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Take the doctrine of God's sovereignty, taught in the Bible in such a way that it stands in creative tension with human freedom. The perspective of an all-powerful being who sees all history at once rather than unfolding second by second will always baffle theologians because that point of view is unattainable to us, even unimaginable by us. A humble approach accepts the difference in perspective and worships a God who transcends our limitations.

Hyper-Calvinists take on the prerogatives that no human can bear. Thus Malthusians opposed vaccination for smallpox because, they said, it interfered with God's sovereign will. Calvinist churches discouraged early missionaries such as William Carey, ignoring the obvious fact that we are the ones chosen by a sovereign God to carry the good news worldwide. On the other hand, in their doctrine of "perseverance of the saints," Calvinists correctly expressed the biblical tension between eternal security and the need for God's followers to persevere in their faith.

Obviously, we must and should investigate some of the issues in what I have called "the margins." I have been greatly helped, for example, by C. S. Lewis's depiction in The Great Divorce of hell as a place people continue to choose even when they end up there. As Milton's Satan put it, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Still, I must insist that the most important questions about heaven and hell—who goes where, whether there are second chances, what form the judgments and rewards take, intermediate states after death—are opaque at best. Increasingly, I am grateful for that ignorance and grateful that the God who revealed himself in Jesus is the one who knows the answers.

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September 6 1999, Vol. 43, No. 10