are well worth reading with thoughtful consideration. It was reading those books that led me to become a firm “fan” of McLaren.

In his new book, McLaren speaks of “repurposing hell.” That means that he is thinking hell “is not a threat of divine retribution in the afterlife but a dire warning about the inevitable negative consequences of harmful behaviors in this life—like war, ecological overshoot, or gross economic inequality.”

Partly because of hearing what Morikawa said in the early 1960s, through the years I have questioned the traditional Christian belief about hell. And because of McLaren’s 2005 novel, I questioned that traditional position even more.

The first sentence of McLaren’s introduction to that book is straight to the point: “I believe that God is good.” And then in the 17^th chapter he has Casey, one of his characters, say that “if hell seems to have the last word, there’s got to be a word after that.”

Pastor Dan, the central character, asks her what that would be, and Casey says, “Grace . . . I think the last word is always grace” (p. 101).**

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⁺⁺ This month I have reread this book and (again) found it to be of great value. If any of you harbor troubling questions/doubts regarding the traditional (conservative) doctrine of hell, I encourage you to read this book (which is a serious theological book written in the form of a novel).

** I didn’t consciously remember those words when I wrote my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018), but the last chapter of that book is “#30  God’s First and Last Word Is Always Grace.”