It
is widely believed among atheists, agnostics, skeptics and freethinkers of
various stripes (and among some Christians as well) that the belief in hell
constitutes, if not a sufficient reason for not accepting Christianity, at
least a very serious problem for Christianity.
But while this belief is widespread, it is seldom articulated with much
clarity or
vigour. The purpose
of this essay is to argue that there is indeed a problem here, which I shall
call the problem of hell, and to explicate its nature.
The problem of hell is a logical
problem. It is a problem in the
‘broadly logical sense’ that Alvin Plantinga is fond of talking about. As a first approximation, we can state the
nature of the problem this way. The
traditional Christian view about hell is that it is the “eternal conscious
punishment of the wicked”.[1] It has at least a prima facie
biblical foundation in such passages as Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 16:19-31, and
Revelation 20:11-15, and it is endorsed by such theological giants as Anselm
and Aquinas. Moreover, one gets the
distinct impression from some biblical passages as well as generations of
fire-and-brimstone preachers that many, perhaps the vast majority, of human
beings are either in or going to end up in hell.[2] Traditional
Christianity also holds that God is just, that is, God is wholly or perfectly
just. The problem of hell is that there
is a logical incompatibility between these beliefs such that it is not
logically possible to consistently hold both of them.[3] One might inconsistently believe both but
that has the unfortunate consequence of leaving one vulnerable to the charge of
irrationality.
Now, of course, the contradiction is
not immediately obvious in the way it is with someone asserting (at the same
time), p and not-p. Unearthing this
particular beast requires some digging.
To begin with, properly speaking, a logical contradiction does not arise
between beliefs, but only between propositions, i.e. the propositional content
of beliefs. The following propositions
are affirmed in traditional Christianity.
(1) Hell
is just punishment for sin.
(2) God is just.
My main purpose in
this section will be to argue that (1) is false and to explicate some of the
consequences of this.
(1)
involves the concept of just punishment.
One of the principles of just punishment is, roughly, that the
punishment should fit the crime. The
term ‘fit’ here means that the punishment should be proportional to the
crime. But proportional in what
way(s)? One answer immediately suggests
itself: the severity of the punishment should be proportional to the severity
of the crime. We have thus another
proposition: (3) The severity of punishment should be proportional to the
severity of the crime (or sin). Let us
call this the proportionality principle. Two essential components of the severity of punishment also
immediately suggest themselves: intensity and duration. (There may be other
components but for the present purpose they may be ignored.) Thus, the crime of stealing a loaf of bread
is less severe than the crime of murder, and the criminal justice system metes
out, and on this principle ought to mete out, less severe punishments for the
former than for the latter.
Before
I proceed with the main argument, a few explanations and caveats. I do not have a systematic defense of the
proportionality principle. The reader
may abandon this principle and thereby try to free herself from my ultimate
conclusion. However, I think many
people in fact accept this principle and do not want to abandon it. The proportionality principle, or something
very similar to it, is one of the axioms of our justice system. I would also claim that it is one of the
cornerstones of humane persons’ sense of natural justice. Moreover, this principle seems essentially
involved in any explanation of why we make the judgments about what punishments
people deserve that we do.
Also,
I do not have a well-developed analysis of what constitutes the severity of a
crime and only the beginnings of one about the severity of punishments. We do, intuitively, make judgments about the
relative severity of criminal acts, and much (though certainly not all) of the
time we seem to have no problem in doing so.
Murder is worse than kidnapping, which is worse than stealing a car,
etc. I suspect the consequences of
criminal acts figure prominently in our judgments of their severity. But the important point for my purpose is
not to try to figure out how such judgments are and ought to be made, but
rather that we do make such judgments and we do accept the principle of
proportionality.
The
important question is, is the concept of hell as just punishment consistent
with the principle of proportionality?
The answer is clearly, “Hell no!”
Hell, conceived as eternal, unrelenting, excruciating pain is not
something that could be deserved by any human being. Human actions occur in space and time and have finite
significance. No finite act or sum of
finite acts (which is itself finite) could possibly be of sufficient severity
to merit infinite punishment.[4] The problem is exacerbated when we consider
that hell is often described as being not only infinite in duration, but also
infinite, or at least extremely great, in duration. The pain experienced there, be it physical, mental, or both, is
terrible enough to cause weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Sometimes
Christians claim that although the number of sins a person has committed is
necessarily finite, sin is by nature of infinite significance. Thus John Walvoord: “The problem here is the
obvious lack of understanding of the infinite nature of sin as contrasted to
the infinite righteousness of God. If
the slightest sin is infinite in its significance, then it also demands
infinite punishment as a divine judgment.”[5] The grievous difficulty with this claim is
that the antecedent of the conditional expressed – that the slightest sin is
infinite in its significance – seems “obviously” false rather than obviously
true. How can a human action have
infinite significance?
Two
answers, both inadequate, come to mind.
First, perhaps Walvoord accepts something like St. Anselm’s Satisfaction
theory of the Atonement, in which “an offender [sinner] is required to make
recompense, or satisfaction, to the person offended according to that person’s
status.”[6] Since God is infinite in his honor and
righteousness, a sinner must then deserve eternal, infinite punishment. The problem, of course, is that to modern
minds, Anselm’s medieval, feudal conception of justice is quite
unacceptable. It clashes quite starkly,
for example, with Article 7 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights: “All
are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection
of the law.”[7]
A
second response might be along these lines: sin results from character that is
potentially infinite in its sinful products, and thus it deserves infinite
punishment.[8] I don’t see this as making matters any
clearer or easier for the proponent of proposition (1). Even if the sinner’s character is potentially
infinite in its sinful products, it is hard to see why this would deserve actual
infinite punishment. A lot of work
would need to be done to spell out in what sense a sinner’s character is
potentially infinite in its sinful products, if this is true at all. In some possible world in which the sinner
lived forever and had ample resources and sufficient motivation, he or she
would commit an infinite number of sins?
How is this relevant to how a real-world sinner should be punished? This whole line of thought strikes me as a
dead end.
David
G. Moore, who recently wrote a spirited and refreshingly forthright defense of
the traditional view of hell, holds the view that the sinner in hell is not
merely potentially but actually infinite in his sinful products. After a brief consultation of some Biblical
passages, he concludes: “The lesson from Dives and Esau is this: those in hell
never truly repent of their sin. They
forever remain in a state of rebellion toward God because their fallen nature
does not carry the ability to recognize its depravity and need for God.”[9] Charles Seymour defends a similar conception
of hell. He writes, “If…we reject the notion that
hell is a punishment only for the sins of the past, and allow that the damned
can continue to sin, then we can believe that there is no injustice in the
damned suffering unending punishment.”[10]
To
show how this view is mistaken, I shall have to inquire briefly into some of
the reasons for and motivations of unbelief in God. Moore, at least, assumes that the only reason one might not
believe in God and repent is because of rebellion, which is caused by pride. Sinners are supposedly self-centered,
whereas God is at the center of the Christian’s being.[11] What Moore and many Christians fail to
appreciate is this. It is
possible to non-culpably fail to believe in God. The earthly realm can be a confusing place and it is not easy to
know what is true and what is false. It
is plausible that even if hell does really exist, many people do not have any
good reason to believe this (at least until they allegedly get there). The same can be said for the existence of
God. The evidence for the existence of
God is far from compelling, and there are secular and religious competitors
with Christianity – e.g. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, secular
humanism, Marxism - that have prima facie equally justified positions.[12] To use Terence Penelhum’s phrase, the world
exhibits multiple religious and ideological ambiguity, and “the same
rationality that they [Christians] rightly claim for themselves is all around
them as well.”[13] Moreover, it is just simply not true that
each of us “knows in our hearts” that God exists and is merely refusing to
accept it.[14] Some people, including myself, reject God
and Christianity not out of pride but simply because our intellectual integrity
will not allow us to believe where the evidence is insufficient (and perhaps
actually against Christianity).
So much
for the claim that all unbelievers in hell remain eternally in a state of
sin. What about the claim that they are
incapable of repentance? It is possible
to non-culpably not believe in God, which is to say that unbelief does not
necessarily stem from sin. Thus, it
certainly seems likely that some sinners, at least, would repent if given the
chance, since the alleged obstacles to their repentance - their rebelliousness,
their pride, their sin – are absent or at least less prominent than Moore and
Seymour suppose. Moreover, their
evidence for the incorrigible nature of the damned is, to my mind, decidedly
insufficient: simply an interpretation of certain Biblical passages. Certainly no independent evidence is given
to justify their pessimistic view of humanity.
The option remains to say that only a small fraction of humanity will go
to hell, and they will be the kind of people who are incorrigible (after all,
it’s possible that some people would never repent, isn’t it?) But this is in effect to abandon the
traditional conception of hell.
Not
all Christians accept that hell is eternal punishment for sin. In reference to John Walvoord’s claim (in
the quotation above) that sin is infinite in its significance, Clark Pinnock
says: “What kind of rationale is this?
What kind of God is this? Is He
an unjust judge? Is it not plain that
sins committed in time and space cannot deserve limitless retribution?”[15]
Another
move can be made by the advocate of the traditional view. He can deny our human capacity to discover
truths about the nature of justice. I
call this the depravity of human reason maneuver. Thus Moore:
“Pinnock’s objection that hell
‘offends our sense of
natural justice’ is quite alarming…It must be stated
quite emphatically that our sense of justice is perverted,
twisted, and distorted.
What we humans deem as fair
can many times be far removed from what God says.
…Man’s sense of justice fails
miserably.”[16]
Moore cites several
scripture verses as justification for this claim. In general, I suppose he accepts that since the Fall, human
reason has been corrupted and cannot be trusted, perhaps especially on moral
and spiritual issues.
I will confine myself to three
points that are sufficient to dispose of this line of reasoning. First, any general deprecation of human
reason will tend to undercut applications of that reason, including using
reason to determine when something is or is not a revelation and what the
proper interpretation of revelation is.
So, if human reason is unable to discern moral and spiritual truths on
its own, why should we think that it is capable of knowing that the Bible is
divinely inspired, or what the proper interpretation of Scripture is?
Second,
it simply is not true that human reason is corrupt or impotent. While it is certainly fallible and sometimes
applied to bad ends, human reason has, through science, made great discoveries
about the physical universe, greatly improved the length and quality of life
for at least some of humanity, and furthermore, important insights have been
gained into ethical issues by purely secular moral philosophers. Last but not least, what alternative do we
have to using our reason the best we can to discern truths about justice? Should reform our justice systems so that
they reflect the standards of justice allegedly accepted by God? In that case, what the world clearly needs
is more cruel, harsh and severe justice.
The worst punishments we can imagine are simply not bad enough; given
time, this idea could turn the whole world into something of which Vlad the
Impaler and the Marquis de Sade might have been proud.[17]
At this point, the defender of the
traditional concept of hell might invoke the divine command theory of morality
to defend the justice of the traditional concept of hell. Briefly, this meta-ethical theory says that
moral values, or moral truths, depend entirely upon God’s will, or
‘commands’. What God says is right is
right, what he says is wrong is wrong, and things are only right or wrong because
God says so. On this view, hell would
be just punishment for sin simply because God says so.[18]
This is a problematic move because
the central and fatal problem with the divine command theory was formulated
long ago and can be expressed succinctly as follows:
Any attempt to identify moral
principles with divine commands
must run up against a dilemma first
formulated in Plato’s
Euthyphro.
Is the good good because God commands it, or does
God command it because it is
good? If the former, then morality
is the product of arbitrary will,
and obediance to morality is mere
obediance to authority. If the latter, then morality is independent
of God’s will, and knowledge of the
divine will is at best redundant.[19]
Any attempt to
identify the nature of justice with divine commands will face the same kind of
problem that appears to defeat the divine command theory generally.
I
can see only one objection left to my claim that hell is not just punishment
because it violates the proportionality principle. Perhaps someone will say, “What about the true monsters of
humanity? What about Hitler? Doesn’t Hitler deserve eternal, awful
punishment?” Let me say first that nothing
I have said lessens the enormosity of Hitler’s evil. But does even Hitler deserve endless awful punishment? He may deserve a million years, perhaps ten,
of pain that is as great as any he brought upon his many victims. But at some point the desire that any human
being, no matter how evil, should suffer becomes no longer the desire for
justice but rather the desire for revenge, perhaps even a delight in
cruelty. What does anyone gain from
Hitler’s eternal suffering? According
to the traditional view of hell, there is no escape, no chance for forgiveness,
and no possibility of redemption. So
Hitler does not gain from the experience; if anything he becomes thoroughly
bitter and sinful because of it. Does
anyone else? It strains credulity to
suggest God gains from Hitler suffering eternally, as opposed to a finite but
very long time. And what about his
victims? After ten million years, if
they still cry for revenge, if they still long to see their tormentor suffer,
I’m inclined to think they have not gained much from being in the presence of
God.[20] These considerations point towards the
conclusion that hell could only be just punishment if it included the
possibility of redemption.
We
are now in a position to formulate the problem of hell clearly. It remains to point out explicitly that if
hell conceived as just punishment is not consistent with the principle of proportionality,
and one is convinced of the truth of that principle, then one is forced to deny
that hell is just punishment.
Consequently, one is also forced to deny that God is wholly just, since
any God who could inflict such disproportionately severe punishment cannot be
wholly just. In fact, it would seem
that such a God would be positively unjust.
To
review, the propositions we have enumerated thus far are: (1) Hell is just
punishment for sin; (2) God is just; and (3) The proportionality principle. Informally stated, the argument goes thus:
1.
If (3) then not (1).
2.
(3)
3.
If (2) then (1).
Conclusion:
Not (2).
Proof:
5.
Not (1). 1, 2 Modus Ponens
6.
Not (2) 5, 3 Modus Tolens
The argument is
almost embarrassing simple, yet powerful, since it is deductively correct
(valid) and sound. Before I discuss its
consequences, I will reply to some possible objections.
It might be objected that even if it
is true that hell is not just punishment for sin, that does not necessarily
imply that God is not wholly just. It
is often said that God does not want us to go to hell but that we send
ourselves there by our own choice to reject Him. Hell is not punishment, it is merely the logical consequence of
our actions, of our freedom to choose.[21]
Thus is it pretended God has no
culpability in this matter. But this is
merely a subtle sophism. Who set up the
rules of the game, so to speak, such that the consequence of rejecting God is
eternal fiery punishment? Certainly not
I. Moreover, as I argued earlier, very
plausibly some sinners would repent if given the chance. Why would God not be willing to give them a
second chance? To reiterate another
previous point, the earthly realm can be a confusing place and it is difficult
to know the truth. Could not God have provided
us with less ambiguous evidence about the rules of the game?[22] God is culpable, therefore, in at least two
respects: for setting up the game the way in which He did, and for not making
it clear to the players what the rules of the game are and what the penalties
are for violating the rules. This
objection, therefore, is weak and it follows that if hell is conceived as
eternal just punishment then God is not wholly just.
The weakest point of my argument is
(3), which could be rejected as a principle of just punishment. But as indicated earlier, the implications
of rejecting (3) are enormous, and for most people, undesirable. So even the argument’s weakest point is relatively
strong.
On the other hand, the argument can
be reformulated using not the principle of proportionality, but instead the Old
Testament standard of justice: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth (Exodus
21:24). Pinnock notes:
Did the sinner visit upon God everlasting
torment? Did he cause
God or his neighbor’s everlasting pain and
loss? Of course not;
no human has the power to do such harm. Under the Old Testament
standard, no finite set of deeds that
individual sinners have done
could justify the infinite sentence.[23]
We have, then, one
more proposition that can be used instead of the principle of proportionality
in the above argument. Proposition (7),
the Old Testament standard of strict equivalence, can be substituted for (3) in
every instance in which it occurs, and the validity of the argument is
preserved. Therefore, my argument holds
whether one accepts (3), a proposition with much intuitive appeal, or (7), the
Old Testament standard of justice.
II. Implications of the Problem
What are the implications of my
argument? The argument establishes that
hell cannot fruitfully be conceived as eternal punishment. To avoid the conclusion that God is not
wholly just, Christians will have to find some other conception of hell,
perhaps along Universalist or Annihilationist lines. Or, they can simply ignore my argument and embrace the
inconsistency of (1) and (2). But that
is surely irrational.
For non-Christians, the problem of
hell constitutes strong support for not believing in those forms of
Christianity that hold both (1) and (2).
Since virtually every theology clings tenaciously to (2), the main
difference among theologies in this respect will be whether they accept
(1). Thus, as a general rule, the
problem of hell constitutes a formidable objection to all those theologies that
accept (1).
The problem of hell raises profound
issues regarding the character of Christ.
Over 70 years ago, in his classic lecture “Why I Am Not A Christian”,
Bertrand Russell noted, “There is one very serious defect in Christ’s moral
character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly
humane can believe in everlasting punishment.”[24] If Jesus Christ really did believe in hell
as everlasting punishment, then there was a serious defect in his character,
and Christians have nothing less than a crisis on their hands.
There is one more possible
implication of my argument. For those
theologies that accept (1) and also accept this further claim, (8) God is
perfectly good, omnipotent, and omniscient, it will follow that God (defined in
this way) does not exist. We need only
make explicit the highly plausible inference that if God is not wholly just, He
is also not wholly or perfectly good.
This conclusion can be avoided, of course, but only by sacrificing
either (1) or (8). And, rather than having
proved that God does not exist, I would say that the problem of hell provides a
clear impetus for Christians to develop more rational theologies.
References
[1] A phrase Wayne Grudem uses in his
Foreword to David G. Moore, The Battle for Hell: A Survey and Evaluation of
Evangelicals’ Growing Attraction to the Doctrine of Annihilationism
(Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1995).
[2] E.g. Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”(RSV)
[3] I owe much to the locus
classicus of a devastating critique of the traditional view of hell: Marilyn
McCord Adams’ article, “Hell and the God of Justice”, Religious Studies
11 (1975), pp. 433 - 447. Adams argues
that there are no sound principles of justice that “entail that men who are
sufficiently sinful ought to be made to suffer everlasting torment incompatible
with any happiness.”(433) I approach
the problem from a different angle. I
argue that there are sound principles of justice that entail that hell is
unjust.
[4] For a fuller presentation of this argument, see Adams, op cite.
[5] John F. Walvoord, “The Literal
View” in Four Views on Hell (Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House,
1992), p. 27.
[6] Encyclopaedia Britannica, URL = http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/5/0,5716,7815+4+7720,00.html.
[7] United Nations website, URL = http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm.
[8] This possible response was
suggested to me by Dr. Bruce Hunter of the University of Alberta.
[9] Moore, op. cite, p. 48.
[10] Charles Seymour, “Hell, Justice and Freedom”, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 43: pp. 69 – 86, 1998.
[11] Ibid, p. 50.
[12] I am not claiming that the secular
and religious competitors of Christianity are, all things considered, compared
to each other and to Christianity, evidentially on a par. I am only claiming that each has its own evidence
that it regards as sufficient and each has its preferred ways of explaining
away the other positions’ evidence.
[13] Terence Penelhum, Reason and
Religious Faith (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1995), p. 130.
[14] Ibid, p.105.
[15] “Response to John F. Walvoord” in Four
Views on Hell, op. cite, p. 39.
[16] Moore, op. cite, p. 29.
[17] It might be objected that while it may be just for God to inflict punishment that seems to us to be unduly harsh, it is not just for human beings to do so given that we are fallible and liable to make mistakes, such as punishing the wrong person. I readily grant human fallibility. However, this objection misses the point. The reason we should not inflict incredibly cruel and severe punishments is that doing so would be to act unjustly, not because we are fallible.
[18] For a clear statement of the Divine Command Theory, see William Lane Craig, “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations of Morality,” Foundations 5 (1997), pp. 9 – 12. Available online at Leadership U, URL = http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html.
[19] Richard Norman, entry on “moral philosophy, history of” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 587 – 588.
[20] Moore provides an instructive piece
of fallacious reasoning when he argues that Annihilationism - the view that no
sinners suffer eternally in hell, some, the incorrigible, are simply destroyed
- is actually more incompatible with God’s justice than the traditional view is
alleged by Annihilationists to be. The
reason? “How would Jews who suffered in
Nazi concentration camps feel about Himmler being annihilated? Would their sense of ‘natural justice’ find
annihilation or eternal suffering for Himmler as more appropriate?”(op cite,
p. 29) As tempting as this inference
may be, from the feelings of victims alone nothing validly follows about
the demands of justice.
[21] Thinkers such as Jonathon Kvanvig, Jerry Walls, C.S. Lewis and Richard Swinburne have defended this type of position, although I doubt they would agree that hell is unjust.
[22] Cf. J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddeness and Human Reason (Cornell University Press, 1993).
[23] “Response to John F. Walvoord” in Four
Views on Hell, p. 152. See also
Adams, op cite, for an extended discussion of how the “eye for an eye”
principle fails to establish the traditional view of hell.
[24] Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A
Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p.17.