I remember a conversation that the Simpsons had as they drove home from church one day….
Marge: “So, what did you children learn about today?”
Bart: “Hell.”
Homer: “Bart!”
Bart: “Well, that's what we learned about. I sure as hell can't tell you we learned about hell unless I say "hell," can I?”
Homer: “Eh, The lad has a point.”
Bart: “Hell, yes!”
Marge: “Bart!”
Bart: (Singing) “Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell.”
Marge: “Bart, you're no longer in Sunday school. Don't swear!”
Hell is a lot bigger problem for Christians than its use as a swear word. It may be the biggest problem of evil we face. Who can imagine an evil greater than the evil of unending torment? Suffering in life is bad enough, but at least it eventually ends. The traditional understanding of hell is that of eternal suffering. Can you envision that? I’m such a sissy that I can hardly stand to be sick or in pain for one day. An eternity of pain more severe than any pain I have suffered in this life is unimaginable.
Hell also raises some pretty tough questions about God’s character. How could a perfectly good and loving God cast people into an eternal existence of torture? How could a just God penalize temporal, earthly sins, with a never-ending punishment for those sins? This seems to be a greater injustice than cutting off a child’s hand for stealing a cookie or hanging a man for telling a lie. James Mill believed the concept of hell is so cruel that it undermines the belief in a good God. He wrote, “all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in constantly increasing progression…till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it.” While I disagree with Mill’s final judgment, I can certainly see his point. It’s hard to view the author of everlasting torment as a God of love.
I don’t have any great solution to the problem of hell right now. I haven’t become a universalist. I probably would become a universalist if it wasn’t for my conviction that I am not smarter than Scripture or the tradition of the church that affirms a doctrine of hell. I think C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce was probably the most helpful book for me reconciling some of these issues, but I still have a lot of unanswered questions.
Right now, my only decisive conclusion is this: Christians need to be careful about how they talk about hell to unbelievers if they want Christianity to be taken seriously. If we talk about hell, we must speak about it in such a way that makes it an intelligible reality, a reality that somehow corresponds to the Triune God who is both loving and good.
4 comments:
What the hell are you talking about? Hell yes, there's a hell!!
My biggest problem with the traditional doctrine of hell is that it's supposedly unending. That's just really hard to reconcile with retributive justice. Perhaps the Hitler's of the world deserve to fry for 1000s of years, but forever without end? That's tough to reconcile with a God who is not only loving but is Love itself.
There seem to be at least 4 solutions to this: (a)immediate entrance into heaven, (b) annihilation, (c) temporal punishment with eventual redemption, (d) or some way of explaining how God can be just while eternally punishing someone.
I'm not sure what to think about (a) and (b). On the face of it they seem unjust. Take Hitler: Don't (a) and (b) seem like light sentences? Still, we don't torture torturers, at most we execute them, which seems merciful. But then if we're merciful in not torturing them, and this can be reconciled with justice, why stop there? It would seem possible to give no sentence at all which would make (a) possible. But of course (a), although perhaps possible, is hard to reconcile with scripture and tradition.
(c) is really attractive but hard to square with scripture & tradition (especially) as well. It would be cool if you could post something on the "Evangelical Universalist" book if you end up having time to read it.
(d) admits of several options. First, we might think that any sin against God--an infinite being--merits an infinite punishment. But the consequence of this view, it seems to me, is that it ends up making every sin equally bad which seems outlandishly implausible. Second, there is C.S. Lewis' view where the sinner ends up choosing a life in hell forever rather than union with God. I suppose this is possible but then it looks like God is no longer the Judge in any real meaningful sense. People choose to go to hell--they aren't sentenced. In essence they are punishing themselves in the same way that we punish ourselves in this life when we sin.
Duns,
I think you're right that none of the solutions seem to fully rectify the situation. I did read the first chapter in the "Evangelical Universalist," and I'm thinking about writing a paper on that chapter. I'll try to post something after I do some more work on it.
I do tend to think that the best way of bringing some meaning to hell is the C.S. Lewis option (also the position Walls seems to defend), but you may be right in saying that it minimize God's role as Judge. I need to think more about that. I do think Lewis/Walls do maintain a consistency between hell and God's love, which in my view is more important than maintaining God's judgment. I also think Lewis/Walls do a better job of incorporating the ideas of sanctification and transformation better than the traditional view of hell. If one's view of the atonement only includes justification language, then it seems that hell can only be described in terms of punishment, and, like you said, it is difficult to see how eternal torment can be just. It seems to me that Lewis/Walls argument may be the middle ground between unjust Calvinism and unorthodox universalism.
BTW, I prefer "Mr. Scotus."
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