Audio only:
In this episode Trent explains what critics of the doctrine of hell often forget when they claim no rational person would freely choose eternal separation from God.
Hell: The Logic of Damnation, Jerry L. Walls
https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268010966/hell/
“How to Go to Hell,” Edward Feser
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-go-to-hell_29.html
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Transcript:
In my previous episode, I talked about how modern concepts of insanity have led some people to think evildoers don’t deserve punishment. They’re just broken machines that need to be repaired and then sent out again.
And in today’s episode, I’ll talk about how this mindset enters conversations about the doctrine of hell and what Christians often forget to mention in order to counter it.
So, to start, both atheists and many liberal Christians say that choosing to spend eternity in misery apart from God is something only an insane person would do, and so anyone who would do that should not be punished but just have their mental illness fixed.
Here’s how atheist Keith Parsons put it:
[Clip: Keith Parsons]
Religious universalists like David Bentley Hart make the same claim, as can be seen in this passage from Hart’s 2019 book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. He writes:
“It makes no more sense, then, to say that God allows creatures to damn themselves out of his love for them, or out of his respect for their freedom, than to say a father might reasonably allow his deranged child to thrust her face into a fire out of a tender regard for her moral autonomy.”
So how should Christians respond to these criticisms of the doctrine of hell?
First, I recommend proposing a minimal definition of the doctrine. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell.’”
Many critics of hell will often use thought experiments to essentially scare the hell out of someone. They ask us to imagine personally roasting someone over an open fire, watching their skin melt and hearing their screams, and then asking how long we could manage to do that before admitting that God would allegedly never do something like that.
But here we can do something to pit the atheists against the liberal Christians, because atheists often make similar arguments against eternity in heaven.
They’ll offer similar thought experiments about what an eternity in heaven is like and say that listening to harps forever on clouds would eventually become so repetitive that heaven would turn into hell.
In response, liberal Christians say that an all-powerful God who made a universe from nothing can certainly fix our tendency to get bored, and that the images used to describe heaven in Scripture should not be confused with the reality of heaven that we can’t fully comprehend at this time.
As St. Paul says:
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.”
A similar response can be given for the doctrine of hell.
While Scripture uses fiery and gruesome imagery to describe hell, we don’t know if that is what hell is exactly like. Pope St. John Paul II said the following:
“The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.”
In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis described hell as a crack in Heaven where, inside, there’s a gray and gloomy town whose inhabitants constantly fight with each other and move further and further away into an infinite void.
Now, Catholic theology traditionally held that the outer edge of hell—the limbus, in Latin—was a place with perfect natural happiness but no supernatural happiness with God. This gave rise to the doctrine of limbo for unbaptized babies, though more recent theological development has shifted toward trusting in God to use extraordinary means to save unbaptized children.
But the principle remains that, for any image of hell a critic conjures up to say that hell is unjust, the defender of hell can fashion another possible scenario where the damned suffer—even to a minor degree—but don’t suffer an allegedly disproportionate amount while they are permanently excluded from the presence of God.
As long as the scenario is possible, then the critic’s objection of a merely possible injustice in hell doesn’t work.
That doesn’t mean hell will be like the defender’s possible scenario. It’s only a way of overcoming the critic’s objection.
So let’s return to the claim, as Hart makes, that choosing hell would be on par with a child willingly throwing herself into a fire—an act so insane that no parent would let his child do it and would instead override her free will to stop her.
This analogy fails because we don’t allow children to do that because they’re ignorant of what fire is or what it is able to do to someone.
A better analogy would be a father allowing his adult son to do illegal drugs instead of kidnapping him and forcing him to get treatment.
The 2018 film Beautiful Boy, which is based on a true story, describes a father who not only doesn’t forcibly stop his son from using drugs, but refuses to let his son return home until his son gives up his drug addiction.
And here’s where defenders of traditional Christian eschatology can answer critics of hell using their same intuition maneuver.
Critics of hell say, “If it would be wrong for us to torture someone, then it would be wrong for God to do the same thing, and so hell is a false doctrine.”
All right. Well, if it would be wrong for you or me to brainwash someone into loving us, then it would be wrong for God to do the same thing.
And that is what many critics of hell say God should do.
The critics who defend universalism say that God will purify and change all those who rebel against Him—in some cases, even the devil—even if they actively refuse to accept God or openly reject Him.
But that means that, at some point, God will override the free will of some creatures.
If those creatures say, “Please, no, I don’t want you,” God will say, “Sorry. You’re mine forever.”
Which sounds like the hellish ending of a horror movie.
For example, imagine a woman refuses to marry a man, and so the man kidnaps her and brainwashes her to marry him because he knows he is a good spouse for her and she just doesn’t realize it yet.
If it would be wrong for the man to force himself on this woman for her own good, then by the universalist’s logic, isn’t God doing the same thing when He saves people who openly reject Him?
Now, a universalist might say that God won’t brainwash us Clockwork Orange-style. He will just “woo us,” and eventually He will wear every sinner down until they accept Him.
Which still makes God sound like an insufferable simp who can’t take a hint and uses abusive gaslighting to manipulate us.
Universalists might also say these analogies don’t work because God is our objective, infinitely good end.
A woman is not insane for rejecting even a great spouse. But you and I would be insane if we rejected eternity with God, and so God should forcibly save us from this insane decision.
First, this thinking basically says free will is not important and God must do whatever it takes to end suffering.
But that really undercuts one of the main answers to the problem of evil.
Because if God doesn’t care about free will at the Final Judgment and so He saves everyone, why did God care about free will at the beginning of creation and let evil happen in the first place?
But if God respects the good of our free will, then this explains a lot of evil in this life as well as damnation in the next life.
Second, by that logic, many earthly crimes are insane because people reject what is obviously a good end for them, and so people who commit those crimes allegedly shouldn’t be punished.
For example, in 2011, 17-year-old Manuel Guzman lured Eddie Leal to a park to kill him because he wanted to feel the excitement and fun of killing.
In 2002, 18-year-old Delon Lucas beat and stabbed a 13-year-old to death for stealing a dollar from him.
And there are many other cases of people acting, not in the heat of the moment, but methodically planning brutal murders and risking life in prison or the death penalty for absolutely stupid reasons—like a missing dollar or just wanting to feel excitement.
Modern definitions of insanity might say these people must be insane because they followed an irrational, irresistible impulse to act against their own objective good, and so they shouldn’t be punished.
That’s why I prefer older definitions of insanity that simply ask if the person knew what they were doing, knew that it was wrong, and still chose to do it anyway.
When discussing the doctrine of hell, sometimes we get sidetracked on issues like whether people who are merely ignorant of Christ will be damned.
Instead, we should focus on the obvious cases of people who freely reject God, taking the obvious moral law written into their conscience and giving it a big middle finger.
St. Paul talks about this when he writes:
“Those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.”
You can see this attitude in murderers who laugh in the faces of their victims’ families and those who commit unspeakable acts of cruelty.
One gruesome example, which made me ill just reading about it, would be the case of David Parker Ray, the Toy-Box Killer.
Between 1957 and 1999, David Parker Ray abducted dozens of women and took them to a custom-built, soundproof semi-trailer he called “the Toy Box.”
Inside, Ray kept whips, chains, pulleys, straps, clamps, leg spreader bars, surgical blades, needles, electric shock machines, and saws.
He would put women into coffins and other immobilizing devices, but many times he would strap them to a table beneath a mirror on the ceiling so his victims could see themselves being raped and mutilated.
Ray even used his own dog to rape some of the women.
It is believed that Ray killed over 60 women, though many more were released and still struggle with the trauma of what Ray did to them.
Ray was convicted in 2001, but he died of a heart attack in 2002.
And there are many other examples like this, including Robert Pickton, who bragged to an undercover police officer about killing 49 women and feeding their remains to the pigs on his farm.
Now, God can save anyone—even a serial killer who truly repents.
But what should God do about extremely wicked people who do not repent? People who would stand before God and laugh at His mercy while boasting of their unspeakable crimes?
God could brainwash them into loving Him, which would require God to do something that even we are not allowed to do. So that’s evil, and God can’t do it.
Or God could destroy the person, which is what the annihilationist, or defender of so-called conditional mortality, says God will do.
But most annihilationists are also against the death penalty. So if it would be intrinsically wrong for us to deprive someone of earthly life, then by their logic it would be intrinsically wrong for God to deprive someone of existence.
Instead, imagine that through some science-fiction scenario all people on Earth became immortal.
In that case, what would the critic of hell say that we should do with someone like David Parker Ray?
Well, why not give him the punishment we give now: life without parole?
That’s essentially what hell is. And yet, for some reason, God is unjust for applying a punishment we ourselves often mete out.
Now, the critic might say that after thousands or millions of years, even the worst criminals can be reformed.
But that’s just an assumption.
In fact, the reason we know there will be no sin in Heaven is the same reason we know there will be no goodness in hell: our wills become fixed at death.
St. Thomas Aquinas said that one reason hell is eternal is because the damned perpetually reject God, and so their punishment is always lengthened.
In his Supplement to the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas writes:
“From the very fact that he commits a mortal sin, he places his end in a creature; and since the whole of life is directed to its end, it follows that for this very reason he directs the whole of his life to that sin, and is willing to remain in sin forever, if he could do so with impunity.”
In other words, the damned are given a life sentence, and even when they are offered parole, they just always spit in the face of the heavenly review board and march right back into hell.
As long as you can think of one example of a person who would enjoy sinning if he could sin forever without any negative consequence, then that’s enough to show that hell does not contradict God’s love or justice for the damned.
Hell may even feel better than Heaven anyway, so God does them a favor by not dragging them into Heaven.
Think of the people who love being the center of attention at a party and become furious when a legitimately famous and nice person takes away their attention.
Now multiply that by infinity and you’ll see why Heaven would be hell for a person like this.
God is just giving the damned what they want and is being a gentleman by not forcing Himself on those people.
Aquinas also quotes Pope Gregory the Great, who said:
“The wicked only put an end to sinning because their life came to an end. They would indeed have wished to live forever, that they might continue in sin forever, for they desire rather to sin than to live.”
While many people object to the idea of endless punishment for a finite crime committed in this life, they should at least be open to the idea of endless punishment for the endless crime of perpetually rejecting God and His goodness.
As the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre portrayed in his play No Exit, hell is bound by an unlocked door that the damned simply refuse to walk through because their own desire to sin is what torments them and keeps them in hell.
Another objection would be that, after a million years, it would be cruel to keep someone in hell who probably doesn’t even remember what put them there in the first place.
But that assumes that nothing happens in the million-year interim.
Instead, what keeps the person in hell is the psychological and therefore culpable connection between every act of disobedience and malice that spans that entire period, where the person chooses to double down in their sin.
Finally, some critics will say that this is a disingenuous defense because hell isn’t just for grisly serial killers.
Catholics, for example, believe that any mortal sin can send someone to hell—even intentionally not going to Sunday Mass.
Is it just to inflict infinite punishment on someone for such an allegedly trivial offense?
First, at most, the critic would just quibble about the reasons people would be damned. He hasn’t disproven damnation itself.
Second, Catholic theology doesn’t say merely missing Sunday Mass will send you to hell.
For example, if you have enough time to say, “God, I know you want me to spend one hour with you on Sunday, and I freely choose not to do that even though I easily could,” well, think about that.
Why would this person, in the deepest part of himself, desire to spend eternity with God if he is so inconvenienced that he freely chooses not to spend an hour with Him on Sunday?
Finally, this objection operates under the false assumption that, deep down, there are only wicked people and nice people, and nice people deserve Heaven.
The problem is that, in this life, what we see as niceness in people consists partly of God-given dispositions, even if the person in his heart of hearts rejects God.
At the end of history, when God takes away those natural dispositions, a person’s true wickedness will be revealed.
Here’s how C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity:
“You cannot expect God to look at Dick’s placid temper and friendly disposition exactly as we do. They result from natural causes which God Himself creates. Being merely temperamental, they will all disappear if Dick’s digestion alters. The niceness, in fact, is God’s gift to Dick, not Dick’s gift to God… because that niceness in Dick was merely part of nature, it will all go to pieces in the end. Nature herself will all pass away. Natural causes come together in Dick to make a pleasant psychological pattern, just as they come together in a sunset to make a pleasant pattern of colours. Presently—for that is how nature works—they will fall apart again and the pattern in both cases will disappear. Dick has had the chance to turn—or rather, to allow God to turn—that momentary pattern into the beauty of an eternal spirit: and he has not taken it.”
To offer another example, when I watch disaster documentaries, I always find it fascinating how “the end” reveals people’s true colors.
For example, everyone on a cruise ship may seem like a nice person, but when the ship is sinking, some seemingly nice people will steal life jackets or abandon their post because they love themselves above all others.
Other nice—or even not-so-nice—people will risk their lives to save others.
This could be seen in the 1991 sinking of the MTS Oceanos, whose captain and crew abandoned ship, leaving the passengers to die.
The ship’s musician, Moss Hills, and his wife took charge, and because of their efforts all 571 passengers and the remaining crew were rescued. No one died or was even seriously injured.
Likewise, at the Final Judgment, what will be judged won’t be how nice we were, but whether we were united to Christ and pursued goodness because of the grace God gave us.
The saved will be those who consciously—and maybe in some cases unconsciously—ordered their hearts and wills toward God through the gift of His grace that they freely received from Him.
So I pray that all of us, especially myself, will not do something spiritually insane and choose to love the creature more than the Creator, because God will give us exactly what we want.
That’s why I pray:
“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
I hope today’s episode was helpful for you.
And if you’d like more resources on this topic, I recommend Jerry Walls’ book Hell: The Logic of Damnation and How to Go to Hell by Catholic philosopher Ed Feser, linked in the description below.
Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.