Is Hell for real?
U.S. Catholic explores what it means that contemporary Catholics are ceasing to believe in the doctrine of Hell. Excerpt:
Over the last half-century hell has moved from being a fixture of the Catholic landscape to something that exists far over the horizon. “Other than hearing my father say ‘damn it to hell’ more times than I can remember, we didn’t discuss it much,” says Mona Cholowinski, who attended religious education at her parish in suburban New Jersey in the 1970s. “It did come up occasionally as the ‘place other than heaven,’ but the discussions were more about being good and avoiding temptation,” she says.
Annie Selak, a rector at the University of Notre Dame, sees a similar dynamic at work among a younger generation. “I would say that most of the high school and college students I’ve encountered rarely think of hell. The vast majority assume they are going to heaven. It seems like an automatic for them. They are good people, so of course they will end up in heaven.”
Some recent polling also bears out this change. The Pew Center on Religion and Public Life’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey found that only 60 percent of Catholics believe in hell. While comparable to mainline Protestants (56 percent), that’s far below the 82 percent recorded by evangelical Protestant churches.
I looked at that Pew survey of the religious beliefs of Millenials (see page 100 of this PDF). How do we reconcile the high professed rates of belief in Hell with sociologist Christian Smith’s finding that most young people today are Moralistic Therapeutic Deists? As he and his co-author Melinda Lundquist Denton write:
This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.
Maybe the answer is that they believe Hell exists, but the only person there is Hitler. It’s one thing to believe Hell exists, but it’s quite another to have its reality affect the way you think about your own life, fate, and behavior. Anyway, I’m always irritated by Christians who say we should drop belief in Hell because it seems so cruel — this, even though Jesus himself testified to its existence. What, are we here to make up this religion to suit our preferences? That is the way of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera.
I’d be curious to know if you think that belief in Hell is a necessary precondition for engaging in this kind of religion.
I’d point out that just about everything on this list might be considered virtues of pagan philosophy (including the religious elements; pagan philosophers were quite explicit about the virtue of rendering the Divine its due). We are exhorted to follow these virtues for their own sake; they advocated for these virtues not because of the threat of divine punishment (nor indeed the promise of divine reward), but because they led to a good life.
I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that Christianity was, to some degree at least, an attempt to introduce virtue ethics to the masses, with an appeal to divine reward and punishment in place of the rational arguments that most people couldn’t be bothered to follow.
I’d be curious to know if you think that belief in Hell is a necessary precondition for engaging in this kind of religion.
No, I don’t. My complaint is that we moderns want to say Hell does not exist because it does not fit our therapeutic ideas of what religion should be. But you cannot edit Hell out of Scripture, especially because Jesus spoke of it as real. If He had never done so, and if Scripture was silent on the reality of Hell, that would be one thing. I’m not saying, “Hooray, Hell exists!” by any means. If I happen to arrive in Heaven and discover that Hell doesn’t exist, or that Hell exists but no one but the Devil is in there, I will rejoice. My point is simply that loss of a belief in Hell is indicative of a shift of our way of thinking about religion from prophetic (calling us to turn from our sins) to therapeutic (telling us that we’re okay, no matter what we do).
One ought to be good out of love of God and neighbor, but some people need the fear of Hell to keep them on the straight and narrow. None of this has anything to do with whether or not Hell exists. You have touched on what I think is the basic divide between religious believers today: whether religion is primarily about what God says to man about how to behave, or whether it is primarily an expression about what man says about God. I know that in reality, things aren’t as clean-cut as that, and that there is a dialectical relationship there. Still, if one believes that religion is our attempt to conform our lives to a transcendent moral order that exists independent of ourselves, one will be “conservative” on theological matters; if one believes that religion is our attempt to say something about our own values and our conception of God, one will be “liberal” on theological matters.
Going back to the Garden of Eden/literalism debate of a week or so ago, why couldn’t Hell also be read metaphorically or as an allegory? I mean, Jesus also spoke about Adam and The Fall as if they really existed, right? So if modern, enlightened people of faith can read Genesis as a myth without necessarily believing in a 6-day creation, talking snakes and a literal Fall, why can’t we also take Biblical concepts of Hell and Judgement for the warmed -over Egyptian and Zoroastrian mythology that they are?
Jaybird,
That’s a terrible analogy. First of all, Jesus talked a lot more about Hell than he did about the Fall of Man. Second of all, most Christians do believe in the Fall of Man, they just don’t think the details recounted in Genesis are literally true. (I have no idea what the details of the Fall were, but I believe that the first humans existed in a state of supernatural grace, and that they fell from that state due to their own choice to sin). Thirdly, the imagery in Genesis and the details of the Garden of Eden story point to deeper realities about original sin and about the fall of man. What does the doctrine of hell point to? We read the myths of the Old Testament as shadows and figures, pointing to the substance, which is the events of the New Testament. What is hell a figure of, if not itself? What do you think is the ultimate reality that Hell is merely symbolic of? I don’t see that it can really be symbolic of anything. Eternal torment means eternal torment.
Thoughtful people know that the doctrine of hell largely developed out of Zoroastrian doctrine, correct, and maybe the Egyptians too. How do you know the Zoroastrians and Egyptians weren’t _correct_? You’re rather assuming something as a premise, which I have neither any reason or inclination to accept.
Moreover, it’s not necessary to appeal to revelation to support the doctrine of hell (even though Jesus spoke about it a lot, and the Apostle’s Creed states its existence). You can arrive at it by reason alone (which is why plenty of people who aren’t Christians believe in it). Hell is a necessary consequence of the fact we have moral freedom. If we have real power of choice, then it must necessarily be possible for a person to choose to reject the good. Possibly forever.
Mainstream Christianity has edited out the idea that Christians can handle venomous snake and drink poison without harm, so why not edit out the idea of Hell, too?
Sadly, I think you are right with this:
One ought to be good out of love of God and neighbor, but some people need the fear of Hell to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Which I suspect is the real basis for the doctrine of hellfire.
The idea (was it CS Lewis) that “hell” is essentially being absent from God, out of His presence, works for me, on a metaphoric rather than literal level. The Dantean idea of hell consisting of pits of people being skewered and drowning in filth seems a ridiculous medieval delusion.
Part of the confusion regarding Hell is that many Bible translations use the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek word Hades for Hell. However while the meaning today of Hell is a place of torment the words Sheol and Hades referred to the common grave of mankind.
When Jesus spoke of “Hell” at Matthew 5:29,30 and Matthew 10:28 the word used was Gehenna. He was referring to the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) which was outside the walls of Jerusalem.
For a time it was the site of idolatrous worship, including child sacrifice. In the first century Gehenna was being used as the incinerator for the filth of Jerusalem. Bodies of dead animals were thrown into the valley to be consumed in the fires, to which sulfur, or brimstone, was added to assist the burning. Also bodies of executed criminals, who were considered undeserving of burial in a memorial tomb, were thrown into Gehenna
So it was not a place of torment but represented eternal destruction. Paul says at Romans 6:23 “The wages sin pays is death.”
At Jeremiah 7:31 God condemned Israel because the were offering up their children as sacrifices burning them in fire.
“ And they have built the high places of To′pheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hin′nom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.”
Would this same God allow his creation to be tortured eternally in a fiery Hell?
JParker, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Lewis’s idea of Hell as a place of burning is along the lines of the concept that God’s holiness is experienced as light to the pure (the saints), but like burning fire to those who are far from Him (the damned).
Rod, this description is correct as to C.S. Lewis’s idea of hell, but only as to devils. In The Screwtape Letters, the damned do not experience eternal torment, but are instead devoured by the devils. For Lewis, damnation = annihilation. And this is consistent with the scriptural description of being thrown into Gehenna, which means destruction instead of eternal torment.
Re: Mainstream Christianity has edited out the idea that Christians can handle venomous snake and drink poison without harm,
Actually, that was probably edited INTO the Bible (the oldest manuscripts don’t have it), and in any case, this was never generally viewed as a charism that Christians in general were expected to have. I believe a few of the Apostles (Thomas and maybe Paul) were supposed to have it, but that’s about it.
Re: The idea (was it CS Lewis) that “hell” is essentially being absent from God, out of His presence, works for me, on a metaphoric rather than literal level.
In the absence of God, you can expect that the damned will torment each other, for all eternity. Because if there is a place from which God is absent, then friendship and love are going to be absent from it, as well. In the last analysis, the pictures of eternal absence of God, and the picture of eternal torment, are one and the same. I think the image of Ugolino and Ruggiero perpetually gnawing on each other in the frozen lake, is a good picture of what any place without God and the angels will look like.
Re: So it was not a place of torment but represented eternal destruction.
Wrong- “Gehenna” connotes torment, because it conjures up the image of child sacrifice practiced by the Canaanites. Hell is pictured as something similar to the human sacrifices that took place in the Valley of Hinnom, which for the Jews was the epitome of evil.
Re: For Lewis, damnation = annihilation.
Actually, no, he was very clear in “The Problem of Pain” that he didn’t subscribe to annihilationism.
I should say, too, that another strong support for the doctrine of hell comes from the fact that so very many mystics and visionaries claim to have seen it. If you place stock in the argument from personal experience, as an argument for the existence of God (and I think that’s probably the best argument that there is), then that goes equally well as an argument for hell.
I don’t believe that hell needs to be eternal- I don’t think there is a time limit on repentance, and I think that in the last analysis no one who is ever truly repentant will be excluded from heaven- but if moral freedom exists, and it does, then it is possible that some will choose to say “No” to God, forever, and to remain in torment for ever.
Information about Christian theology is omnipresent in our culture as there is no shortage of evangelists proclaiming the good news, “friends don’t let friends die without Jesus” bumper stickers, or people handing our literature at mass transit stations. So MTD is not a result of lack of knowledge, more likely it is a conscious choice people make to square their beliefs with the world they perceive. I’d argue that in the past 30 years three major trends causing this:
* Modern telecommunications has made the world a smaller place and provided easier access to information about alternate belief systems and cultures. This is bound to have a watering down effect on any belief system. For example the apologist Josh McDowell has called the Internet the greatest threat to Christians.
* A wave of immigration to major US cities has turned them into a global melting pot, not just a European one. These immigrants brought with them alternate belief systems (e.g., Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam) and really good restaurants. Most of those people seem nice enough and it appears futile and rude to evangelize them. They already have a religion which was a result of where they were born, but this realization creates a greater awareness of the cultural contingency of your own beliefs.
* Conservative Christianity damaged itself due to its close association with a secular political movement. Especially when the political movement behaved in ways that seemed in tension with the professed beliefs of Christianity.
tl;dr People don’t believe in Hell because they don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy anymore and the modern world made it that way.
First of all, Jesus talked a lot more about Hell than he did about the Fall of Man.
Are we going on just by what Jesus said now? Paul talks about Adam and the Fall in fairly literal terms as well in the NT.
What is hell a figure of, if not itself? What do you think is the ultimate reality that Hell is merely symbolic of? I don’t see that it can really be symbolic of anything.
I think Hell could be symbolic of a lot of things – the mental anguish and guilt that “sin” brings to people – have you ever heard the saying “we are punished by our sins, not for them”? I an very patrilineal/clannish society and culture like 1st century Palestine the idea of Hell could refer to the stain of shame one’s descendents might feel if a person died in a particularly ignoble or debased circumstances. JohnT pointed out that “Gehenna”, the actual word Jesus used, was a smoldering trash heap outside of Jerusalem where garbage was burned along with the bodies of executed criminals. Do you think Jesus really, literally meant that sinners would be eternally tormented on a burning trash pile outside of Jerusalem? If not, then you’re already reading it symbolically.
Eternal torment means eternal torment.
I think this is just special pleading. By the same token, fundamentalists can make the argument that “6 days means 6 days”
Thoughtful people know that the doctrine of hell largely developed out of Zoroastrian doctrine, correct, and maybe the Egyptians too. How do you know the Zoroastrians and Egyptians weren’t _correct_? You’re rather assuming something as a premise, which I have neither any reason or inclination to accept.
Well, first off, the burden of proof is on one who asserts something, isn’t it? It’s not up to me to prove that Hell or any other ancient myth doesn’t exist. Sure, maybe it’s possible that ancient Egyptians and Zoroastrians discovered some aspect of reality that Christianity finally revealed in fuller truth or such. It seems far, far more likely that these were primitive philosophical/mythological ideas that Christianity later incorporated.
Hell is a necessary consequence of the fact we have moral freedom. If we have real power of choice, then it must necessarily be possible for a person to choose to reject the good. Possibly forever.
Sorry, this is a non-sequitur. It simply does not follow that if we have moral freedom, that therefore there must be an afterlife where eternal punishment is meted out.
Hector, I was only talking about The Screwtape Letters, where it is certainly clear that he describes Hell as annihilation. Lewis was always pretty flexible with doctrine, and it would be consistent for him to write of both possibilities as expressing the idea of how awful damnation is. The metaphysics don’t matter for him; it’s just that damnation is the bad end.
As for the mystical experience of hell, the essential thing to remember is that mystical experience entails experience of symbolic reality as something concrete. I would say it is evidence of hell as something, but says very little about the exact details of what Hell is.
On the idea of hell = being cut off from God, one image from recent literature that has really stuck with me is from Harry Potter(!) Towards the End of the Deathly Hollows, there is an image of Voldemort in a sort-of afterlife as a hideously ugly, totally helpless entity, somewhere being an infant and a slug. What’s interesting about this is that not only is Hell being cut off from God, but also being cut off from everyone, not being able to torment others at all, just totally and absolutely alone.
RE: Wrong- “Gehenna” connotes torment, because it conjures up the image of child sacrifice practiced by the Canaanites. Hell is pictured as something similar to the human sacrifices that took place in the Valley of Hinnom, which for the Jews was the epitome of evil.
So you are saying that Jesus was referring to something that God condemed and said in Jeremiah would not even come up into his heart?
Living humans were not pitched into Gehenna; so it was not a place of conscious torment. It represented those with no hope of a resurrection. Jesus was speaking about Gehenna that existed in his day the garbage dump of Jerusalem, which his listeners were very familar with.
What would you think of a parent who held his child’s hand over a fire to punish the child for wrongdoing? “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Would he do what no right-minded human parent would do?
Hector:
I don’t believe that hell needs to be eternal- I don’t think there is a time limit on repentance, and I think that in the last analysis no one who is ever truly repentant will be excluded from heaven- but if moral freedom exists, and it does, then it is possible that some will choose to say “No” to God, forever, and to remain in torment for ever.
Are you just making this up you go along? Not two posts earlier you told me that “eternal torment means eternal torment.” Which is it? Is Hell some fairly literal, unalterable doctrine, which we disregard at our peril, or is there room for varying degrees of interpretation?
“The pagan philosophers advocated for these virtues not because of the threat of divine punishment ”
False. Read Plato.
@MH scientismist- right on! I suspect the traditional religions are able to continue because they were incubated and ossified into self-sustaining cultural institutions throughout many pre-modern centuries. During these times, there were no public libraries, TV, internet, etc. Most people were illiterate, and perhaps flat out unaware there were alternative belief systems available. Furthermore, most were essentially stuck in small self-contained communities where to question the dominant beliefs meant ostracism, exile and quite possibly death by starvation or execution. All throught this time, religions become much more than just scriptures and doctrine (mining another post from this blog). They become major, if not dominant cultural institutions. The local church was the social club, charity center, the one place where junior might learn a bit of reading, writing and arithmetic, etc. So to question the doctinre is to turn away from all the undeniable benfits. Unthinkable to just about everyone but the most committed of rebels. All of this has changed in just the last few centuries. We don’t need the local religous community and institutions for our basic physical and social/emotional support. Government and corporatinos have supplanted a lot of this, for better and worse (take your pick). The religions that have been born recently have a much higher plausibility hurdle to clear. Mormonism and Scientology immediately come to mind. They don’t have anywhere near the same cultural weight added to their doctrine over several centuries. So they can mainly just be judged by their doctrine.
Re: Hector, I was only talking about The Screwtape Letters, where it is certainly clear that he describes Hell as annihilation.
I don’t think that’s the case: he describes Hell as a state in which we are ‘digested’ and ‘devoured’ by the demons, losing our own personal identity, at least in any permanent or sustained state. That suggests that we lose our distinct individual consciousness, but not that we lose all consciousness at all. It’s something more like a state of permanent possession, in which we are melted down into the demons’ being. He fleshes this out a lot more in some of the chapters of “Perelandra”: it’s clear that Weston is, at least fitfully and temporarily, conscious (and that his consciousness is exceedingly painful and unpleasant), but that he’s lost his own distinct identity, and that at any given moment it’s difficult to know whether Weston or the demon is talking.
That’s certainly a plausible view of hell, whether or not you agree with it.
John T,
Living humans were certainly pitched into Gehenna. Jesus is referring to the Tophet, the idol of Molech, into which the Canaanites threw their children to be roasted alive. He’s suggesting that that experience of ultimate evil is what hell is like, and that hell will be like the human sacrifices that took place in the Valley of Hinnom. That’s the closest we can come to imagining hell. If you think of it, it makes perfect sense: God is love, and therefore the perfect anti-God state, from which God is completely absent, would be a place characterized by the total absence of love. Something, in other words, very similar to the Canaanite places of human sacrifice, in which the damned similar sorts of torment on each other.
It wasn’t till I read a bit more about the Canaanite human sacrifices that I understood what Jesus truly meant when he talked about ‘Gehenna’, but that made it perfectly clear.
Would he do what no right-minded human parent would do?
Feh, no right-minded human parent would hide himself from his child and make him question whether or not his parent really existed, so the God-as-loving-parent analogy is messed up long before we get to the question of whether or not a loving parent would let his child suffer eternal torment.
That’s certainly a plausible view of hell, whether or not you agree with it.
Since we have absolutely no information about what Hell is like or whether or not Hell actually exists, we can make up any old thing we like about Hell and say it is plausible, because – hey – who can say otherwise?
This post brought to mind the parable of the rich man & Lazarus (Lk. 16: 19-31) where Abraham tells the rich man he cannot comfort him in his torment because of a great chasm that prevents anyone from crossing over from one side to the other.
Another thing that came to mind was a time when I was standing in line for Confession (Reconciliation). A mother was in line with her daughter. Daughter to mom: “Why are you making me do this? I haven’t sinned.” If you have lost a sense of sin, I think it follows that you have lost a sense of hell.
Perhaps those Catholics don’t believe in Hell because the modernists that created the Novus Ordo Mass decided to leave out “negative theology”. Heaven forbid the mass reference Hell, judgment or condemnation. Ever.
TWylite, random tidbit of information. In Massachusetts the public schools were founded in 1647 by the Old Deluder Act. The goal was universal literacy so people could attend church, read the bible, and avoid damnation.
So it is majorly ironic that universal literacy and access to information seems to undermine religious belief.
Dreher: “What, are we here to make up this religion to suit our preferences?”
Whether or not that’s what we’re here for, that’s what we all do, even the most doctrinaire, orthodox believers — today and in Jesus’s time and ever since the first proto-human stuck his hand in fire and recoiled in pain and awe.
Hector,
I find it hard to believe that Jesus was referring to something that God condemned and said would not even come into his heart to do.
Also Jesus spoke in simple terms and illustrations of everyday life that were familiar to people. They all knew and understood what Gehenna was. I don’t see Jesus making some abstact reference to Gehenna as it was in the distant past. Rather it was in the context of what people understood when he spoke to them in the 1st century.
RE: This post brought to mind the parable of the rich man & Lazarus (Lk. 16: 19-31)
The Jerusalem Bible, in a footnote, acknowledges that it is a “parable in story form without reference to any historical personage.” A parable is meant to teach a lesson and is not literal. Any more than we would expect a camel to go through the eye of a needle or any of the many other parables and illustrations Jesus used.
What does the parable mean? The “rich man” represented the Pharisees. The beggar Lazarus represented the common Jewish people who were despised by the Pharisees but who repented and became followers of Jesus.
Their deaths were also symbolic, representing a change in circumstances. Thus, the formerly despised ones came into a position of divine favor, and the formerly seemingly favored ones were rejected by God, while being tormented by the judgment messages delivered by the ones whom they had despised
Re: So it is majorly ironic that universal literacy and access to information seems to undermine religious belief.
Actually, the least religious culture in the world appears to be the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe studied by one, Daniel Everett. Apparently, they’re even less religious then the Swedes.
Re: I find it hard to believe that Jesus was referring to something that God condemned and said would not even come into his heart to do.
I don’t find it at all hard to believe, it’s exactly what we would expect of hell: it is the epitome of evil left to its own devices, and unlimited by the restraint that God places on us in this life. Human sacrifice is a shadow of what hell is like- that’s what Jesus meant by using the symbol of Gehenna.
Re: Also Jesus spoke in simple terms and illustrations of everyday life that were familiar to people.
I don’t see that at all: the Jews were a very historically aware people, and were used to charging the events of history with spiritual meaning. Nearly everything Jesus said and did was charged with layers of meaning, and this was one of them. No one in first century Palestine would have forgotten what the Valley of Hinnom was, or why it was important.
Re: Since we have absolutely no information about what Hell is like or whether or not Hell actually exists,
Actually, we have plenty of testimony about what hell is like- you can choose to accept that testimony or not, but I wouldn’t say it boils down to ‘no information’.
Just a quick observation: I’m always amazed by which posts get robust comment threads going. Sometimes I’ll labor on something for a while, post it, and get maybe four or five comments. Other times I’ll toss one off, and it generates a long, good discussion. Funny how that works. I guess that’s why it’s good to write about a lot of different things, and often.
Hector,
It seems most unlikely that God’s Son, in discussing divine judgment, would make such idolatrous practice the basis for the symbolic meaning of Gehenna.
It may be noted that God prophetically decreed that the Valley of Hinnom would serve as a place for mass disposal of dead bodies rather than for the torture of live victims. (Jer 7:32, 33; 19:2, 6, 7, 10, 11) Thus, at Jeremiah 31:40 the reference to “the low plain of the carcasses and of the fatty ashes” is generally accepted as designating the Valley of Hinnom, and a gate known as “the Gate of the Ash-heaps” evidently opened out onto the eastern extremity of the valley at its juncture with the ravine of the Kidron. (Ne 3:13, 14)
Morris: “But slow down on the columns. You’re writing them as fast as I can read them.”
I’ll second that sentiment.
Seriously, do y’all think I’m writing too much, or too often?
John T,
I do know what a parable is. But I do think it is safe to say that through actions & inactions in this life, the rich man placed himself in separation from God. That is hell. The sense of sin I was talking about previously is an acknowledgment of that. But if you don’t acknowledge sin, how can you acknowledge hell?
“Seriously, do y’all think I’m writing too much, or too often?”
Well the problem is that the comment system is not threaded, so its hard to follow the conversations…
Get Disqus!
1. Many of the early Church Fathers were universalists (i.e. believed in no eternal Hell), at least privately.
2. Universalist belief was apparently common at that time, to, according to the cited quotation from Jerome; so it must not be just the MTD’s.
3. While Jesus does speak of Hell, he also makes statements that seem to imply universal salvation–e.g. John 12:32.
4. Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was Catholic and perfectly orthodox, wrote the controversial Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved, in which he carefully argues at least the possibility of universal salvation, from a Catholic perspective. Please note: though the book unleashed a firestorm of controversy, it was never condemned by the Vatican or the Congregation for the Doctrien of Faith. Moreover, von Balthasar was one of the late Pope John Paul II’s favorite theologians, whom he even intended to make a cardinal (von Balthasar died before this could be done).
5. If one takes traditional Catholic teaching on mortal sin seriously, there are people in Hell for deliberately missing Mass; for eating meat on a Friday (as George Carlin said, despite the changes after Vatican II, he bet there were still people there “doing time on a meat rap”); for masturbation; and both traditional Catholic and general Christian teaching would imply that not only are many people in Hell for being in the wrong church, but probably the vast majority of the human race is in Hell. Doctrine and the idea that “God doesn’t damn people, people damn themselves” (bumper-sticker worthy, no?), does the idea of a God of absolute love who makes a world of intelligent beings most of whom He good and well knows are bound for eternal perdition, especially those daomned for seemingly trivial things, really cohere?
6. C. S. Lewis (especially in Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce) is very careful and subtle in discussing Hell and correctly (in my view) boils the issue down to this: does the punishment of Hell last eternally and is this consonant with an infinitely loving God? As a related question, would the existence of an eternally damned, unredeemed population of souls be a defeat of God’s mercy and love? Lewis’s answers are yes (Hell exists), yes (it is consistent with a loving God), and yes (it is a kind of defeat for God, who give people free will even to the extent that they can frustrate His saving will for them by insisting on not being saved). It is on these questions that Balthasar disagrees (though he doesn’t engage Lewis directly).
In that regard, I tend more towards the Hindu/Buddhist view, or that of some Jewish schools of thought that see Hell as of limited duration–a sort of more intense version of Purgatory, in a sense. From the Christian perspective, it seems to limit God’s love and/or power to say that somehow a finite person can permanently say “no” to God with no chance of ever changing. To say that the damned are “fixed” in their denial begs the question; I can’t see any logical reason why this must necessarily be so, given the postulates of Christian theology.
Anyway, I think the words of one of the Eastern fathers are a good way to look at it: “Live as if all are saved and I alone am damned.”
Seriously, do y’all think I’m writing too much, or too often?
I think you are putting posts out at a good rate. I too would like to see threaded posts, but I realize that isn’t under your control. Put it in the suggestion box, though.
On Universal Salvation, I’d say it was a poor sort of God-Sacrifice that couldn’t redeem a soul that was in Hell if that soul wanted to accept that Grace.
Hector, there are only about 420 Piraha compared to over 7 million Swedes. So I don’t think there aren’t enough Piraha to make meaningful statements about the effects of major social trends like literacy, religion, or mental illness. For example Evertt claims they don’t experience depression, but with only 420 individuals you don’t know if your population is large enough for a meaningful sample for, or if the Piraha were just lucky so far.
Rod, I admire your prolific writing ability, so don’t slow down. While I only comment on some of the threads, I read them all.
If one takes traditional Catholic teaching on mortal sin seriously, there are people in Hell for deliberately missing Mass; for eating meat on a Friday (as George Carlin said, despite the changes after Vatican II, he bet there were still people there “doing time on a meat rap”); for masturbation; and both traditional Catholic and general Christian teaching would imply that not only are many people in Hell for being in the wrong church, but probably the vast majority of the human race is in Hell
This is another good point. I think the Catholic Church really oversold Hell to the point where it just became absurd. I remember my days in Catholic high school, where we’d get week-long lectures about the Evils of Self-Abuse – really, there was a whole bizarre point system, according to the priest who took it upon himself to explain this too us – one illicit masturbation was a venial sin, but 10 could add up to a mortal sin, and so on, until pretty much you’re either doing Penance until you’re in your 70s, or you realize the wholeidea of a celibate, middle-aged man being fixated on teenage boys touching their penises is kinda silly, and not a little creepy.
“Seriously, do y’all think I’m writing too much, or too often?”
After such a long blogging hiatus, no and no — keep ‘em comin’!
As I suppose Flannery would have said, “Well if hell is just a symbol than to hell with it.”
The Pope has outlawed Limbo so there’s only Hell and Purgatory left. If Hell isn’t eternal then it’s just a ghetto of Purgatory. And everyone in Purgatory gets to go to Heaven. In fact, they get to go their sooner if we on earth pray for them.
So what the hell is the Last Judgement for anyway?
It’s probably for grammatical mistakes: “they get to go there sooner.” Or maybe “thither”.
I never thought I’d say this, but Roland de Chanson is making the most sense of anyone here. (Except Turmarion- his comment was, as usual, thought provoking although I somewhat disagree with it).
FTR, a friend of mine who used to frequent an Eastern Catholic (Ruthenian, I think) parish, tells me that Eastern Catholics, unlike Rome, still believe in Limbo.
Turmarion,
Re: To say that the damned are “fixed” in their denial begs the question; I can’t see any logical reason why this must necessarily be so, given the postulates of Christian theology.
I don’t, personally, believe that the damned are fixed in their denial. I believe that we always have free choice, and that we will have chances to repent in the hereafter as well. I think this is in keeping with scripture, it’s in keeping with what a lot of the mystics and visionaries have said, going back to the first century, and there have been many Christian writers and holy men (especially in the East, I’m told) that have always held it. That being said, I believe it’s possible for the damned to choose to say “No”, eternally. And I think experience and revelation both tell us that beyond a point, sin damages your soul to the point where it becomes very difficult to say “Yes.”
To play devil’s advocate (no pun intended), I believe that the point of view that ‘the damned are fixed in their denial’ owes more to Scholastic / Hellenic thought about the will and the passions than to Jesus or the early fathers. I think the argument is that just as the demons are able to irrevocably commit to good or to evil, because their will and intellect are not restrained by the inertial force of the flesh and the passions, so a disembodied soul can also choose good, or evil, irrevocably and totally. (N. B. I don’t agree with this in the strict sense, either as regards the demons or as regards human beings, but this is the case that I’ve heard made in the past. I do think in a weaker sense, both for human beings and for incorporeal spirits, the fact of having a disembodied soul set free from the constraint of the flesh, does make it easier to set a course, for good or for evil, and more difficult (though not impossible) to be influenced away from that course. In this sense, we are perhaps lucky to be embodied beings, because our corporeal limitations protect us from the full consequences of our choices.)
N. B.: just to make it clear again, I do _not_ agree with the Scholastic point of view, though it’s certainly interesting.
Hector: I never thought I’d say this, but Roland de Chanson is making the most sense of anyone here.
In that case I think we’re all in deep trouble!
Also, just to clarify, I don’t think belief in Limbo was proscribed by Benedict XVI. And it was never required to believe in it either. In other words, it is not a dogma. It’s sort of one of those theological figments issuing from the tortured mind of St. Augustine. The Orthodox don’t believe in Limbo as far as I know. And even the nature of Purgatory (though not that name) is not a well defined doctrine either. It is more like the waiting room of Heaven but there is no fire. It’s an intermediate state and prayers for the souls there are desirable.
Earlier you mentioned the Apostle’s Creed states the existence of Hell. I suppose there is a sense in which that might be true. But the Greek reads κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα and the Latin descendit ad inferos (or: inferna) which are both better rendered “descended into the nether (or nethermost) [places].” There would be no purpose to Christ’s going down into “Hell”; but He descended to the lower world where the souls of the dead were awaiting the effects of the Redemption, “trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life”. I think there is a version of the Apostle’s Creed in Anglican Church that has it “descended to the dead.” The Athanasian Creed has “descendit ad inferos” as well.
Interesting too is the fact that that particular phrase is omitted in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which is the liturgical profession of Faith. Hell may indeed exist but what it is or who’s there are enigmas.
Hector_St_Clare (btw, you’re the same as just plain Hector, right?): I don’t, personally, believe that the damned are fixed in their denial.
We’re in agreement, then. That one thing, if true, opens the possibility that Hell is or may ultimately be empty. However, I’ve read arguments (often vehement ) that this is not so.
I think this is because thoughtful supporters of the traditional teaching on Hell really hangs on this one point. You can’t have God damning people to Hell for eternity a là Jonathan Edwards’s God (as in “sinners in the hands of an angry”)–that would make Him a cosmic sadist for all who don’t hold to Calvinist double predestination (which in my view is a pernicious doctrine). You have to say people “damn themselves”. However, then that puts you in the position of saying that they damn themselves eternally and infinitely for sins that, however evil and foul, however enormous, however sickening, are still temporal and finite. Once again, it makes the God who sets up such a system seem a sadist.
One could argue that eternity is not about duration, so a person isn’t being damned for “billions and billions” of years, but is fixed trans-temporally in a damned state; but that still doesn’t seem fair. Even beings in an eternal, atemporal state must have free will in some meaningful sense, so it still must be the case that even the atemporally damned could logically change their minds “eventually” (to use admittedly inaccurate temporal language).
The only way that eternal damnation can be really defended without turning God into a monster is to argue that in some sense the damned “want” to be eternally damned (which is what Lewis implies) or that their will is somehow “fixed” at death (or at the moment of their Fall, in the case of the fallen angels). The problem is that no one who defends this notion (a lot don’t defend it but assume it as self-evident, which it actually isn’t), at least none I’ve ever read, gives a truly effective argument. This, in my view, is because there is no such argument. In short, the damned can change their mind.
What you say that intrigues me, and which I’d never thought of before, is the notion that the body acts as a brake on our wills, making conversion easier and more likely. Of course, according to Christian doctrine, our souls won’t remain disembodied–they’ll get a spiritual body (pneumatikon soma) at the end of time; but the basic notion is interesting. I’ll have to give it some thought. Still, assuming that God makes every effort (short of overriding free will) towards all His creatures to call them back to Him, I would hope that in the vast sweep of eternity even the fallen spirits would eventually do so.
I do agree with you that Scholasticism is part of the problem here, though–for all its achievements, I think in the long run it’s been a bad path for the Church to have taken.
Those of you who have a taste for this sort of thing may wish to take a look at two novels written by Larry Niven and Dr. Jerry Pournelle: “Inferno” and “Escape From Hell”. They center on the journey of a certain Allan Carpentier, who finds himself having died and gone to a place that bears a resemblance to the Hell described in Dante’s Inferno. At first he thinks he has arrived in a sort of demonic, Hellish amusement park…..later, with the help of a certain Benito, he comes to figure out the real Truth.
The second book describes how Carpenter returns and attempts to fathom the real purpose of Hell. They’re both good stories…..and Niven and Pournelle indicate they based the books on current Roman Catholic theology regarding Hell and the afterlife.
The books are fantasies, not treatises on salvation….but I found them deeply moving.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
It strikes me as rather dangerous to draw firm conclusions from our own sense of what Jesus meant as a parable and what he meant as literal Truth, since the words that have come down to us are not particularly clear, except when he begins “Another parable…”
The most sensible argument for hell is that some people won’t do right unless they are afraid of hell. If there is a God who reigns over the universe, it would be sensible to fear what happens next. Whether what happens next is a lake of fire is rather conjectural. I cannot make sense of an omniscient, transcendent deity who would bother to roast anyone for all eternity. What fiendish sadism that would be? There is the parable of the farmer burning the tares, weeds and chaff. What farmer spends his entire life gleefully chortling as he slow-roasts each stick of straw? He burns it all, quickly, and scatters it on the field as fertilizer.
Seventh Day Adventists teach that after final judgement, those found wanting simply die, forever, and the rest enter into eternal life. It would be premature to say “Works for me,” but it does make sense, Biblically and rationally.
As the story goes a women questioned her priest as to why she had to pay to have prayers said for her deceased husband.
The priest explained that her husband was in purgatory and that an angel held her husband by the hairs of his head over the fires of hell. If a prayer wasn’t said for her husband then he would sink down closer to the flames of hell. However when a prayer was said he would go up a little closer to heaven. Eventually when enough prayers were said for him he would make it to heaven.
The women replied I know that’s not true! How would you know replied the priest indignantly. Because my husband was bald!
The thing about Purgatory is that it is temporary and Heaven is supposed to be eternal. So any finite experience is a blink of an eye compared to eternity. So purgatory is like a nanosecond time out in the grand scheme of things.
Hell is interpreted differently in most Christian traditions. Jesus speaking of hell frequently doesn’t mean its an actual place, any more than heaven is. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, not up in the sky, not an actual “place” one goes to after death, it is far more profound and meaningful than that. Likewise, hell is where you are when you are turned from God, when your attention is directed outwards towards worldly fulfillment and satisfaction. I believe the Eastern Church speaks of hell in this manner, as a state of mind and emotion that is turned from God. One doesn’t have to die to go to hell. Many are there already. The life of sin is “hell”, and that habit continues after death, until one makes amends and turns back towards God. So yes, one could say that there is a hell after death that sinners go to, but it’s merely a state of mind, not a literal place. And those who devote their energy and attention to God are already living in heaven to some degree, and will continue as such after death as well. These are not mere metaphors, but they are not literalisms either. Similarly with the story of Adam and Even in the Garden. These have spiritual meanings that go beyond mere symbolism, but they do describe real states of the soul that we suffer or rejoice in.
As for people being condemned for all eternity to hell, that of course is not how God works, and the Therapeutic Deists are correct in that regard. But it does work out that way if one turns away from God forever. The mind that sins makes time out of the timeless, and that time can certainly seem to be “forever” to the sinner. But once one turns to God, in that instant all time is rendered meaningless, and eternity stand before you. That is heaven.
One of my favorite stories is about a Samurai warrior who became obsessed with understanding heaven and hell. He traveled about the country seeking a satisfactory answer, but became deeply frustrated with the vague and contradictory relies he received from all the religious figures he questioned. So when he heard oft that a famous Zen Master would be coming to a nearby town, he was determined to ask him about it.
When he arrived, he found a simple man, unadorned with pomp and circumstance. He questioned the Master repeatedly, but the man simply remained silent and still, refusing to answer. The Samurai became more and more frustrated and angry, until finally he drew his sword in a rage, held it over the Zen Master’s head, and yelled, “Show me heaven and show me hell, or I’ll cut your head off!” The Zen Master was not in the least perturbed, but he did look up at the man, and simply pointed to the Samurai’s disturbed face, saying, “That is hell.” The Samurai was deeply broken and ashamed of himself, and he suddenly fell to the floor at the Zen Master’s feet in surrender, contritely begging his forgiveness, until finally he simply fell silent. A few minutes passed, and then the Master quietly added, “And this is heaven.”
Given what we now know about how the brain operates and neuropsychology, I’d even be hard pressed to say Hitler was in hell, (if there is a hell). The man clearly suffered brain-damaging, ergo personality (and morality) altering beatings as a child by his father.
So if Hitler’s there, Joe Stalin, (who made Hitler look like just an ill-tempered head nurse), Mao Tse Tung, and Pol Pot must also be there.
I am strongly skeptical that the Dead exist (naturally) in real space-time at all, so the question of their agency and perception are quite problematic. Please note that I am not doubting life-after-death, only that it involes existence in this universe, or any real (in the mathemtical sense) universe. Those who die in Christ have a lifeline to that which is beyond even Elsewhere, but those who do not may be in a frozen forever, with nothing more than what they bring with them. This is oddly similar to what many ancient people (including the Greeks and the Jews) thought about the afterlife: that we become empty ghosts brooding on our lives but otherwise quite effectless. Which would be hell indeed.
And remember that Heaven and Hell are not the end of the story: finally there comes Judgment and Resurrection (not necessarily in that order)
Hell is for real in the religions of many. It cannot be argued away by logic, because it’s existence is axiomatic within those belief systems. So, to Hell with the logical argument.
The belief in Hell can have great utility in coaxing us onto better paths. But believing that the fate of all, even the worst among us, does not include eternal and infinite torment can also have great utility.
So the debate at last is not logical or utilitarian. In the end, it is a moral dilemma. For God, it would be, “What kind of God am I?”, and for humans, it is “What kind of God could I spend an eternity seeking?”
In Jesus’ lifetime, the concept of hell was synonymous with ‘afterlife’. It did not mean a blazing inferno of eternal torment.
The concept was developed in the marketing model of auto rebates, and had little to do with the basic product.
I find myself — as an atheist, mind you — in agreement with much of what Rod Dreher says. But I wonder about this sentence:
“If I happen to arrive in Heaven and discover that Hell doesn’t exist, or that Hell exists but no one but the Devil is in there, I will rejoice.”
I find that interesting. Why would you rejoice?
Perhaps you rejoice because you feel that the sheer existence and maintenance of Hell — and the suffering that it would occasion — would be a bad thing, at least in comparison to the alternative. That seems a reasonable reaction.
What, then, happens if you get to Heaven and discover that Hell *does* exist for a vast majority of souls — that Hell and eternal punishment are, indeed, part of the “transcendent moral order”?
Would you still rejoice? Would you work to conform yourself to the implications of that order? Would you realize that your prior hypothetical rejoicing at Hell’s non-existence was in error?
And if not, why not?
Or to put it more directly, shouldn’t the question of Hell’s existence or non-existence — of its place in Creation — be separate from that of the moral rectitude of Hell’s existence?
Your gut-level feeling that one *ought* to rejoice at Hell’s non-existence argues for an affirmative answer. But your claim about conforming oneself to a transcendent reality answers in the negative.
Rod Dreher writes:
But will you rejoice, to find that Hell exists and hosts the torment of everyone who didn’t believe in Jesus as savoir, from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Einstein? Well, how could you not rejoice? Your god will have remade you, so that you will see that as his perfect plan, and enjoy its fruition for the rest of eternity.
The faith you have to carry somehow is that that is the Rod Dreher you want to become.
On the idea of hell essentially being absence from God. In “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Joyce/Father Arnall attributes this idea to Aquinas, and paraphrases it as follows:
“This, then, to be separated for ever from its greatest good, from God, and to feel the anguish of that separation, knowing full well that it is unchangeable, that is the greatest torment which the created soul is capable of bearing, poena damni, the pain of loss.”
As Father Arnall’s lecture proceeds, there are the pain of loss, the pain of conscience, the pain of extension, the pain of intensity, and the eternity of hell. Was this orthodox Catholic doctrine in the late 19th century, and if so, what has changed?
Rod, can you address the theological issue at stake: How can a loving, infinitely compassionate God condemn souls to eternal torment?
Perhaps my previous post was too glib, which Christians notoriously confuse with disrespect. It was not, and was not intended to be, so. (Why are Christians so touchy, yet so totally insensitive to other religions? Fundamentalist Islam leaps to mind.)
Why would eternal torment in a lake of fire as a punishment be in the least way an attractive element of Christianity for Christians? As a kid in Catholic schools I was continuously taught that martyrdom was a fate devoutly to be sought by Christians. So why would Jesus want someone to believe because they were trying to avoid the big bonfire?
This just makes no sense to me at all. Isn’t one supposed to embrace Christ for Christ’s sake? (No punning.) Isn’t it possible that the lake of fire was meant to signify the salvation that one was missing, as opposed to (the strange notion that it was a) threatened punishment that one might expect for failure to comply? Who needs a Christian (or a Jew or a Moslem) who converts under threats … for heaven’s sake. (Punning intended.)
That’s a very good point — indeed, if you also find that, say, Joseph Stalin was there in Heaven (having repented in the final minutes of his life) but millions of his unfortunate victims were not, because they were not Christians when he cut their lives short, you would be rejoicing just as fullsomely, both at Stalin’s salvation and his victims’ condemnation to the fires of Hell.
Hell is losing favor because the more people are unafraid to think about the doctrine of Hell and discuss it, the more illogical and vile it becomes, especially if you believe only born-again believers escape its grasp.
If you have to be a born-again believer to get to Heaven, for example, then you’re essentially saying that in the last 2000 years, about a billion children (between the “age of accountability”–assuming you believe that young children get a free pass–and 14) are currently rotting away in Hell forever.
Of course, you can’t send babies and young children to Hell, so we have the “age of accountability”, which then makes abortion the only sure-fire way to ensure that your children make it to Heaven, and certainly no right-minded Christian should be opposing abortions in China and other non-Christian nations, since every child saved from abortion in those countries almost certainly means another soul destined for the fires of Hell.
But maybe those who’ve never heard the Gospel message should have a free pass too — after all, if you died age 20 in, say, 1250AD having lived your whole life in Medina, then how are you supposed to have been saved? But there’s a problem with that too–it turns evangelists and missionaries into Hell bait. Woe betide anyone who just happens to hear a visiting preacher and not believe their message. You just condemned yourself to Hell.
Since Hitler’s already been mentioned on this thread, I guess it’s safe to reference him! Six million Jews suffered unimaginable torment at Htlter’s hand, but at least their agony ended after a short while. The problem is that the moment their physical pain ended in death, if Hell is real (and all non-believers end up there), then their anguish was only just getting started and they still have an eternity of pain ahead of them. This makes God’s “justice” infinitely worse than Hitler’s.
Every way you look at it, the literal interpretation of Hell as a place of eternal torment for all non-believers (except maybe small children, since that’s a step too far even for most fundamentalists) is an abomination.
Some people try to excuse God by placing the blame on the people — e.g. non-believers would hate it in Heaven or they send themselves there because of their sins. But, supposedly, it was God who set up the system in the first place, and being omnipotent and omniscient, he must have known precisely what would happen from day one. And did all those children in Hell ask to be born? Did they ask to be brought up to love a false religion in the absence of all knowledge of Christianity? Did they ask to die young before they had a lifetime to search out the answers for themselves?
All this, and more, is why the old-fashioned doctrine of Hell is falling into disfavor. It turns God into a monster, and so you either reject the literal Hell and find a way to make it more palatable, or you have to jettison Christianity, lock, stock, and barrel.
A Hell where only the truly evil go would fit the bill, and that is what many Christians believe these days.
[...] is a response to Rod Dreher’s “Is Hell for Real?” and to the multitude of comments it spawned. You should read the short original post, and [...]
This is a long thread, and I came to it somewhat late, so my full and lengthy comments are at my blog. But just now this needs a response:
To this there is only one reply: “I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners” (Luke 5:32).
If you, in and of yourself, with no need for reliance on God, are truly righteous, you have nothing to worry about. Party on.
If, come Judgment Day, you can look the Holy One straight in the eye, unflinching, and tell Him with a clear conscience that you have never had a selfish thought, never spoken a spiteful word, never took a toy from your brother or said No! to your parents, never thought more highly of yourself than of others, never lacked the full measure of gratitude for every molecule of oxygen He gave you in every breath — that you are, in sum, fully as holy as He is, and totally worthy to share in His perfect heaven forever — well, I promise you, God’s unshakable commitment to His own justice will say in answer: “Come in, O you whose righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Your works have saved you.”
Me, I need a heap of forgiveness first. I need a borrowed righteousness. I need to be remade. I need grace.