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If the Lord Gave Us Free Will, Then Hell Is a Thing
I know that some people don’t believe in Hell. I want to give those folks an opportunity to change my mind, so my short essay today will be to argue for the certainty of everlasting hellfire and damnation being a possible fate for any person.
I begin with the stipulation that man has free will. The Lord made man in His image, which means that we, like the Lord, can choose our actions.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states,
1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”26
The Lord is not merely pretending at this, like a parent who knows that no matter what willful stubbornness a child may display, the whole family will be showing up for Aunt Martha’s jubilee on time, dressed to the nines, with smiles pasted on.
We really do have free will, so we can really choose God, or we can choose not-God. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion, so I’ve been told, and He really, really wants us to choose Him so the opportunities are many, but for each person there comes a moment of final judgment.
As my Catechism says,
1022 Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven–through a purification594 or immediately,595— or immediate and everlasting damnation.596
In other words, at the moment of our deaths, the Lord will allow us to see our lives clearly and understand them and the just judgement that He renders will either be for us to live with Him forever in Heaven, for many of us after we are made perfect through a purification (we call it Purgatory — pray for those souls), for others who are already ready to live immediately in the fullness of the Lord, or, to live without Him forever in the state of Hell.
Hell is not other people, but rather the absence of the Lord, so it really is a choice that we men are capable of making.
One might argue against this point by saying that, well, like a loving parent, who knows that the child will be happier if he is made to attend Aunt Martha’s party well dressed and pleasantly behaved, God, who is so much more loving than any parent can be, would want our happiness and would not allow us to choose Hell, so it can’t really be a thing. His mercy is infinite!
I disagree. I believe in mercy, but I also believe the Lord’s justice is without end, and I know there are really depths in the human soul that are capable of great evil. Some people choose Hell, of this I am sure.
And the Lord who loves us all with a boundless, infinite love, gives it to them. Of that, I am also sure.
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I don’t mean to be a downer, but in this post, I am stipulating that there is free will.
Your ideas are interesting, but perhaps they should wait for another post that is discussing whether or not free will exists at all?
I was asked by another commenter whether free will exists. So, I responded to the question. But sure, we can table the free will discussion for another thread.
It was I who asked whether you believe in free will or not, in order to find out.
That’s why I ask questions! (Like Socrates’, my popularity is explained by that habit.)
I don’t mean to silence you at all, I have found your comments interesting and thought-provoking.
Infinite punishment for finite crimes…it sounds like something is out of adjustment there. Unless the punishment is really for your inner attitude or state of your soul, not your actions, which we know is what some believers think.
One of the biggest dichotomies in Christian theology is how you can have free will along with predestination. Ranks right up there with the theodicy . . .
For Catholics, predestination is not really a thing. We don’t believe in it, since it is contrary to free will, so we don’t face that dichotomy.
And the answer to how can a good God allow evil is found in the free will of the individual to choose evil.
That’s my answer, anyway.
My Catholic brain supplied “idiocy” on the first pass. May have been unkind to think of my protestant brothers that way…. (-;
In my non-theologically-trained, borderline-heretical opinion, Lewis’s conception of Hell is the most believable.
Hell isn’t so much a “place” where God flings sinners; rather, it’s more a state of existence befitting a soul so disordered as to be incapable of perceiving joy, goodness, and grace.
I doubt it’s borderline heretical. Theologians have been describing hell in terms of the state of the soul for a long time.
Agreed. But of these, only “sheol” is in the Torah, and it simply refers to death.
Right.
Medical historian Harris Coulter said something like:
Old problem. Milton’s Hell was much more interesting than his Heaven.
Correct, but by the closing of the canon of the Torah, it’s clear that after death there is to be bodily resurrection, and not long after that the question Abraham asked in Genesis 18:25 was understood to mean that the righteous and the wicked would have different ultimate endings. Wikipedia:
The place of dust, maggots and worms is sheol.
Akavia ben Mahlalel is difficult to place historically, but is generally believed to have been active in the generation preceding the destruction of the Second Temple or perhaps the generation in which the Temple was destroyed.
We can’t know.
I think the biblical case for eternal fire and brimstone for humans is inconclusive.
I think it is very challenging to defend the justice of inflicting infinite pain for finite sin.
I think it is very challenging to reconcile that apparent injustice with a just and merciful G-d. (It is also hard to understand what the word “merciful” means in this context.)
If one expands the list of those destined for eternal damnation to include all those who are not “saved” through a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ — so that it includes, say, the young woman who lives and dies in an isolated village in Afghanistan without ever being exposed to Christian teaching — then I think it is probably impossible to reconcile that with any kind of justice or mercy.
So, no. We can’t know if there is a Hell, but I very much doubt it.
Can you be certain that all sin is finite?
Can anyone be certain of anything when it comes to metaphysics?
But I’ll answer this way. Our awareness, knowledge, and span of life are all finite. We are limited (hence, finite) in our abilities to understand and to anticipate the effects of our actions. We have imperfect (hence finite) knowledge.
Nothing in our experience during life is infinite. So a punishment infinite in duration for an offense committed in a fleeting instant of limited human understanding seems disproportionate and unjust to me.
Having said that, if someone can give me an example of a sin that would justify infinite punishment, and explain how that could be, I’ll politely listen and consider.
In practice, not God is usually self god. A very popular position, in fact.
I will bite… As I remember it, in Sophie’s Choice, the mother is made to decide which of her two children should die so the other could live. Had she made no choice, both would be killed… The person that made her choose, committed grave sin, perhaps worthy of eternal damnation.
I do recall, though, a priest telling me that if Hitler as he was exiting this world had repented, he could stil have been saved. On the first pass, it was a shocking thing to hear, but then… it made sense…
An immortal soul is not necessarily finite.
I can’t remember who said it, but I believe it was an English woman in the early part of the last century: If God would condemn me to Hell because I cannot believe, that is unfortunate. However, I would not care to spend eternity with such a person anyway.
True, we as natural creatures cannot access the supernatural world by our own efforts.
However, if one of the Grand Unicorns chooses to visit us on Earth and reveal the secrets of the Magic Unicorn Kingdom, then we would gain knowledge of the supernatural — but only if we find the Grand Unicorn credible and choose to believe what she tells us.
I don’t think the Catholic view is quite as simple as that. See for instance Aquinas’ elaborate discussion of predestination in the Summa.
I’ve been working at it, man. Working hard. But so far I know that I’ve only managed finite.
I think you’re looking at things the wrong way. God is love and because of that he wants you to love him. Not in the oppressive sense, but because he is all good, so loving Him, is to love the greatest possible good: Completely unity in God’s love for me and my will for Him. But love is not some wild set of emotional attachments. Rather, love is only possible between two or more persons. I have a will and can therefore choose to either love God or not, accept His goodness or not. I must be free to make that choice. Coerced love is an oxymoron.
At the moment of judgment, explains Aquinas, a man will have absolute clarity on how he lived his life, but he is still free to say, as Milton’s Lucifer (who saw God face to face) declared “non serviam,” (“I will not serve, ) which means “I will not love you.” Thus, as Milton’s Lucifer also said “Hell is in me” .
As for the alleged injustice of eternal punishment for finite sins…
In our smallness we have only a very shallow understanding of the breadth of the damage we do. A murderer, for example, might think his only victim is the person killed, but he would be wrong. The victim might have a wife, children, parents, siblings, etc., each of whom will suffer grief. But more than that, he has passed down a psychological guilt to his children who, for a while anyway, will be labeled the offspring of a killer. That can mess up a kid royally and cause him to carry the burden throughout his life, which he in turn will hand it down, etc.
Now again consider the victim. His death will spark a chain of reactions down through the ages. Perhaps he would have fathered kids who, in their turn would father kids, etc. The numbers rise like compound interest. And what of those now lost children destined for greatness, maybe curing cancer or, more transcendentally, saints who would have inspired millions to holiness.
Think of the bigger horror. Since the victims death cut off his family line, how many children made for heaven may never come into existence. If, as I believe as a Catholic, each life is of immeasurable value, I would have stopped Lord knows how many people from entering and thus expanding the Kingdom of God.
Moreover, we choose the punishments of hell by our sins on earth. Read Dante. The tortures arise directly from the evil we have chosen to live. The lust full are condemned to being blown about in a hot wind, a relentless desire for sexual pleasure that cannot be stilled. Think about that. If you are so utterly taken up in lust you would be absolutely unable to do anything else. You couldn’t think straight. That strikes as the life of de Sade. Similar choices are made but gluttons, the envious, and all the other seven deadly sins and their offspring.
In our small and time bound world we cannot see much further into the future than a hour from now, if even that. God sees all that happens in His eternal being. Maybe He will ultimately restore even the temporal losses brought on by sin: “Behold, I make all things new again.” But we don’t know. But we can see, from the potential long term consequences, that at the very least we can identify consequences far beyond those of our temporal understanding.
I used to think that hell was populated by only Satan and his fallen angel comrades. Who would choose that once they encountered the glory and mercy of G-d at their last judgment? (I do think it’s a matter of free will.) Then a wise friend countered that those who would end up in hell would be those who could not give up their own power/self importance/conceit, much as @sisyphus commented. Because I’ve known people who struck me as having these tendencies, I’ve come around to thinking they could possibly choose hell (not G-d). But I really hope they don’t.
Aquinas’ discussion is very elaborate, as you say, but I think the Catechism sums it up quite neatly when it states,
I prayed the the Clintons would not be allowed to return to the WH and it worked….
I think any priest would tell you that Hell is real and not a story, especially those trained in exorcism. The exorcist that allowed the filming of the young woman in Italy who was possessed was terrifying – I just heard a bit of it on a radio interview and my sister sent me the story that was originally in Vanity Fair. I would never want to see the film. The medical professionals who witnessed it said there is no medical explanation, that they’d not ever seen anything like it, and believed it was indeed supernatural. That is one example among many.
May it be so forever! Amen!