Here is a guest post from my friend Nicole Hassoun, a philosophy professor at Carnegie-Mellon:
Below is, I hope, a potentially interesting ramble on God and love. Brad and I are thinking about working the basic argument up into something dry, boring, and publishable eventually. Since, however, some might find it entertaining as it is (my apologies to those who don’t), I figure it might be worth soliciting feedback on the basic idea at this point [so, unlike most posts on this blog, this post is open for comments]. Enjoy!
God and Love
Under the towering shadow of the Alps it is hard not to think of God. Does he exist? Could he? Every day on my way back to the cloister where I am staying I walk past a message scribbled irreverently on the medieval walls. “Neither of us can go to heaven unless the other gets in” and it reminds me of an argument against God’s existence or, barring that, his goodness, that captured my imagination when I was ten. It probably was not the reason I got kicked out of Hebrew school (because there’s no hell in Judaism), but I am not sure the monks would like it.
The argument applies to the kind of Christianity embraced by many of the nondenominational types that lived in the evangelical house at my Methodist university. As they told the story, you would be saved by accepting Jesus into your heart, anyone could be saved, and those who did not accept Jesus would go to hell. Being saved meant being in the presence of God in heaven and being perfectly happy. Going to hell meant eternal suffering. God, these nondenominational friends of mine proselytized, meant love. Or, at least, their version of Christianity embraced love as a virtue. There is certainly a lot in the bible that supports this interpretation of basic Christian doctrine (Luke 16:22-28; Matt. 13:42, 20:20, 10:32-34, 16:24; Isa. 33:20, 25:6, 65:16; Ps. 133:1; Eph. 2:4; 3:8; Rev. 21:1-4, 20:15)
Perhaps I have the story wrong, or maybe such Christians do not think of love the way I do, but it seems to me that several things are true of love. First, if I love someone, I cannot believe that that person deserves eternal suffering. Perhaps that means I do not love unconditionally. But, I am pretty liberal with my love. I love some pretty messed up people including someone with borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia. I even love one psychopath. Second, when someone I love is hurt, that hurts me. I could not be perfectly happy if someone I loved was suffering for eternity. I cannot even conceive of such a thing.
But then it seems there is a problem. For, I could be saved while someone I love is not saved. (Hey, it is a long shot, Okay, but I °could° accept God into my heart and be saved on the version of Christianity at issue). Then I could be perfectly happy in heaven while a person I love is burning in hell. But if I love someone, I cannot even think this is possible. So I should not, if I love, believe in this kind of Christianity. It could not be right unless my love would disappear at the gates of heaven (or some such) and why, I wonder, would that be? Wouldn´t it be better if heaven had my love in it? Wouldn’t I be happier in love?
This problem may explain why Camus said he would not go to heaven if even one other person went to hell. Perhaps he loved humanity, unlike Sartre who said hell is other people. But it is possible that Camus was just convinced that no one really deserves eternal suffering and did not want to associate with any creature who thought otherwise. (The writing on his wall might say: I *refuse* to go to heaven unless the others get in.)
Of course, God could let people who start out in hell into heaven if they do what he requires. Or God could give me someone else to love. But that misses the point. While my loved ones are in hell, I cannot be in heaven. No one I love is replaceable, no matter how many others I love.
Nor does free will solve the problem. We cannot say it is only because people have free will that God has to allow love into the world, as if love were a bad thing. We would no lack free will if we could only love good people but God would not be as good.
Maybe we cannot understand what God and heaven are like. Maybe love and God can coexist. Unfortunately, the problem with this kind of answer is that it can be given for any problem – whether about God or not.
If one cannot but continue to believe in the version of Christianity at issue and falls in love with an unbeliever, one might find even more truth in Thomas Dekker’s exclamation — ‘O what a heaven is love! O what a hell!’ — than even the unbelieving can comprehend.
So, what should the faithful do? They might follow C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce and complain that their loved one was holding their soul hostage. They might just stop loving people who do not believe. (My last boyfriend may have taken that option seriously when I told him about my reflections in Austria). Can we really blame our loved ones for not believing, though, if they do not intend to keep us from the pearly gates? Do those who would stop loving people because then they cannot go to heaven really know what love is?
A biblical response might be better. John (2: 4-11 15-16; 1-3, 10-24, 4: 7-5:3) tells us ‘we love the Children of God, when we love God.’ And the bible says our love of God, though it may seem incompatible with love of other humans, should not be thought so – or at least that might explain why Abraham’s decision inspired Kirkegard’s claim that love of God (if not God’s love) should give birth to faith. But unless one believes in the words of scripture, or has Abraham’s faith, it is hard to see why loving God should mean one’s beloved could not suffer in hell. Either faith or love must perish.
When I showed this to one of my friends, he suggested Christians take a Buddhist approach: Embrace suffering. If it is not bad, then neither is God. But, if suffering is not bad, what reason could we have to take care of ourselves or one another? Do I really love someone if I do not want to keep them from suffering? That was the friend I (perhaps unkindly) referred to as a psychopath – coincidence?
Most Christians I have talked to respond to this argument by putting a real twist on the ignorance response. They point out that we need not know our loved ones are suffering in hell. But when I ask them whether they would be just as well off in the matrix, they refuse the blue pill.
Perhaps I will ask the monks around here what they think…
Bradley Monton's Blog 
August 24, 2009 at 1:16 am
I would start of reading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis for a treatment of agape, God’s love for man. Secondly, I would read The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, particularly the part about hell, and why those who are in hell go there willingly. I really didn’t see a part of your paper that hasn’t already been answered by Lewis or G.K. Chesterton, and getting involved with these guys might provide the answers you’re searching for. They have for me.
August 25, 2009 at 1:26 pm
The problem of theodicy is a universal issue for any system of belief. None of us like the thought of someone suffering for their choices. Yet, we allow people to do this everyday. Criminals go to prison and waste away in penal institutions devoid of freedom. Drug addicts destroy themselves failing to stop scratching the itch. Smokers suffer under the cancer they self-inflicted. We allow them to suffer in these situations because we cannot prevent them from making choices only they can make. It doesn’t change the amount of love we have for them. The same is true for God. Why do we think God is somehow different in His view of such things? If our lives determine the trajectory of our eternal destinies, then our choices are our own to make. God can do as much as possible to show someone love and provide a way for them to be with him. However, when someone consistently chooses to fail to respond or receive such acts of mercy they have no one to blame but themselves. How much does it pain the heart of God that people do not repent and believe in Him? I would wish that all my friends and family would know the blessedness of peace with God but that is not a decision I can make for them. Will I know whether my loved ones “get in”? One can only speculate. One thing I do know, God is good, in Him is no evil at all. So if eternal punishment is a reality, then all I can do is appeal to those who will listen about the reality of our state of affairs. I cannot conceive of a better heaven as it would already exist if it were possible in God’s economy. The nature of God is such that His truth is the one that corresponds with reality if He in fact is real. Thus inventing conceivable better worlds is not possible.
August 25, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Here is part of the relevant text that I made reference to in the first comment:
“The doctrine of hell, although barbarous to many, has the full support of Scripture, especially of our Lord’s own words; and has always been held by Christendom. And it has the support of Reason: if a game is played it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in voluntary self-surrender to God, it also has the right to voluntarily refuse.
I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved’. But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it’? In fact, God has paid the price, and herein lies the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is hell.
God can’t condone evil, forgiving the wilfully unrepentant. Lost souls have their wish – to live wholly in the Self, and to make the best of what they find there. And what they finds there is hell. Should God increase our chances to repent? I believe that if a million opportunities were likely to do good, they would be given. But finality has to come some time. Our Lord uses three symbols to describe hell – everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46), destruction (Matthew 10:28), and privation, exclusion, banishment (Matthew 22:13). The image of fire illustrates both torment and destruction (not annihilation – the destruction of one thing issues in the emergence of something else, in both worlds). It may be feasible that hell is hell not from its own point of view, but from that of heaven. And it is also possible that the eternal fixity of the lost soul need not imply endless duration. Our Lord emphasizes rather the finality of hell. Does the ultimate loss of a soul mean the defeat of Omnipotence? In a sense, yes. The damned are successful rebels to the end, enslaved within the horrible freedom they have demanded. The doors of hell are locked on the inside.
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
August 26, 2009 at 1:15 pm
What if there is an omniscient Judge who is completely and perfectly holy, righteous, and just? Perhaps what seems like the most trivial sin to us created beings is such that we don’t even think of it as a sin is actually a crime of infinite proportions because of Whom has been offended. If the Being offended is truly omniscient, being unable to escape knowing everything, then the crime must be as a speck of dust in the eye and that Being cannot escape the eternal irritation of the crime. If the Being has ineffable memory, then the crime has an eternal, ineffable effect. The crime, therefore, has eternal implications and requires eternal punishment for justice to be satisfied.
August 28, 2009 at 10:16 am
Tom H says, “If the Being offended is truly omniscient, being unable to escape knowing everything, then the crime must be as a speck of dust in the eye and that Being cannot escape the eternal irritation of the crime.”
This indicates that before the omniscient God created humans, He already contained specs of dust in his eyes. How does eternal punishment satisfy the eternal irritation of the crime since God has known and always will know about the offense? This statement creates problems for the character of God because it points to the fact that a perfect, omniscient, and omnipotent Being, created the potential for sin. As a result, this places blame on Him. Maybe the reason why God created the potential for evil/The Fall is because God had too many specs of dust in His eyes?
Tom H said, “If the Being has ineffable memory, then the crime has an eternal, ineffable effect. The crime, therefore, has eternal implications and requires eternal punishment for justice to be satisfied.”
If the crime originated in an infinite Being, then it would have an infinite effect. The crimes of humanity remain finite and may only equate with a finite punishment. However, this statement brings up an interesting question of whether finite causes bring about infinite effects. How could we qualify this reality? Is there evidence for this relationship? Even if one assumes that this relationship exists, crimes are punished based on the nature and context of the crime, not the nature of the victim.
Besides, isn’t the purpose of punishment to deter and rehabilitate those who commit crimes? Eternal punishment solves nothing. In fact, wouldn’t this create infinite “specs in God’s eye” since He has known and will always know who goes to hell? If the God of the Bible is supposed to be redemptive, I do not understand how eternal punishment accomplishes or aligns with this purpose. I am probably forgetting that God’s redemptive desire for humanity runs out after one dies. That’s right, no mercy for humans after death if they do not “get it right” in this life. How does this make any sense with the existence of a loving, merciful God?
As for the other posts, the theme running through their line of reasoning relates to the analogy between God and humans. As humans allow criminals to suffer the consequences of their actions, in a similar way, God allows humans to suffer for their decisions about Him. The reason why this line of reason is problematic lies in the fact that the nature of God and the nature of humans remain vastly different. Drawing connections between finite, human scenarios (i.e. consequences for committing crimes) and God’s ways, which are infinite and mysterious, establishes a weak analogy.
August 29, 2009 at 5:18 pm
First, regarding your discussion of eternal punishment, I agree that it’s a bad idea, as perhaps the whole “afterlife” thing is. Believing that one has assurance with respect to such things is not what faith is all about, as Kierkegaard would say. In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus comments that there are “absurd” religious believers who reject the idea of personal immortality. So maybe I’m one of those?
But I must confess that I find the idea of God loving each of us as an only child, and wiping the tears from every face, to be one of the most beautiful images in Western religion, as I think Saint Augustine also did. Because leaving aside anything outside of this life as we know it, there’s still the fact of suffering, often referred to as the Problem of Evil — i.e., why doesn’t God conspire to make everyone perfectly happy all the time, why is there pain and distress that is not by virtue of our own wrongdoing, and so forth. This could be cited as evidence against religion (if you assume that it’s God’s job to ensure our contentment/satisfaction), or it could be seen as one of the difficult features of existence that religion provides us one way of trying to come to terms with. As your Buddhist friend might say, a life free of suffering wouldn’t be the life of an individual, finite being — and, unlike the Buddhist, a religious Jew or Christian would say that we have no reason to accept the idea that individual existence is illusory, as Buddhism (for instance) would have us believe, in fact quite the contrary. The passage you cite about tears being wiped from every eye clearly acknowledges the fact of suffering and doesn’t try to explain it away, but instead views it as endemic to our condition: that is, the logical consequence of being a finite creature who loves, forms attachments, pursues the good, and who, of course, would be tormented to know that his or her loved ones were suffering.
August 29, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Sarah,
“Drawing connections between finite, human scenarios (i.e. consequences for committing crimes) and God’s ways, which are infinite and mysterious, establishes a weak analogy.”
If it establishes a weak analogy because God is mysterious, then you cannot argue against God’s ways in dealing win sin and His justice, because, His ways are mysterious. What’s good for the goose…
August 29, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Jake,
The weak analogy does not rest on the fact that God is mysterious alone. It rests on the reality that God is infinite, while humans are finite. Furthermore, the nature and character of God combined with the fact that his ways are not human ways establishes a large dissimilarity between God and humans.
Related to this post, Wes Morriston posed some interesting questions in his essay “What is So Good About Moral Freedom?” He says, if moral freedom is such a great idea for humans, why is it not a grave defect in God that he lacks it? And if the lack of moral freedom does not detract from God’s greatness, then wouldn’t it be better for humans to lack moral freedom? I think the answer is yes, because the most loving thing God could do for his Creation is to make sure humans do not spend eternity in hell.
Nietzsche says it best, “a god who is infinitely perfect and who does not make sure his creatures understand his intention-could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of humankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made about the nature of truth?”
September 3, 2009 at 10:06 am
Sarah,
In my opinion C.S. Lewis said it best:
“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”
The Problem of Pain.
And pertaining to God being deficient because He “lacks” the sort of free will that we enjoy, is actually a power that we don’t have that God does have. It is us who are deficient; to paraphrase Aristotle “we do evil because we lack the knowledge and the power to always do right”. Sin is always a privation of the good, good done in the wrong way or too much or too little, and the capacity to make a perversion of the good is not a power but a deficiency.
September 8, 2009 at 10:24 am
The passage that people typically point to when talking about God’s ways being mysterious, beyond our understanding, etc is Isaiah 55.6-11.
“Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that He may have mercy on them, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Ironically, the point of the passage is the GOD IS BETTER AT FORGIVING THAN WE ARE. But what Jake and TomH seem to be saying is that God is actually WORSE at forgiveness than we are and that He gets a free pass because His ways are beyond our ability to understand.
When we say God’s ways are beyond our comprehension, surely we don’t mean His ways of acting are WORSE than ours do we?
September 8, 2009 at 11:18 am
Thanks for the replies! You’ve all given me a lot to think about. To add fuel to the fire, I thought I’d see if anyone had a copy of the introduction to the Night trilogy (Weisel is not the the author of the intro but I do not remember who wrote it). His response might be like Rick’s, and is also beautifully written.
One other thought: I think my argument is not a version of the argument from evil. There need be no evil (at least) in the world for the argument to go through.
Cheers, Nicole
November 25, 2009 at 12:01 pm
An easy explanation (at least to me) of this is offered in a different interpretation of the Bible passages.
First off, I agree with the argument that it does not seem to fit (to us humans, at least) that God, whose capacity for love far surpasses us humans’ capacity for love, would make an imperfect human (who, mind you, has a TENDENCY to be sinful) suffer in fiery hellfire for eternity. Say what you will about us not being able to understand the Supreme Being and His ways, it still change the fact that it just doesn’t fit. And as one of the commentators above said, if God himself is love, one would expect such a God to be much more forgiving and merciful than us humans (since the same statement can’t be said of human nature and love). I suppose one can make the argument that God’s perfect love is tempered by his perfect sense of justice. But even perfect justice doesn’t seem to agree that a man who lived sinfully for 80 years and, after his death, be subjected to torture for all eternity. So even with the justice argument, it still doesn’t quite fit.
At some point, one has to question whether the teaching of the soul’s damnation to eternal hellfire and torment is really a Bible teaching. I submit that it is not congruent with everything else that the Bible teaches about God and his love.
There are bible texts that speak of state of the dead as a condition of non-being, non-existence.
Ecclesiastes 9:5 – “For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all”
Ezekiel 18:20 – “The soul that is sinning – it itself shall die.”
For brevity’s sake, I won’t post any more passages, but I think you get my point. Ecc. 9:5 tells us that the condition of the dead is such that they are not conscious of anything. They are non-existent. And Ez. 18:20 says that the soul is not something that survives death and goes to Hell to be tortured forever, but that it actually dies.
This is in line with everything else that the Bible teaches. I apologize for turning this into a scripture-interpretation debate, but a misinterpretation of scripture is what I believe led to the initial conundrum in the first place.
In talking to some friends of other Christian denominations, it seems that at least a sizable community believe that hellfire is not a Bible teaching, and with good scriptural evidence to support it.
November 26, 2009 at 10:19 pm
To Nicole and James, with the reply to James coming first:
James,
You wrote: “But even perfect justice doesn’t seem to agree that a man who lived sinfully for 80 years and, after his death, be subjected to torture for all eternity. So even with the justice argument, it still doesn’t quite fit.”
But of course, I’ve already answered this objection, haven’t I?
You also wrote: “There are bible texts that speak of state of the dead as a condition of non-being, non-existence.”
Of course, there are also texts that speak of an eternal torment, where “the worm does not die.”
One does not necessarily preclude the other.
I also question whether love can exist without justice where there is evil.
Nicole,
The question of choice to spend one’s eternity with relatives in hell vs. God in heaven hearkens back to the biblical dilemma, “He who does not hate his own father and mother cannot be my disciple.” I think that ultimately our choice is really between good and evil; if we go to hell, it is because we have freely chosen evil. Justice is meted out through our choice.
December 11, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Hell exists and God’s Mercy exists.
Since the Lord God is the Alpha and Omega of every eternal sequence, you should trust God to correctly deal with the eternal sequence of Hell.
Best Regards,
Frank Hatch
December 28, 2009 at 1:04 am
Nicole. I agree that Hell, insofar as it is believed to be a state of eternal punishment, is an exceedingly difficult doctrine to square with a God of all-surpassing love and mercy. However, if the Christian is permitted some latitude in his or her conception of Hell, it may be a little less intractable. Just as the Christian conception of Heaven should be understood as essentially eternal life in the knowledge and presence of God, perhaps Hell should be understood conversely, as essentially the eternal province of those who preferred not to live in the knowledge and presence of God. Perhaps for some, the presence of God is claustrophobic, the rule of God a chaffing oppression. Perhaps for some, Heaven would be Hell. If that is the case, I can imagine two loved ones who are separated in the afterlife being grieved, but nonetheless grateful that God had provided a dwelling most suited to each of their decided orientations toward God.
For the Christian who accepts the doctrinal authority of the Bible, some exegetical work will surely be required to justify this view without doing violence to the relevant passages. The “wrath” of God will have to be allowed in some measure, though I think that wrath needs be apportioned as the appropriate consequence to each person’s wicked acts, rather than as punishment for spurning God’s love.
Furthermore, the imagery in each case will have to be understood as largely metaphorical. The “new heavens and new earth”, the promised abode of eternal life, may not be paved with streets of gold, just as Hell may not be constructed such that an eternal fire is somehow burning in a bottomless pit in utter darkness.
Of course, even if such imagery is metaphorical, must it not describe a dreadful existence in Hell nonetheless? In that regard, it should be noted that the biblical authors describe life apart from God as quite dreadful even here and now. And yet, many prefer it, and quite enjoy it. On the Christian view, believers have already entered into eternal life in the kingdom of God to some extent, while nonbelievers remain in spiritual death. One could conceive of the afterlife as an intensified extrapolation of our current state. And one might hope that then, as now, each person remains in the relation to God that they prefer.
As I see it, love is essentially non-coercive. Hell, on the above view, can be understood as an eternal testament to the non-coercive nature of God’s loving relationship toward humankind. The lover allows the beloved to be forever free, even though that freedom entails the deprivation of many of the goods available only to those wed to Christ. And if love is essentially non-coercive, allowing for the free roam of the beloved, our separated lovers may be grateful that each is allowed to persist as they choose.
As Doug Geivett has argued with respect to theodical responses to the problem of evil, the prospects for a supposition such as the one I’ve offered here will depend greatly on whether there are independent lines of evidence that God is there… and is good. If there is sufficient independent evidence for theism, one may approach the problem of Hell with some assurance that it does, if fully understood, fit within the best of all possible worlds, even if that understanding evades us. The Christian also takes some comfort in the assurance that God is just. No one property of Hell is as well attested in Christian scripture as is God’s perfect justice. If it comes right down to it, the Christian should be willing to beg ignorance about the fundamental nature of our ultimate state rather than compromising the justice of God, of his doing right by each of his creatures.
Perhaps you will have noticed my abundant use of “perhaps”. That is as it should be. I offer these thoughts as the apprehensive musings that they are. And now, it’s time to rewatch What Dreams May Come.
December 28, 2009 at 3:29 am
It’s funny, Sarah. I remember Prof. Morriston posing the very question you recall way back in 1992 in Philosophy of Religion 101. I remember puzzling over it for some time. “If moral freedom is such a great idea for humans, why is it not a grave defect in God that he lacks it? And if the lack of moral freedom does not detract from God’s greatness, then wouldn’t it be better for humans to lack moral freedom?” Later I came to think that what may be best for a necessary being may not be best, or even possible, for a contingent being. I wonder if Prof. Morriston’s question is fundamentally different than: “If contingency is such a great idea for humans, why is it not a grave defect in God that he lacks it?” It does not seem unlikely that two beings so fundamentally disparate in nature would also differ in their ideal moral capacities. One might also add that though God may be self-obligated toward the good, there may yet remain a wide range of supererogatory acts that God chooses freely. I need to revisit Prof. Morriston’s essay to see if he anticipates just such a response. I suspect so :)
December 28, 2009 at 4:01 am
Though I know it’s not exactly on topic, Morriston’s paper is here: http://spot.colorado.edu/~morristo/whats-so-good-about-moral-freedom.pdf. And yes. He does indeed consider, and reject, my response.
January 7, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I believe that Tom Talbott (Emeritus, Willamette) has used an argument like the one proposed by Prof. Hassoun, in his defense of form of Christian universalism. His website is here:
http://www.willamette.edu/~ttalbott/
His work, and especially his exchange with Wm. Lane Craig, may be worth following-up on if you are still working on this issue.
April 18, 2011 at 11:30 am
THE LOST:
“Hear and hear,
but do not understand,
see and see,
but do not perceive.” (Isaiah 6:9)
To break the restriction of a linear time sequence, the Lost need empirical data – uncorrupted, honest data. However, the Lost have filtered all their data with a scientific-religious presumption: a finite universe with a finite number of dimensions.
The Lost do not understand, not do they perceive their conflict with the Infinite Universe and the Infinite number of dimensions…
“…nothing can be added to it,
nor anything taken from it…” (Ecclesiastes 3:14)
Best Regards,
Frank Hatch
Initial Mass Displacements