sense, refers to some kind of bad post-mortem state. The English word
is apparently derived from an Indo-European word meaning "to cover,"
which is associated with burial, and by extension, with a "place of
the dead." Accounts of hell's nature describe these dimensions:
* The duration of hell: is it temporary or permanent?
* The felt quality of hell: is it a state of consciousness, or
lack of consciousness? If the former, what is it like to be in hell?
* The purpose of hell: why do some people go there?
Some Eastern religions teach that after death, people suffer conscious
punishment for their sins before eventually being reincarnated.
However, this 'temporary hell' plays a relatively peripheral role in
these religions, which aim primarily at escaping the cycle of rebirth
altogether. Therefore, this article concentrates on philosophical
issues surrounding the doctrine of hell as it has arisen in the
theistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In these, hell
is central to traditional eschatological teachings about a last
judgment. This is the culminating event of history, in which God
bodily resurrects the dead and separates the righteous or saved (those
with love for or faith in God) from the wicked, admitting the saved to
some kind of heaven or paradise, and damning the wicked to a permanent
hell.
Section One explains several alternative understandings of what hell
is like. On the traditional Christian model of hell, articulated by
some of the West's most historically significant philosophers and
theologians, hell involves permanent, conscious suffering for the
purpose of punishing human sin. According to annihilationism, the
damned ultimately cease to exist and so are not conscious. According
to the free will view of hell, the purpose of hell is to respect the
choice of the damned not to be with God in heaven. Finally, according
to universalism, there is either no hell at all, or only a temporary
hell. Section Two considers the 'problem of hell' (which is a
particular form of the general philosophical problem of evil): if, as
theistic religions traditionally have taught, God is all-powerful,
all-knowing and completely good, it seems morally and logically
impossible that God would allow anyone to be utterly and ineradicably
ruined, as the damned in hell would seem to be. Advocates of the
traditional view normally respond to this problem by claiming that
hell is a function of impartial divine justice; this line of response
is explored in Section Three. Finally, Section Four explains how the
free will view deals with the problem of hell.
1. The Nature of Hell
a. The Traditional View
The Tanakh/Bible contains various images of the last judgment. One
striking picture in Hebrew scripture occurs at the end of Isaiah
(66:22-24). [Quotations from the Bible are from the New Revised
Standard Version.] Faithful Jews, who will "remain before" God in a
prosperous "new heavens and new earth," "shall go out and look at the
dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against [God], for their
worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall
be an abhorrence to all flesh." In the Gospel of Mark (9:48), Jesus
appropriates this imagery in describing hell as a place "where their
worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched." In the Gospel of
Matthew (25:31-46), Jesus teaches that at the last judgment, those who
failed to care for "the least of my family" will "go away into eternal
punishment," which is "the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his
angels." Elsewhere in Matthew (8:12, 22:13, 24:51, and 25:30), Jesus
invokes a rather different image, suggesting that hell is "outer
darkness" (that is, outside heaven) "where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth." He teaches that many will seek to enter heaven but
be shut out (Luke 13:22-30), suggesting that there is no way to escape
from hell once there. Finally, the Christian Bible's closing book
(Revelation 20:7-15) describes the devil, along with Death, Hades, and
"anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life," being
cast "into the lake of fire and sulfur . . . and they will be
tormented day and night forever and ever." The Qur'an teaches that
hell is "a prison-house" (17:8) in which "those who disbelieve and act
unjustly . . . shall remain forever" (4:168) to receive "a sufficient
recompense" (9:68) for their sins. There they will "…burn in hellfire.
No sooner will their skins be consumed than [God] shall give them
other skins, so that they may truly taste" divine wrath (4:55).
[Quotations from the Qur'an are from the translation by N. J. Dawood
(Penguin Books, 1974).]
Reflection on these scriptural images has given rise to the
traditional view of hell. The passage from Isaiah, in which the
residents of hell are dead bodies, suggests that hell is a state of
unconscious existence, or perhaps even non-existence. While some of
the Gospel passages may fit with this view, the ones about weeping and
gnashing of teeth seem to suggest instead that the residents of hell
are conscious of their bad condition. Furthermore, the passages from
Revelation and the Qur'an suggest that the denizens of hell experience
torment (extreme conscious suffering). So, on the traditional view,
the felt quality of hell is suffering (this implies that the damned
exist and are conscious), and its purpose is to punish those who have
failed to live faithfully in this life. With respect to duration, the
traditional view teaches that the suffering of hell is not only
permanent, but necessarily permanent, because there is no possible way
for the damned to escape hell once there as a irreversible consequence
of their sins. Different versions of the traditional view spring from
different understandings of the suffering involved in hell.
i. The Literal View
In the harshest version – which takes much of the scriptural imagery
literally – hell involves extreme forms of both mental and physical
suffering. On the Day of Judgment, the dead will all be physically
resurrected, and the bodies of the damned will be consigned to a
literal lake of fire. According to Augustine, this fire will cause a
physical agony of burning, but will not consume the flesh of the
damned, so that their agony will never end. Furthermore, the damned
will suffer psychologically: their most powerful desire will be to
escape from hell, but they will realize that escape is impossible, and
so will experience not only frustration, but despair. Furthermore, as
Augustine puts it, they will be "tortured with a fruitless
repentance." (Book 9) Realizing that their own actions have placed
them in this miserable position, they will be filled with regret and
self-loathing.
ii. Psychological Views
Some traditionalists object that the literal view of hell, as a place
of physical torment, presents God as sadistic. They prefer to see the
scriptural images of fire, darkness, and so forth as potent symbols or
metaphors for the psychological suffering of hell. Because humans were
made for God, their most fundamental desire (whether they consciously
acknowledge it or not) is to enjoy eternal union with God. As a state
of eternal separation from God, hell would frustrate this central
human desire. Therefore, even if the damned felt physical pleasure,
they would still experience psychological suffering: frustration,
despair, regret, and self-loathing. This 'psychological suffering
only' view of hell can be further subdivided into harsher and milder
views concerning the extent to which the damned suffer.
1) Harsh Psychological View
On the harsher view of psychological suffering, the torments of hell
will cause the damned to see clearly, perhaps for the first time, that
they truly desire union with God. Although this epiphany will bring
them to genuine repentance and willingness to obey God, it will be
'too late' for them to enter heaven, for hell is necessarily an
eternal state, from which there is no escape. On the harsh model, the
damned really want to leave hell, but can't.
Although this view fits with some scriptural imagery noted above (in
which people try to enter heaven and are turned away), it is difficult
to reconcile with the idea that God loves all people, including the
damned. It would seem that a truly repentant denizen of hell would
have attained the very same psychological state of love for God that
the blessed in heaven enjoy. Therefore, it is hard to imagine that a
loving God would want to keep such a person in hell (and to suggest
that God might want to admit such people to heaven, but be unable to
do so, would be to do deny God's omnipotence).
Against this objection, some may argue that God does not in fact love
all people, but only the elect, who are predestined for salvation.
Others might point out that heaven is a reward for loving God in the
unclear conditions of mortal life; those repenting only after God has
made things clear to them would fail to merit heaven in the same way
as the blessed (however, this argument would be difficult for many
Christians to make, given their stress on the importance of divine
grace, rather than individual merit, in the process of salvation).
2) Mild Psychological View
In the milder view of psychological suffering, while the damned may
have a desire to leave hell and enter heaven, they would also wish to
remain as they are: self-obsessed, morally vicious, etc. This view
contends that the damned continually act on their desire to remain the
same, and so are unwilling to repent and submit to God. If they seek
to enter into heaven, it is only on their own terms. This is a 'mild'
version of hell because, though the damned suffer in hell, they do not
suffer badly enough to want (all things considered) to leave. In their
vicious state, they could not enjoy union with God, and so prefer
hell.
The mild view is easier to reconcile with the idea that God loves even
the damned; if a denizen of hell were to genuinely repent, God would
admit such a person to heaven. Thus, hell will be a permanent state
for the damned only because they will never repent. There are two ways
to explain why the damned will refuse to repent.
First, they may be unable to repent, because they have lost their
freedom to choose what is truly good. In this case, hell is
necessarily eternal; it is not possible for the damned to escape from
hell once they arrive there. Second, the damned may be able to repent,
but remain eternally unwilling to do so. That is, while the damned
will actually remain in hell for all eternity, it is possible for
their stay in hell to be temporary, since they could repent and be
admitted to heaven.
This second explanation of eternal damnation is actually a departure
from the traditional view of hell. As noted above, the traditional
view teaches that the duration of hell is necessarily eternal because
it is not possible for the damned to escape. This second view,
according to which hell is eternal, but not necessarily eternal, is
discussed here only because it is so close to the traditional view and
does not have a widely accepted label. [The closest thing to an
established label comes from Kvanvig (1993), which uses the term
"second chance theory of hell" for any view denying that it is
impossible for the damned to escape hell. See pages 71-73.]
It could be objected that on either version of the mild view, hell is
not a form of punishment because it is not imposed on the damned
against their will. However, it does not seem that all punishment must
be contrary to the will of its recipient. It seems rather that
punishment is a negative consequence demanded by justice, regardless
of whether or not the one punished wishes to be punished. For example,
if justice demands that God remove the ability of the damned to
repent, then this removal would seem to be a form of punishment (one
which shapes, rather than opposes, the wills of the damned).
b. Annihilationism
Annihilationism (also known as the 'conditional immortality' view)
teaches that ultimately the damned cease to exist, and so are not
conscious for all eternity. Whereas the traditional view is
comprehensive in the sense that it specifies the purpose, duration,
and the felt quality of hell, annihilationism is a thesis only about
the last of these categories. Therefore, it is possible for
annihilationists to take different positions on the overall nature of
hell. They normally assume that once God annihilates a person, she
will never again come into existence; annihilation is a permanent
state. However, annihilationists disagree about God's reason for
annihilating the damned. Many see annihilation as retributive
punishment for sin, while others think that God annihilates the damned
out of love for them (this will be discussed further in section four).
According to annihilationism, the ultimate fate of the damned does not
involve suffering (because it is a state of non-existence). However,
it is open to annihilationists to assert that God puts the damned
through a period of conscious suffering (enough, perhaps, to 'pay them
back' for their sins) before finally snuffing out their existence.
Descriptions of this temporary conscious suffering could vary in
harshness along the lines described above for the traditional view.
The best argument for annihilationism derives from the traditional
theistic doctrine of divine conservation: all things depend on God to
conserve their existence from moment to moment, and so exist only so
long as they are connected to God in some way. But if hell is complete
and utter separation or disconnection from God, then hell would be a
state of non-existence. Against annihilationism, some would object
that it is contrary to God's creative nature to annihilate anything
(this will be discussed further in section four).
c. Free Will View
The free will view is primarily a thesis about the purpose of hell. It
teaches that God places the damned in hell not to punish them, but to
honor the choices they have freely made. On this view, hell originates
not so much from divine justice as from divine love.
According to the free will view, one of God's purposes in creation is
to establish genuine love-based relationships between God and humans,
and within the human community. But love is a relation that can exist
only between people who are genuinely free. Therefore, God gives
people freedom in this life to decide for themselves whether or not
they will reciprocate God's love by becoming the people God created
them to be. People freely choose how they act, and through these
choices they shape their moral character (a collection of stable
tendencies to think, feel, and act, in certain ways). Those who
develop a vicious character suffer psychologically, both in this life
and in the life to come, for in the afterlife, people will keep the
character they have developed in this life. So the suffering of hell
consists (at the least) in living with one's own bad character.
The question may arise: Why does God not simply alter the character of
vicious people after they die, so that they become virtuous and
God-loving denizens of heaven? Some would argue that such alteration
would be too radical to preserve personal identity over time: the
person admitted to heaven, though in many ways similar to the original
vicious person, would not be numerically the same person because of
serious differences in moral character; in altering the vicious
person, God would be, in effect, annihilating her and replacing her
with a numerically distinct virtuous counterpart. Against this
argument, it could be claimed that even if instantaneous
transformation would undermine personal identity, an omnipotent God
could surely transform vicious people through a more gradual process
that preserves personal identity. But even if it is possible,
adherents of the free will view would consider such
divinely-engineered transformation deeply inconsistent with the divine
plan. For if God remade vicious people into saints, the humans' new
attitude toward God would not be truly their own, thus removing the
genuineness of the love relationship between God and creature.
The free will view's emphasis on character formation leads quite
naturally to the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Because of
their bad character, vicious people cannot have an afterlife entirely
devoid of suffering. Those in purgatory, though initially vicious, are
able and willing to repent, freely receiving a good character from
God; therefore their suffering is temporary and they eventually enter
into heaven. Those in hell, on the other hand, are either unable or
unwilling to repent; the only afterlife God can give such people is an
afterlife of self-inflicted suffering.
One pressing question for the free will view is why God gives the
damned an afterlife at all, rather than simply letting them cease to
exist at death (a version of annihilationism). This, and other
objections to the free will view, will be discussed in section four.
Like annihilationism, the free will view is not a comprehensive view
of hell, and so is subject to variation. It can be combined with
either the claim that the damned suffer consciously for all eternity,
or the claim that they are (eventually) annihilated. Another point of
variation concerns post-mortem freedom: some teach that the damned
have the ability after death to continue freely choosing and shaping
their character, while others claim that the damned are locked into
their vicious characters, unable to change.
d. Universalism
Strictly speaking, universalism is not a view of what hell is like,
but it is nevertheless an important view relevant to any discussion of
hell. Universalism teaches that all people will ultimately be with God
in heaven. There are two main versions of the view. According to
necessary universalism, it is not possible for anyone to be eternally
separated from God; necessarily, all are saved. According to
contingent universalism, while it is possible that people could use
their free will to reject God forever, no one will actually do this;
eventually, everyone will say yes to God's love. While it would be
consistent with the basic universalist thesis to say that all people
go immediately to heaven upon death, most universalists (in an effort
to incorporate scriptural warnings about hell) insist that many people
will undergo a temporary period of post-mortem suffering before
entering heaven. This period of suffering, which could be seen as a
temporary hell or as a kind of purgatory, could be motivated either by
divine justice, as in the traditional view of hell, or by divine love,
as in the free will view.
2. The Problem of Hell
Atheists have leveled two different 'arguments from evil' against the
existence of God (see Evil, Evidential Problem of, and Evil, Logical
Problem of). According to the evidential argument from evil, we would
not expect a world created by a necessarily omnipotent, omniscient,
morally perfect being (that is, an 'omniperfect' God) to contain
suffering of the kinds and amounts that we actually experience;
therefore, though the suffering (i.e. evil) we see does not logically
imply the non-existence of an omniperfect God, it does count as
evidence against God's existence. According to the logical argument
from evil, it is not even logically possible for an omniperfect God to
coexist with evil. Given the evident existence of evil, it is
impossible for there to be an omniperfect God. Furthermore, since
religious belief systems normally assert the existence of both God and
evil, they are internally incoherent.
The problem of hell is a version of the logical problem of evil, and
can be stated thus:
(1) An omniperfect God would not damn anyone to hell without
having a morally sufficient reason (that is, a very good reason based
on moral considerations) to do so.
(2) It is not possible for God to have a morally sufficient reason
to damn anyone.
(3) Therefore, it is not possible for God to damn anyone to hell.
This argument concludes that if there is an omniperfect God—one that
necessarily has the perfection of Goodness—then no one will be damned.
Therefore traditional theological systems, which insist on both
damnation and God's omniperfection, are incoherent and must be
revised. Theologians must give up either the doctrine of damnation or
the traditional understanding of God as omniperfect.
In light of the above argument, those who retain their belief in God's
omniperfection have two options: embrace necessary universalism, or
challenge the soundness of the argument. The argument is valid, so
those who wish to reject it must deny one of its premises.
The argument's first premise seems to follow from the nature of the
relevant divine attributes. To say that a being is morally perfect is
(in part) to say that such a being would not want any suffering to
occur unless there were a morally sufficient reason for it to occur.
God's omnipotence and omniscience imply that God has knowledge and
power sufficient to ensure that things happen only if God wants them
to happen. So it seems that a perfectly good, omnipotent, and
omniscient being would not allow suffering – particularly of the
extreme sort associated with damnation – unless there was a very good
moral justification for allowing it.
The second premise of the argument is much more controversial,
however. Anti-universalists (i.e. those who affirm both divine
omniperfection and damnation) have denied the premise in two different
ways. The first is simply to deny that, given our finite minds, we can
be sure that (2) is true. Is it not at least possible for God to have
a morally sufficient reason for allowing damnation? Perhaps there is
some great good (which we cannot now, and perhaps never will, grasp)
that God cannot realize without the damnation of souls. Leibniz (c.
1672) suggests one possible example of such a good: the overall
perfection of the universe. It may be that God brings about the
damnation of some because preventing their damnation would have made
the overall story of the universe less good. While a view such as
Leibniz's may be appealing to moral utilitarians, people with more
Kantian moral intuitions will object that a God who pursues the
perfection of the universe (or any other unseen good) at the expense
of the damned is not morally perfect at all, but is instead using the
damned as a mere means to divine ends (see Kant's Ethics).
Second, anti-universalists can claim that (2) is certainly false
because we know of a morally sufficient reason for God to allow
damnation. They have proposed two such reasons. The first, and
historically the most popular, is justice: if God failed to damn the
wicked, God would be acting unjustly—acting in collusion with the
wicked—and so would be morally imperfect. The second, more popular in
the last century, is freedom: if God necessitated the salvation of
everyone, then God would be removing human freedom to say "no" to God
in an ultimate way, and consequently the value of saying "yes" to God
would be significantly diminished.
3. Hell and Justice
Many defenders of the traditional view of hell claim that though God
is loving, God is also just, and justice demands the eternal
punishment of those who sin against God. However, others often object
that far from demanding damnation, justice would prohibit it, since
there would be a discrepancy between the temporary, finite crimes
committed by the sinner and the everlasting, infinite punishment
inflicted by God. Some see such reasoning as favoring annihilationism:
if hell is punishment, then it must involve (at most) a finite amount
of conscious suffering followed by annihilation. On the other hand,
capital punishment (the earthly analogue of annihilation) is usually
considered a more serious punishment than life imprisonment without
parole (which could be considered analogous to eternal conscious
punishment).
The following 'infinite seriousness' argument aims to show that
justice not only permits God to damn some (contra the objection
above), but actually demands it.
(4) Other things being equal, the seriousness of a crime increases
as the status (the degree of importance or value) of its victim
increases.
(5) God has an infinitely high status.
(6) Therefore, crimes against God are infinitely serious (from (4) and (5)).
(7) All sin is a crime against God.
(8) Therefore, all sin is infinitely serious (from (6) and (7)).
(9) The more serious a crime is, the more serious its punishment should be.
(10) Therefore, all sin should receive an infinitely serious
punishment (from (8) and (9)).
Premise (9) is relatively uncontroversial, because it seems to be just
cashing out part of what we mean when we talk about the "seriousness"
of a crime. To say that a crime is not serious is (in part) to say
that does not merit a serious punishment; to say that a crime is
moderately serious is to say that it deserves a moderately severe
penalty, and so on. Premise (5) is also uncontroversial, since an
infinitely perfect being would seem to have infinite value and
importance. However, some of the other premises of the infinite
seriousness argument are subject to dispute.
At first glance, (7) may seem false: how can Smith's theft of Jones'
wallet wrong God, especially if Smith is unaware of God's existence
and so cannot intend the theft to be directed against God? However,
many believe that when one person is sufficiently precious to, and
dependent upon, another, a wrong committed against the first person
automatically wrongs the second. For example, harm done to an infant
is arguably also harm done to the infant's mother. But if all things
depend on God for their continued existence, and all people are
precious to God, then by the same principle it would seem that God is
wronged by all sin, even if the sinner does not intend to wrong God.
Premise (4), which claims that seriousness of a crime is a function
not only of the nature of the crime itself and the harm it causes, but
also of the status of the victim(s) wronged by the crime, seems to fit
with some widely shared moral intuitions. For example, other things
being equal, killing a human (a higher status victim) seems to be a
much more serious crime than killing a neighbor's dog (a lower status
victim). However, when the harm against a victim is indirect (e.g., by
means of harming someone precious to the victim), it is not clear that
the victim's status is relevant to the seriousness of the crime. Other
things being equal, killing a saint's best friend seems no worse than
killing a criminal's, even though the saint would arguably enjoy a
higher social status. On the other hand, this may not be a genuine
counterexample to the first premise, because saints and criminals are
both of the same natural kind (humanity); perhaps all the infinite
seriousness argument needs is a principle according to which harms
against beings of more ontologically perfect kinds are more serious
than harms against beings of less perfect kinds.
Finally, as Jonathon Kvanvig (1993) notes, factors such as the
criminal's intentions are relevant to determining the appropriate
degree of punishment for a crime. For example, premeditated murder is
normally considered more serious than murder committed in a fit of
passion. Therefore, it seems that not all sin deserves the same degree
of punishment, even if all sin is against God. Insofar as damnation
would inflict the same punishment (eternal separation from God) for
all sin, it would be fundamentally unjust. This objection would seem
to vitiate even annihilationist conceptions of hell, if they see
annihilation as punishment. In response, it could be suggested that
although all the damned are given an infinitely lengthy punishment,
more serious criminals are placed in more harsh conditions. Or perhaps
it could be claimed that although not all sins deserve infinite
punishment, everyone commits at least one infinitely serious sin at
some point in life, and so would deserve infinite punishment.
Even if the infinite seriousness argument is sound, the idea of divine
mercy creates difficulties for a defense of the traditional view of
damnation, as follows. Suppose that every person deserves damnation.
Theistic religions teach that God is willing to forgive the sins of
the faithful, so that they will not receive their just punishment. But
if God is able and willing to forgo the punishment in one case, why
not in all cases? There are two main (seemingly incompatible)
responses to this question. Some claim that if God were to forgive
everyone, this would display God's mercy, but not God's justice.
Therefore, because God seeks to reveal all the divine attributes, God
cannot will the salvation of all. Others insist that although God is
willing to forgive everybody, not everyone is willing to ask for, or
accept, God's forgiveness, resulting in self-inflicted retribution.
4. Hell and Freedom
Because the traditional view of hell understands the purpose of
damnation to be retribution for sin, it would seem to stand or fall
with the infinite seriousness argument. As discussed at the end of
section one, however, those who see hell as an expression of divine
love have proposed an entirely different morally sufficient reason for
God to allow damnation: respect for freedom. In the free will view,
damnation is the only possible way for God to honor the freedom of the
damned. To force the sinners into heaven against their wills would
not, in this view, be an act of Divine love. Instead, God respects
human autonomy by allowing us to shape our character through our own
free choices, and by refusing to unilaterally change the character we
have chosen; if in this life, we freely develop into morally vicious
and miserable people, then that is how God will allow us to remain for
eternity.
But if the only possible eternity open to the damned is one of
fundamental ruin and despair, why would God give them a never-ending
afterlife? Would it not be more loving of God to let the damned cease
to exist at death (or, if justice demands it, after a temporary
postmortem period of punishment)? The two main versions of the free
will view require different lines of response to this question. Those
who deny post-mortem freedom might insist that only the guaranteed
existence of an eternal afterlife (good or bad) can render our
ante-mortem choices truly momentous. Therefore, to guarantee the
importance of our earthly freedom, God must give an afterlife to
everyone. For those who affirm post-mortem freedom, God gives the
damned a never-ending afterlife (at least in part) so that they can
continue to choose whether to accept or reject God's love. Indeed,
some who defend the free will view suggest that because our earthly
freedom and knowledge with respect to God are often very limited
(indeed, because God's very existence is not evident to many), no one
would be in a position to make a truly decisive choice for or against
God until the afterlife, in a situation where the agent had a clearer
understanding of what was at stake. The subsequent discussion will
focus on versions of the free will view that posit post-mortem choice.
The free will view assumes an incompatibilist account of free will,
according to which a person is genuinely free with respect to her
choices only if she (or an event involving her) is the ultimate causal
determinant of those choices. Therefore, if God causally determined
denizens of hell to repent, then God—rather than the humans—would be
the ultimate determining cause of the repentence, and the humans would
not be the agent of their own repentance. Those that hold the
compatibilists view concerning free will and determinism claim that
free actions can be causally predetermined, as long as the chain of
causes runs through the will and intellect of the free agent in an
appropriate way. If compatibilism is correct, then God could determine
everyone to enter heaven freely, by first causing them to desire
heaven enough to repent. Therefore, in claiming that God cannot both
(1) give creatures genuine freedom and (2) guarantee that all will be
saved , the free will view relies on incompatibilism, which is a very
controversial view. For more on the compatibilist/incompatibilist
controversy, see the entry on Free Will.
Even if an incompatibilist notion of freedom is taken for granted, it
is not clear that the desire to honor human free choices would provide
God with a morally sufficient reason to allow damnation. To see why,
consider an analogous human situation. Perhaps parents should, out of
respect for their children's freedom, allow them to harm themselves in
relatively insignificant ways. But as the degree of self-harm
increases, it becomes less and less clear that non-intervention is the
loving parental policy. Could it ever be truly loving to allow one's
child to, say, commit suicide? If the child were very young, or did
not clearly understand the nature or consequences of her choice, then
it would seem clearly wrong for the parent not to do everything in her
power to stop the suicide. But if the child is both fully mature and
fully cognizant of her choice and its ramifications, then some would
consider parental intervention a violation of the child's rightful
autonomy. Insofar as the free will view appeals to God's respect for
the freedom and autonomy of the damned, it seems to conceive of the
damned as related to God in something like the way an adult child is
related to a parent. Those who see humans as more like infants in
relation to God – because of the vast gap between divine and human
power – will probably not be persuaded by the free will view.
Another possible objection to the free will view concerns the
relationship between freedom and rationality. Free choices, if they
are to have any real value, must be more than simply random or
uncaused events—they must be explicable in terms of reasons. Free
action must be a species of rational action. But there seems to be no
reason to choose eternal suffering (or non-existence) over an eternity
of bliss. The choice to remain in hell would be utterly irrational,
and so could not count as a genuinely free choice. Defenders of the
free will view would likely counter this objection by distinguishing
between objective and subjective reasons. If people amass enough false
beliefs, then what is in fact bad or harmful can seem good or
beneficial to them. So perhaps the choice to remain in hell, while
admittedly not objectively rational, could be motivated by the damned
person's subjective reasons (that is, by how things seem to him or
her). Even if this line of defense is successful, it leaves open
questions about the value of freedom in such cases: is it really a
good thing for agents to have the power to act in ways that bring
about their own objective ruin?
Although the freedom view does not rule out the traditional picture of
hell as eternal existence apart from God, some would argue that it
requires openness to other possibilities as well. What would happen,
for example, if the damned hated God to such an extent that they would
prefer non-existence to retaining even the slightest dependence on
God? It would seem that God as depicted in the free will view would
(out of respect for the freedom of the damned) give them what they
wished for, unless there were a good reason not to. Thus, in the
freedom view it would seem possible that the damned may end in
annihilation. Hell would then be disjunctive: it could involve eternal
conscious suffering or annihilation. Advocates of the free will view
who favor a more traditional conception of hell can respond to the
foregoing argument by positing some reason for God not to honor a
damned person's choice for annihilation. Here are four possible
responses.
First, some suggest that souls, once created, are intrinsically
immortal, and cannot be destroyed even by God. Most theists would not
find this suggestion plausible, however, because it seems to do away
with divine omnipotence.
Second, perhaps annihilating the damned would violate God's moral
principles. According to Stump (1986), Aquinas believed that being and
goodness are convertible, and so considered morality to require that
God never destroy a being unless doing so would promote an even
greater level of being/goodness. Since annihilating a damned soul
would decrease being without a compensating increase in being
elsewhere in the universe, God is morally bound not to do it. This
view could be criticized (as was Leibniz's view above) for giving
insufficient weight to the idea that God is first and foremost good to
individuals, and only secondarily concerned with abstract issues like
the amount of being in the universe.
Third, God might refuse to annihilate the damned because it is better
for them (regardless of global considerations) to go on existing,
because existence itself is a significant good for those who enjoy it.
On the other hand, in using phrases like "a fate worse than death,"
people seem to presuppose that the goodness of existence can be
outweighed by negative features of existence. Therefore, if the
sufferings of hell are serious enough, they could make continued
existence there even worse for the damned than non-existence. So
whether we consider this third suggestion (that eternal conscious
separation from God is better for the damned than annihilation) to be
plausible will depend on how bad we consider non-existence to be, and
how bad we consider the felt quality of hell to be.
Fourth, God might refuse to annihilate the damned out of hope. This
claim could be endorsed even by those who believe that an eternity of
conscious separation from God would be worse than non-existence. We
would think it right to interfere in the attempted suicide of a young
person with temporary depression, because of her hope for a brighter
future. Similarly, it would seem right for God to keep the damned in
existence (even if this existence is temporarily worse than
non-existence for them) if there were some hope that they might
repent. Out of respect for freedom, God would not unilaterally alter
the character of the damned so as to cause their repentance, but out
of love and hope God would refuse to allow the damned to extinguish
the possibility of reconciliation. If God allows the damned to
continue in their suffering only out of hope that they may repent,
then no one (not even God) can be certain that the damned will go on
suffering eternally. For if God knew (through middle knowledge) that
the damned would never freely repent, then God would have no reason to
prolong their suffering.
For those who favor the fourth explanation over the first three, the
freedom view faces a dilemma regarding the eternity of hell. On the
one hand, if there is no hope that the damned will repent, God would
seem to have no reason not to honor their (possible) choice for
annihilation, thus rendering hell (understood as a state of conscious
suffering) possibly temporary. On the other hand, if there is hope
that a person in hell will repent, then while God would not honor a
choice for annihilation, there is still the possibility for hell to be
temporary, since a person who fully repented would eventually go to
heaven. On this latter, hopeful, scenario, hell becomes not a place of
everlasting retributive punishment, but a place of indefinitely long
therapeutic punishment, aimed at the ultimate reconciliation of
sinners with God. While it remains possible that some people will in
fact hold out against God forever, on the freedom view the functional
role of hell is very similar to that of purgatory in Roman Catholic
theology: a state of being aimed at leading a person to heaven,
through the removal of character flaws that would prevent her from
enjoying beatific intimacy with God. The main difference is that the
inhabitants of purgatory are certainly destined to join with God in
heaven, while the inhabitants of hell face an uncertain future.
5. References and Further Reading
Adams, Marilyn M. (1993) 'The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for
Christians', in E. Stump (ed.) Reasoned Faith, A Festschrift for
Norman Kretzmann, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 301–27.
An explanation of the problem of hell, advocating for universalism.
Augustine, City of God, Book 21.
Articulates and defends a literal version of the traditional
Christian view of hell.
Crockett, William, ed. (1997) Four Views on Hell. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Advocates of the literal view, the psychological view,
annihilationism, and purgatory take turns explaining their own views
and responding to the views of the others.
Kvanvig, Jonathan L. (1993) The Problem of Hell. New York: Oxford
University Press.
An extremely thorough study of philosophical issues surrounding
the problem of hell; argues at length against a retributive model of
hell and in favor of love as the divine motivation for hell.
Leibniz, G. W. (c. 1672) The Philosopher's Confession.
Proposes a 'best possible world' defense of damnation.
Lewis, C.S. (1946) The Great Divorce. London: MacMillan.
A psychologically astute fictional story about heaven and hell; it
assumes something like the free will view.
Stump, Eleonore (1986) 'Dante's Hell, Aquinas's Moral Theory, and the
Love of God', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 16:181-196.
Attributes a version of the free will view to Dante and shows that
it can be defended on Aquinas' moral principles.
Swinburne, Richard (1983) 'A Theodicy of Heaven and Hell', The
Existence & Nature of God, ed. Alfred J. Freddoso, Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 37-54.
An articulation and defense of the free will view highlighting the
importance of character formation; considers annihilation as well as
eternal existence as possibilities for the damned.
Talbott, Thomas B. (1999) The Inescapable Love of God. Universal Publishers.
An extended argument for universalism.
Walls, Jerry (1992) Hell: The Logic of Damnation. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press.
A defense of the free will view, emphasizing the need for postmortem choice.
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