The Doctrine of Hell is Unconscionable

Exploring the concept of eternal conscious torment

In the first article I wrote on this blog, ‘Why I’m Not a Christian Anymore’, I spoke about the reasons I ultimately left Christianity. One of those reasons is the doctrine of eternal hell. In that article, I gave a cursory overview of my critiques of the doctrine as commonly expounded within Eastern Orthodox theology. Today, I want to take a broader look at the doctrine in general, how it developed, and whether it is morally just. By doing so, I hope to demonstrate that eternal hell is one of the most abhorrent doctrines ever to grace the religious stage, and is one that Christians should promptly abandon lest they bind themselves to moral obscenity.

The Doctrine

The doctrine of hell itself, like many Christian teachings, varies widely across traditions and institutions. However, there is one phrase that has been broadly adopted across denominational lines that seems to well summarise the basic idea; eternal conscious torment (ECT). Often put forward as the “orthodox” doctrine, this minimalist definition gives us a good place to start when assessing the concept. Although when we are speaking about the afterlife, we have to have a healthy level of agnosticism regarding the particulars of how it might be, we can say that hell is at very least;

1. Eternal, as in, not temporary.

2. Conscious, as in, not a place of slumber or annihilation.

3. Torment, as in, not a pleasant or neutral place.

Later in Church history, largely inspired by Dante’s Inferno in the medieval period, there develops a sophisticated and rather legalistic version which has held sway in Western Christian theology ever since. Historically, the Eastern tradition has tended to follow the West rather closely but in recent times has sought to distance itself from ways of expressing the doctrine that it deems to be more of a product of Catholic scholasticism than the Biblical and Patristic¹ vision. Regardless of what flavour of the doctrine is palatable to your taste, pretty much everyone who is an infernalist would agree with the above definition.

Is it Biblical?

From the outset its important to recognise that the Bible doesn’t have a united theological vision, but instead is made up of the musings of several different authors with various audiences in mind. This means that looking at the Biblical data for any given Christian doctrine is not straightforward, and rarely yields clear answers. With that said, I will try and assess some of the key passages offered both for and against ECT. Most of the so-called “universalist” passages of scripture come from St Paul’s epistles. Even C.S Lewis thought that Paul was a universalist! Let’s dive in to some of the key passages.

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20, NIV)

The key bit here is the idea that “all things” are reconciled to God through Christ’s death on the cross. There seems little doubt that Paul sees the eschatological end of Christianity as the restoration of the entire creation (apokatastasis) to it’s original status before the fall.

“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:22, NIV)

Here Paul is making a parallel between the original sin of Adam, and the atoning work of Christ. Many Church Fathers like St Augustine thought that original sin meant that everyone was destined for hell by default without the intervention of God’s grace. Paul seems to think that Jesus’ intervention applies to all people, whether or not they accept it.

“Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19, NIV)

This passage is making the same parallel as the Corinthians passage and seems to clearly state that all people will be justified through Christ’s saving work. It’s worth noting that some translations like the RSV don’t include the word “the” before the word “many”, implying that the “all” in the previous verse isn’t as absolute as it first seems. As far as I can tell however, the original Greek does include the definite article (οἱ). We can glean from this that Paul is probably using “the many” in contrast to “the few”.

The main “infernalist” passages come from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. From the off, I think this gives them more weight than anything Paul had to say about the matter. After all, if you get ECT from the words of God himself, you probably ought to believe him. The most famous example is at the end of the parable of the sheep and the goats:

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46, NIV)

The most controversial part of this passage is the word aiōnion that is often translated as “eternal”. Every time this word is used in reference to the afterlife, it is translated this way. Notably, this is the word that is also used when heaven is described as “eternal life”, so it would be curious if in one instance, it literally meant eternal, but in this instance it meant something different. Some have rightly pointed out that aiōnion means something like age-long, which is more akin to how we use the word aeon in English (the etymological roots are clear here). This doesn’t solve the issue however, as presumably, if heaven doesn’t have an end, nor does hell. Another verse from the Gospels is:

“This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:19-50, NIV)

Here we get a description, not of the length, but of the character of hell. Although this image is clearly metaphorical, its use seems to be intended to evoke the idea that hell is a place of torture and even insanity. Elsewhere in the New Testament (Acts 7:54), a similar image is used to described anger and resentment. The other image we get from outside the Gospels appears in the “apocalypse”:

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8, NIV)

It’s hard to say exactly what is meant by the “second death”, but it comes after the verse previous describes relationship with God as “the water of life”. This would seem to imply some sort of separation from God. This verse however seems to imply annihilation more than it does ECT. Indeed, if God is the source of being, what would it mean to be separate from him? Well, non-being surely. Overall, the data from the Bible is a mixed bag.

What Does Church Tradition Say?

Although the Bible isn’t completely transparent on the issue, the weight of Christian tradition is firmly on the side of ECT. Only a handful of Church Fathers are universalist, the most notable being St Gregory of Nyssa. By the time that Aquinas is writing in the medieval period, universalism was long dead and was only to be resurrected in the modern period. Like it or not, the doctrine of eternal hell, in one form or another, is profoundly ubiquitous amongst the early Church Fathers, the medieval scholastics, and Protestant reformers.

More troubling for traditional Christians is the condemnation of Origen and his version of universalism at Constantinople II, the 5th Ecumenical Council (AD 553). Although some universalists have rightly pointed out that the acts of the council do not mention the doctrine, Origen is explicity condemned as a heretic in canon 11:

“If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their heretical books, and also all other heretics who have already been condemned and anathematized by the holy, catholic and apostolic church and by the four holy synods which have already been mentioned, and also all those who have thought or now think in the same way as the aforesaid heretics and who persist in their error even to death: let him be anathema.”

Further to this, the Emperor Justinian attached nine additional anathemas to the council, one of which reads:

“If anyone says or holds that the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time, and that there will be a restoration of demons and impious human beings, let him be anathema.”

If one wants to read this as an over-extension of imperial authority, then this exposes a naivety about Ecumenical Councils in general. The whole history of councils during the Byzantine Empire is that of Emperors sponsoring and shaping what came to be understood as Christian “orthodoxy”. Until the Pope took the reigns in the West and universal councils all but died out in the East, the Church was essentially the religious wing of the empire and was thus bound by imperial imposition. Regardless, its clear that the 5th Ecumenical Council was received as having condemned Origen, and by extension, universalism.

“The Gates of Hell are Locked From the Inside”

This famous quote from C.S Lewis’ book The Problem of Pain is often used as a place holder for the free will defence for hell. The argument goes that the existence of free will logically entails some sort of possibility that any given person can ultimately and irrevocably reject God, and in doing so, choose for themselves, eternal suffering. Hell therefore isn’t an externally imposed punishment, but the natural consequence of tearing oneself away from God.

This however relies on a hard distinction between God’s active will, in contrast to his permissive will. Active will is what God actually intends, and permissive will is what God merely permits to be the case. Whilst this sort of distinction may work when applied to limited human activity, when applied to God, this is actually a distinction without difference. The distinction begins to collapse when we consider who God is in relation to the universe. Part of what it means to be God, by definition, is to be the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe. This entails that God is ultimately responsible for all of the possible outcomes within the governing laws of the universe. This is because God created those laws in the first place.

The problem continues with how one defines free will. There are two competing visions of free will within the Christian tradition. One we can call “classical free will”, and the other “libertarian free will”. Classical free will is such named because it is the more common notion of free will held by Christians up until recent times. The assumption behind it is that mankind is teleologically destined for union with God, and one’s will is ordered in that direction. Freedom therefore is simply defined is that which is in accordance with God’s will and human nature. Sin then, represents a failure to act freely, in the same way an alcoholic’s decision to have a drink isn’t actually an entirely free choice. Freedom proper, in this account, is freedom from sin.

Libertarian free will posits that one is free as long as there our choices are not determined by something external. With this assumption, a choice to sin is equally free as a choice not to. This is the kind of free will required to defend ECT. If this is not the case, then God is holding us accountable for choices we made which were not completely free. This seems to me not merely unjust, but is a failure on God’s part (which is of course logically incoherent). If one rejects classical free will, and instead wishes to embrace libertarian free will, one will run into many issues. Namely, is God still free even though He cannot by evil by definition? Was the incarnate Christ free even though he was necessarily sinless? Are people in heaven free if they cannot sin? We can see here that however one conceives of free will, it causes fundamental problems for ECT.

The Justice of God

So if free will defences don’t work, how can Christians defend ECT? As Dr

Jordan Daniel Wood

points out in his article ‘The Future of Hell’, free will defences of hell are a positively modern phenomena.

“Hell used to be characterised as God’s active, retributive punishment through the pain proper to the entire human being, soul and body; now it’s God’s reluctant, passive permission of the natural consequences of the damned’s perverted desire. Hell used to manifest the manifold justice of God’s activity; now it reveals the sad ineffectiveness of God’s grace.”

Here he is pointing out that historically, Christians didn’t feel the need to defend hell in the way modern folks do. Indeed, as we have seen, Jesus himself doesn’t seem to flinch when speaking about hell, nor does he feel the need to justify himself. Some still bravely take this route claiming that ECT is perfectly just and not in contradistinction to God’s goodness. Usually, this is based on the concept that sin incurs a debt that is owed God, and that God justifiably satisfies through Christ’s death on the cross. For those that don’t participate in grace however, that punishment is poured onto them eternally.

Notice, there is no talk here of hell being the natural result of rejecting God; no, hell is the active and just retribution of God against the sinner. For St Augustine for example, the cause of hell is God’s unwillingness to show mercy. Within this framework, God owes salvation to no one, and so even if everyone ended up in hell, God’s justice would be preserved. Gosh, no wonder this has become unpopular in Christian apologetics today. If we look at the following two claims prima facie, they absolutely appear to be in tension:

1. God is infinitely good and just.

2. God punishes people for eternity for finite sins.

Generally, justice means something like fairness, or a lack of disparity. In what sense is God just if he punishes someone for eternity and fails to show mercy? Especially since we are told in scripture that God wills the salvation of all humans (John 6:38-40), it seems curious then that he deliberately withholds salvation from a non-zero percentage of people. It seems clear that ECT is contrary to God’s goodness and justice. Often when pressed, Christians will retreat to appeals to the mysterious nature of God. Sure, I can concede that if God exists, he’s pretty frickin strange. No one can claim to understand God in his totality. But when Christians say that “God is love”, either that means something or it doesn’t. It can’t be true when you want it to and false when challenged.

If we simply look at the issue a priori, it seems unlikely that a loving God would create a reality that allowed for the possibility of eternal suffering. God could’ve created reality however He wished, and so if the fact that He created this kind of reality, and not some other better kind, requires some sort of justification. This insight is what the problem of evil is picking up on. Why would an all-loving God create a world in which suffering is so ubiquitous? I think there are good answers to that question, but the question “why does eternal suffering exist?” is an even deeper challenge to theism.

One has to posit that God a) created a world knowing humans would sin, b) made the rules such that that sin incurs punishment, c) knows how to save every person and has to power to do so, d) instead refuses to save some people and deliberately withholds mercy from them, and e) makes it such that those people will spend eternity in conscious torment. I simply have moral qualms with a God that would ordain any form of eternal suffering, no matter the kind and under the circumstances I have described above. It is suffering without purpose. Without a greater end. Suffering becomes an end in itself. This seems to create tension with a God who is love itself (1 John 4:16).

Conclusion

Watching the discussion about hell develop is more interesting now I am outside the church looking in. What troubles me however is how many Christians go to great lengths, to defend it. Sacrificing any concept of justice and goodness, the insistence of the doctrine of ECT makes a colossal mess of the Christian worldview. It seems to me the only version of Christianity that is coherent and tolerable, is a universalist one.

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1. Patristic just means in reference to the Church Fathers.