This is the third part of a four-part series addressing the question, “Is the idea of hell – an eternity of suffering apart from God – compatible with the idea of an all-good and loving God?” So far, we’ve looked at our infinite craving for the good, and the fact that everything we do is in pursuit of the good. But since no earthly good satisfies this infinite desire, we’re left with a dilemma: is there an infinite good? Or are we like the tortured “hungry ghosts” of mythology, constantly craving and never satisfied?
III. The Infinite Good
Why believe that God is capable of satisfying the infinite chasm in our hearts? A few reasons:
First, because He’s our Creator, and He’s the one who created us with these desires. So if He’s good at all, He wouldn’t create us with a longing that even He couldn’t fill.
Second, because this corresponds with all of what we know about human desire. Mind you, there are parts of the brain that religion uniquely stimulates. And as C.S. Lewis points out:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Third, because God is infinite. “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20). There’s no quick way of establishing the infinitude of God, but basically… if God has limits, where are these limits coming from? Who is imposing them?
Fourth, because it corresponds to what we know of the good. Aquinas points out that when we use terms like “good” and “better,” we seem to be comparing these things to an implicit ideal. That suggests that all created good is a reflection of a perfect good.
Fifth, because Heaven is eternity with God. An infinite happiness would, by definition, have to be infinite in duration as well as in magnitude. What other than the afterlife could vie for this?
Sixth, because God has promised us this. St. Paul describes the Christian promise this way in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18,
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
All of this is neatly summed up by St. Augustine in the opening of his Confessions:
Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You — man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that You resist the proud, — yet man, this part of Your creation, desires to praise You. You move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.
Mind you, I’m not trying to prove the existence of God here, only saying that He (and He alone) logically satisfies the longings of our heart.
Tomorrow: How the case for God’s goodness logically points to the case for hell.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”, but most of us are made of much commoner stuff. We go a-whoring after our own wills until somehow and somewhere we are touched by the Holy Spirit and turned away, however reluctantly from our careers of self-gratification. Then begins the journey…
As for hell, it is not as some vainly teach for all who have not known Christ; it is for all who reject him, and He being all-knowing and all-merciful, we can be sure sends there only those who truly deserve it.
“Why are you reasoning in yourself, and perplexing your mind, and distressing yourself? For the Things which you cannot understand, do not attempt to comprehend, as if you were wise; but ask the Lord, that you may receive understanding and know them. You cannot see what is behind you, but you can see what is before. Whatever, then, you cannot see, let it alone, and do not torment yourself about it; but what you see, make yourself master of it, and do not waste your labour about other things…”