when love and doctrine contradict each other

Originally posted on December 31, 2025 – by Andre Piet

In the New Year’s Eve edition of the Nederlands Dagblad an interview appeared with Alie Hoek-van Kooten, a physician and well-known speaker within Reformed circles. In the conversation she speaks candidly about her faith, her questions, and her struggle with the fact that one of her sons does not believe. Strikingly honest, she says that toward unbelievers she remains silent about hell. Not out of indifference, but because it touches her too deeply.

That tension becomes most sharply visible where it concerns her own son.

where unconditional love becomes concrete

With regard to people in general, she can still to some extent maintain the idea of an eternal hell, although it costs her effort. But when it concerns her son, that no longer works. There the thought comes to a halt.

That is telling. For if there is one relationship in which unconditional love becomes concrete, it is that between parents and children. A parent does not love his child because it believes or makes the right choices. That love precedes it and does not cease when the child chooses other paths.

Precisely for that reason, the idea of an endless hell here becomes internally untenable. Not only emotionally heavy, but principally unthinkable. For if one cannot let go of one’s own child, not even in unbelief or rejection, how then could God — who is Father — do so?

judgment is biblical — endless judgment is not

Quite apart from the terminology used here, this is not a misunderstanding but a fundamentally incorrect assumption. In the interview the assumption sounds that “the Bible simply teaches” that there is an endless hell. But that is not what Scripture says.

The Bible clearly speaks about judgment and judgment proceedings. The histories that are mentioned as well — such as Noah or the crossing of the Red Sea — show that God’s judgments are real and serious. About that there is no doubt.

What the Bible nowhere teaches, however, is a judgment without end. That idea is based on the assumption that the biblical concept aion (age, time period) would be endless. But in Scripture eonian times (Rom. 16:25; 2 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 1:2) have a beginning and an end. Eonian judgments belong to such time periods and are therefore by definition not endless.

The problem, then, does not lie in recognizing judgment, but in extending it into something that the Bible itself does not teach.

For a moment His anger endures, a lifetime His favor.
–Psalm 30:6–

Thus God’s anger and His favor relate to one another.

God as Father and the goal of all things

It is striking that this tension only truly becomes tangible when love becomes concrete. One can speak abstractly about “humanity.” One can draw hard conclusions about “unbelievers” in general. But as soon as it concerns my child, the space for a judgment without end disappears.

That is not a weakness, but an indication. Scripture does not speak of God as Father for nothing. Fatherly love seeks, corrects, and does not let go. The fact that God is not now known by all as Father does not change that; the Biblical perspective is precisely that He becomes Father in the full sense of the word when His purpose has been reached.

That purpose is put into words by Paul:

… that God may be all in all.
–1 Corinthians 15:28–

It is not love that fails here, but the assumption — as it is presupposed in the interview — that Scripture would teach an endless hell. For where God is Father and becomes all in all, no judgment without end can exist.

Delen: