Is the idea of hell – an eternity of suffering apart from God – compatible with the idea of an all-good and loving God? I think that this is one of the strongest arguments against traditional Christian doctrine. I would argue that it is, but that to see this we need to see something about ourselves, and about God in relation to us, before we can see why. That’s what I’ll be exploring over the next four days. I’ll be making four major points:
- We have an infinite craving for the good. Everything we do is in pursuit of the good;
- Because no earthly goods are capable of satisfying our hearts, life is cruel… unless there is a good capable of satisfying the infinite longings of our hearts.
- God, as infinite and perfect good, is the only one who can fill our hearts.
- Eternity without God would necessarily be hellacious.
Let’s start with the first of these points…
I. Our Infinite Hunger
All of us, no matter how holy or wicked we are, hunger for the good. St. Thomas Aquinas does a good job of showing how this is (and how this claim is still compatible with the fact that we sometimes intentionally do evil stuff). So if I can be permitted a few paragraphs of philosophical nerdiness, it’ll hopefully make everything clearer…
He defines the “first principle of practical reason” as “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” That’s both a description (meaning it’s how we do reason) and a prescription (meaning it’s how we ought to reason). Whenever you choose to do something, it’s because, on some level, it seems good). If some idea seemed perfectly horrible, you would never choose to do it. You could never choose to do it. (And the moment you say, “Well, maybe I’d do it anyways, because…” you’re explaining the good that you perceive in even the most horrible idea.). As Aquinas puts it, “all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance.” You wouldn’t pursue something unless it seemed good for you, and you wouldn’t avoid something unless it seemed bad for you.
Some of you are now thinking, “Well, obviously“; but others of you are thinking, “So why do I do all of this dumb stuff?” Aquinas has an answer to that, too, noting that sometimes, “the reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature.” So you can convince yourself that something that’s not really good is good (or at least, it’s good for you, or good right now, etc.). This is what is called an “apparent good.” It looks good, but in reality, it’s not.
Or alternatively, some evils are a “lower good.” When you were a kid, and you mom asked you why you drew on the wall when you knew you weren’t supposed to, the real answer is that the idea sounded like fun, and you knew it would feel good for a moment. Your tiny brain couldn’t foresee long-term consequences very well, so all you saw was the good of having fun and feeling good. Some people continue to live like this into adulthood: getting drunk on a work night sounds like a great time, as does sleeping with someone who isn’t your wife, or telling off the boss that drives you nuts. In some cases, the thing in question actually is attached to some good (like relaxation, or pleasure, or vindicating yourself in justice), but it’s wrong because there’s some higher good to be sought. So we are hardwired to pursue good, and evil is either choosing an apparent good over a real good, or choosing a lower good over a higher good.
All of this is true of every living creatures, whether it’s a sunflower seeking the good of the sun, or an animal looking for shelter or a mate. But what they do by impulse or instinct, we can do (or not do) freely. We can use reason to determine whether a good is real or apparent, or which of two goods are higher. We can inform our intellects, so our reason works better. Or we can ignore our reason and follow our animal instincts. So the whole point of the moral law isn’t to impose a set of rules on us to impede our freedom, but to give us guidance so we can do the thing that we’re already trying to do (seeking the good) better. The minute we believe this is the minute we can stop treating God as a Slavemaster and start treating Him as a Father.
So we spend our entire lives chasing the good. Every single intentional decision we make is part of this lifelong journey. But here’s the depressing bit: we have an infinite hunger for the good, and earthly things don’t fill up that abyss. When I was a kid, I thought hotel rooms were amazing. I’m one of six kids, and we rarely got to go to hotels. But imagine spending four weeks in the same hotel, and it’s likely that the novelty will wear off. The hotel doesn’t get worse: you just eventually find that the good is more limited than you crave.
Every single good in life (real though they may be!) is like this: if you think that food, or drink, or sex, or even another person will make you perfectly happy, you’ll inevitably end up disappointed. It’s how you become a glutton, or a drunkard, or a philanderer, or codependent. I’m not saying that food or drink or sex or other people are bad. Of course not. I’m saying that we expect them to be more than they can be, and we end up disappointed. Talk to any recovering alcoholic: there’s no amount of booze that’ll fill that infinite abyss, because it’s infinite. In my experience, the only people who don’t know this are the ones who haven’t tried to fill that hole with earthly things. Ironically, this means that there are a lot of Christians who have lived “well-behaved” lives, and yet who secretly harbor the fantasy that sin really would make them happy. It’s the people who have lived lives of no-holds-barred sinning who know better.
Tomorrow: is it a curse to go through life constantly craving the good, if no earthly goods satisfy?
“So we are hardwired to pursue good, and evil is either choosing an apparent good over a real good, or choosing a lower good over a higher good.” Aquinas’ summa speaks of Sin against the Holy Spirit. One article in that series speaks to the question if one can upon his first sin be farther down the evil road than another. He believed it possible. Taking from that, there are those who would reject the idea of being Hardwired to pursue good. At least for some of us. There are those who believe that God exists and don’t care. They ignore him and go their way. I suppose that they may be pursuing a lesser good, but all that says is that they haven’t found the most evil yet.
Patrick,
How do you get from “one can upon his first sin be farther down the evil road than another” to rejecting the idea of being hardwired to pursue good?
Nobody pursues evil for the sake of evil – you might do something wicked because the action makes you happy, or wealthier, or more popular, etc., but happiness, wealth, and population aren’t evil. You never do an evil action just because it makes you worse off, for example. In philosophical jargon, we’d say that evil is done “under the aspect of the good,” meaning that we do evil things because we see them as good, or see some good (even a low one) in doing them.
There’s a loose analogy to sports: there are plenty of “bad moves,” but even losing strategies are done for the sake of victory. Obviously, in sports, there ARE cases in which people throw the game, so that’s where the analogy breaks down. But I think it’s clear enough to explain why evil-doing doesn’t disprove the human orientation towards the good.
Another way of saying all of this is simply that man has two faculties, an intellect and a will. The intellect ALWAYS seeks truth (you never comfortably believe a lie because it’s a lie, even when you’re willfully deluding yourself), and the will ALWAYS seeks good (you never comfortably do evil because it’s evil, even when you’re self-destructing).
I.X.,
Joe
“Nobody pursues evil for the sake of evil – you might do something wicked because the action makes you happy, or wealthier, or more popular, etc.,”
Actually, I think that there are people who do things for the sake of doing pure evil, even as satan and his legions of demons do evil for the pure sake and reason that what they do is evil, such as causing the damnation, misery and eternal suffering of otherwise innocent and beautiful souls. How are the motives, thoughts and hearts of men so much different from the hearts, thoughts and motives of both good angels and demons, some of whom who are intent on doing good for goodness sake, and others on doing evil purely for evil’s sake?
Anyway, that’s my opinion, even though it might be a darker assessment than yours. And, actually, I hope you are right.
It seems to me that Joe’s four major points above relate to a teaching of Christ in Luke 12:34 where He says “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
This indicates that our very being can be swayed, orientated to or relocated to whatever we consider to be our ‘treasure’ in this life, ie…”there will your heart be also”. The problem with this is that God has given us the freedom to choose what our treasure is going to be, and for many people the treasure, or treasures, they choose will be something other than God.
Another problem is, that we are not ‘by ourselves’ or alone, regarding the many types of treasures we might choose, because the many treasures offered to us are also offered to others; and, to complicate things further, these ‘others’ have a degree of power and influence with us whereby they can advertise, draw attention to and highlight their own particular treasures so that we might join them and ‘treasuring’ what they also do. So, we are not alone in what we treasure, and this is demonstrated also in the Gospel story of Jesus’ ‘temptation in the desert’ wherein Jesus was not actually alone, or by Himself in his temptation, but another being, Satan, was also there with Him, and was trying offer Him various treasures that He might be interested in that were contrary to the will of God, even as occurred with Eve and the forbidden fruit. Herein Jesus needed to resist such temporal treasures, and we also are taught how to guard our hearts from being influenced by others, be they humans or angels, so as to avoid straying away from the treasury of true goodness, which is found only in God’s will.
Another teaching of Christ also relates to this topic, wherein Jesus said:
“amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.” [Matthew 17:19]
This also teaches us how to re-orientate ourselves towards the only true good in life which is God. In this analogy of the ‘moving mountain’ we might interpret the mountain to be a ‘mountain-full’ of un-Godly and worldly treasures by which to amuse and distract our hearts with in this world. And these multitudes alternative treasures ( ..which are also compared to ‘weeds’ in another parable) can become heavy enough… as a mountain is… to completely bury our hearts under their great quantity, volume and weight. And, this also might cause a soul to think that nothing can be done about such circumstances, after he has chosen and built for himself such a mountain of worldly, or infernal, treasures that are opposed to the goodness of God. But, fortunately, Jesus says that even the tiniest ‘grain’ of faith has the power to remove that entire mountain full of false treasures and false loves, and that just a tiny speck of spiritual light and true love of God can cause all of those false and unworthy treasures to dissipate into nothingness…like ‘a mountain dissolved into the sea’ [Matt.21:21].
So, this is the drama that takes place in our lives regarding the 4 points that Joe raises above. And, Jesus offers us the ‘way, the truth and the life’ through His words and person…so as to give us a view of true goodness and true love so as to help us to resist and dissipate the many false treasures that can lead to our hearts away from God and into Hell. And, this is why it is so important for every soul to make sure that there is always a ‘grain’ of faith available, or a sliver of ‘light’ available so as to dissipate all false treasures that lead away from the goodness of God. And so, we know also by this why the various sacraments offered by the Church, and on a continual, ongoing basis…are so important for us.
the idea of eternal hell is cruel. I think this is a projection of sociomorphism into divine realm. I hate my neighbor so much that I would like to see him in hell forever. so I need to create an eternal hell.
the idea of eternal hell is as cruel as the idea of predestination. if there is eternal hell, god is a failure. why create someone without his consent and roast him in hell for eternity because the poor fellow did all kinds of ‘sinful’ things? with eternal hell god is not a god of love. how are we and who are we to know and judge the motives of others while they sin? god alone searches our hearts. we don’t ‘know’ what will happen to us after death. why be eloquent about it? it is through faith we understand that our loving father calls us back to himself someday.
if I have been sinning seriously for 60 years, I must be punished for the maximum period of 60 years. for the sins I committed in time I must be punished proportionately, not disproportionately in eternity. eternal punishment is unequal, unjust and illogical. we reduce god to a caricature. little wonder people are drifting away from god and the church. by saying these things I do not underestimate sin. but we need to handle the idea of punishment after death in some other manner. if the face of god is revealed to me in jesus, I do not see there eternal hell.
Joseph,
By your temporal equality standard, if it only takes you 5 minutes to murder someone, the maximum permissible penalty is … 5 minutes?
The logical flaw in your theory seems to be that you assume the damage your sin causes (for you, or others, or your relationship with God) is limited by the time it takes you to sin seriously.
i think to be in love is to be in heaven.
to be with the beloved is to be in heaven.
estrangement from the beloved is to be in hell.
my selfishness and inability to love is to be in hell.
heaven and hell are already on earth.
I punish myself by getting coiled in a cocoon of selfishness rather than god punishing me.
god has better things to do!
my point is the idea of eternal punishment for sins committed in time makes no sense.
Here is how I understand it:
God is infinitely good. He has given us finite body’s and souls that have the ability choose to offend He who is good beyond all measure. When we offend Him, justice demands that our offences be atoned for. Those who accept Jesus as their savior have it covered, because, being God, His death on the Cross has infinite value and is able to atone for all sins. Since we humans are finite, our suffering has only finite value. So in order for our suffering alone to atone for an offence against the infinite God, it must last forever. That is why Hell continues forever with no end. Only if we join our suffering to the suffering of Jesus, we will be saved.
To say it another way, our sins, committed in time, take on a sort of infinite nature because they offend the infinite God. Therefore the atonement must also have an infinite character.
Here is another interesting point. I have read that even the souls in Hell are recipients of God’s Divine Mercy. How can this be? Even though their suffering is more horrible that we can even imagine, it is less than what they deserve. It lasts forever, but the level of suffering is less than what they deserve. I wish I could find the source where I read that, but I cannot find it right now. I believe there are several saints who share this opinion in their writings.
The idea of Hell is one of the easiest ideas for me to grasp and accept.
Probably because my experiences in life have left me with the conclusion that most people end up there.
It’s the idea of heaven that I’m unsure of.
Eternity without God is boring as hell.