Corruptionism and care about the soul

According to Catholic corruptionists, when I die, my soul will continue to exist, but I won’t; then at the Resurrection, I will come back into existence, receiving my soul back. In the interim, however, it is my soul, not I, who will enjoy heaven, struggle in purgatory or suffer in hell.

Of course, for any thing that enjoys heaven, strugges in purgatory or suffers in hell, I should care that it does so. But should I have that kind of special care that we have about things that happen to ourselves for what happens to the soul? I say not, or at most slightly. For suppose that it turned out on the correct metaphysics that my matter continues to exist after death. Should I care whether it burns, decays, or is dissected, with that special care with which we care about what happens to ourselves? Surely not, or at most slightly. Why not? Because the matter won’t be a part of me when this happens. (The “at most slightly” flags the fact that we can care about “dignitary harms”, such as nobody showing up at our funeral, or us being defamed, etc.)

But clearly heaven, purgatory and hell in the interim state is something we should care about.

Pascal's Wager and the beatific vision

To resolve the many gods and evil god objections to Pascal’s Wager, we need a way of comparing different infinite positive and negative outcomes. Technically, this is easy: we can represent these outcomes as an infinite quantity in some system like the hyperreals or vector-valued utilities, and then multiply these by probabilities, and add. The real difficulty is philosophical: how do we make probability-weighted comparisons of these infinite utilities? How does, say, a 30% chance of a Christian heaven compare to a 20% chance of a Muslim heaven? How does, say, a 30% chance of a Christian heaven compare to avoiding a 5% chance of a hell from an evil god?

I want to make a suggestion that might help get us started. On Christian orthodoxy, heavenly bliss is primarily constituted by the beatific vision—an intimate union with God where God himself comes to be directly present to consciousness, perhaps in something like the way that the qualia of ordinary acts of perception are often thought to be directly present to consciousness. How nice such an intimate union with a divine being is depends on how good the divine being is. For instance, plausibly, such a union with the kind of being who loves us enough to become incarnate and die for our sins is much better than such a union with a deity who wouldn’t or even couldn’t do that.

Gods that have morally objectionable conditions on how to get to heaven are presumably not going to be all that wonderful to spend an infinite time with—even a small chance of a beatific vision of a perfectly good God would beat a large chance of an afterlife with such a god. (Of course, some people think the Christian God’s conditions are morally objectionable.)

There is an important sense in which the beatific vision is intensively infinitely good—i.e., even a day of the beatific vision has infinite value—because the good of the beatific vision is constituted by the presence of an infinite God. Because of this, afterlives that feature something like the beatific vision may completely trump afterlives theories that do not. This may help with evil god worries, in that it is plausible that suffering we can undergo will intensively be only finitely bad. If B is the value of the beatific vision and H is the (negative) value of hell, then pB + qH will be infinitely positive as long as p > 0.

I am not saying that taking the beatific vision into account solves all the difficulties with Pascal’s wager. But it moves us forward.

Separation from God

The worst part of being in hell is separation from God. But Jesus did not become separated from God. So how could his suffering atone in place of our deserved punishment of eternity in hell?

Some theologians, perhaps of a kenotic sort, may hold that Jesus did become separated from God. But this is heterodox.

Here is perhaps a solution: separation from God in hell is the worst part of being in hell, but it’s not a punishment.

As it stands, this would contradict the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states: “The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God” (1035).

But perhaps we can distinguish two senses of punishment: retributive and non-retributive. Suppose that I am vain, and vanity leads to a fall, namely that I become a plagiarist. My plagiarism, then, is a kind of punishment for my pride. It is fitting. It is just. But it is not a retribution for my vanity. Here is one feature of this kind of non-retributive punishment: its lack is not an injustice. Suppose I am vain and instead of this leading to further vice, people notice my ridiculous vanity and start laughing at me, which hurts my feelings badly. In this case, I am much better off than in the case where my vanity led me to plagiarism, since I did not become more vicious. But notice that even though becoming more vicious would have been quite fair, my not becoming more vicious isn’t itself unjust. For it is the omission of due retributive punishment that is unjust.

This distinction in hand, we might say that separation from God in hell is non-retributive punishment. Many authors in the 20th century have argued that hell is a kind of choice one makes rather than a retribution. But with the distinction, we can say that this is true of the separation from God: that is what the wicked have chosen, and it is just that they get it, but it is not retributive punishment. There is, however, retributive punishment in hell, the chief part of which is the pain of separation from God. This pain, however, Christ could be said to suffer, for while not himself actually separated from God, he could take on himself the pain of separation on behalf of others, through perfect empathy.

Pro-life outreach to fellow Christians

At a recent pro-life event that I participated in, the question was asked the panel how to convince a pastor that one’s church should support the pro-life cause, notwithstanding pro-choice congregation members. An answer was offered by a panelist that talked well of standard texts of Scripture that have bearing on the humanity of the fetus.

A day after the event, one of the audience members told me that there was too much focus on the status of the fetus, because even if students are convinced that human life starts at conception, they still think that because of conflict between the rights of the fetus and the rights of the mother, abortion is permissible.

In light of this, it seems to me that a crucial part of pro-life outreach to fellow Christians—including but not just pastors—is to focus on more general texts about our duties towards the vulnerable and needy. While a major part of the debate over abortion is indeed focused on the moral status of the fetus, both motivationally and intellectually it seems really important to focus on a deep underlying assumption that we do not have much in the way of onerous duties towards others, unless we have voluntarily undertaken those duties. Yet the Gospel teaches that we do have such duties, duties binding under pain of eternal damnation. Thus in addition to a reliance on texts about the status of the unborn, one needs motivationally powerful texts like:

Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:41-46).

These texts make it clear that we have highly onerous duties towards others, duties we may have done nothing to acquire. It is very difficult to defend disconnection from the violinist while thinking about such texts.

But of course if we use such texts then we had better be sure that we live so that they do not condemn us, too. For they are indeed terrifying texts on many fronts. May God have mercy on all our souls!

A reason why God might not give second chances

Jones definitively rejects God in this life. He dies. Should God give Jones a second chance at salvation? While an endless--or just extremely long--sequence of second chances might damage Jones' freedom to decide his ultimate destiny, a single second chance seems to be clearly a good thing.

Not necessarily! By giving Jones a second chance to choose God, God would also be giving Jones a chance to reject God all over again. But it is much worse to do wrong than to have bad things merely happen to one, at least when the wrong and the bad are proportionate. And rejecting God is among the worst of all wrongs--maybe even the worst of all wrongs. So there is definitely a risk of further gravely harming Jones by giving him a second chance.

This risk was already present when God gave Jones a first choice for salvation. But once one has done something terrible, doing it again is easier. If Jones has once rejected God's overtures, rejecting them again will be more probable, other things being equal. So, normally, the risk increases. Granted, God could decrease this risk to the level of the first-chance risk by changing Jones' character, but in doing so, God would be overriding Jones' freedom to decide on his character.

None of these considerations show that God shouldn't give a second chance. God could override character or take the risk of letting Jones reject him all over again. But what the considerations do show is that God could be acting reasonably and lovingly towards Jones in not giving Jones a second chance.

This argument depends on theologically incompatibilist simple foreknowledge or open theism: it doesn't work given theological compatibilism or Molinist.

Can a life of eternal pain be worth living?

Sally is in moderate pain and opts for a painless medical intervention that extends her life by one more day just because she wants to experience another day. Surely Sally is not being irrational. It's not irrational to choose to experience another day, even if that day involves moderate pain. Further, whatever the merits of a defense of euthanasia in the case of severe pain (in the end, I will reject euthanasia even in those cases), defending euthanasia in the case of moderate pain is implausible.

This suggests that it can be worth living for a finite amount of time in moderate pain. Moreover, it can be worth doing so even if there is no prospect of pain-free life afterwards. The rationality of Sally's decision doesn't depend on her beliefs about the afterlife. All this suggests a strong intuition that the experience of life, by itself, is enough to make life worth living despite moderate pain. But if it makes life worth living for a finite amount of time, why not an infinite?

Well, maybe an infinite life of moderate pain would result in extreme mental pain of hopelessness and ennui. But notice that this is a contingent consequence. A person who doesn't think much about the future can avoid the pain of hopelessness, and a person who doesn't remember having had many such days can avoid the pain of ennui. Thus it is logically possible to have a worthwhile infinitely long life of moderate pain without any great compensating goods besides the good of experiencing life itself, at least as long as one wasn't very thoughtful.

Thus, it is logically possible to have a painful but mildly worthwhile eternity in hell. It could be a life where enough of people's memories are wiped to prevent excruciating ennui, and where the people's minds have degenerated to a point where they don't care much about the future. (Would it be surprising if the minds of the damned weren't in tip-top shape?)

Now, one of the main reasons people reject the doctrine of hell is because they think that a loving and just God would not allow a person to exist for eternity in a state worse than nonexistence. But if it is possible to have a painful but mildly worthwhile eternity in hell, so that we need not suppose that eternity in hell is worse than nonexistence, this particular argument against hell disappears.

Objection: The biblical picture of hell involves not merely moderate but excruciating pain.

Response: Let's grant a literal picture of eternal burning. Now, being burned is normally an excruciating pain. Either divine goodness would rule out eternal excruciating pain or it wouldn't. If it wouldn't, the objection to hell disappears. But if divine goodness would rule out eternal excruciating pain, then it follows logically that if there is a God and eternal burning, then God does not allow that eternal burning to be eternally excruciating. Perhaps he provides fairly effective painkillers.

Eternal nagging, endless second chances and hell

Jabba the Hutt asks for a passionate kiss. You really don't want to do it and you don't. So he asks you again the next day. And again the day after. And so on. Each time Jabba asks you, there is some small chance you'll agree. Let's say that that chance is always at least one in a googolplex. Now suppose you and Jabba live forever. He asks you every day. Then by the Law of Large Numbers, it is nearly certain (i.e., has probability one or one minus an infinitesimal) that one day you will agree, no matter how disgusted you are by him.

The practical inevitability of the kiss means there is a sense in which your agreeing has been forced out of you by Jabba's eternal nagging, even though you were free on the particular occasion when you agreed to the kiss. We might say that you were quite free not to kiss on day n, where n is the day you actually kissed Jabba, but you were not really free never to kiss him. Yuck! How is it freedom when you are guaranteed to kiss a disgusting giant slug?

Now the two best alternatives to the traditional Christian doctrine that those who after a set deadline (death, say) opt against God are excluded from heavenly union with God are:

• Imposition: God imposes moral transformation on those who do not freely opt to love him.
• Endless Second Chances: God ensures that those who refuse him nonetheless always have another chance.

Here I take for granted Jerry Walls' argument that for a sinner moral transformation is metaphysically necessary for heavenly bliss, as heavenly bliss is constituted by a love relationship with God.

It's pretty plausible (pace compatibilists) that in Imposition, God takes away the agent's freedom to refuse him. But if the eternal nagging argument works, then in Endless Chances it looks like God all but takes away the agent's freedom, making it all but inevitable that the agent will eventually agree.

It is offensive to compare God to Jabba the Hutt. Yet for the person who is opposed to God, eternal union with God is subjectively rather like kissing Jabba the Hutt. Nor would it make the story more palatable if Jabba were to promise to make you enjoy the kiss, say by exuding pheromones or changing your preferences, as soon as you say "yes" to him. Of course, objectively God is infinitely lovable--but those have rejected him have set their hearts against that truth.

Objection: God could set up a version of Endless Second Chances on which it is not inevitable that the agent will agree by allowing each of the agent's refusals to affect the agent's character by even further lowering the chance of subsequent acceptance of God's offer. If the subsequent chances decrease sufficiently (say, by a half each time), the overall probability of eventually accepting might be significantly different from one.

Response: Yes, but this loses out on what I take to be one of the main merits of hell, that hell stops the agent's moral deterioration. On this picture, there is a significantly non-zero chance that the agent will continue morally deteriorating for eternity. And that's unfitting.

Might the damned design their hell?

In my Death and Afterlife class, we were reading about whether immortality is worth having. The following has become clear to me: it is not easy to design an eternal life that isn't in some way hellish. An eternal life of fixed capabilities would involve the boredom of infinite repetition, and we could easily get bored with a life of growing capabilities, too, as things become too easy. To have a good infinite life, a human being needs something utterly exceeding our ordinary life--like the beatific union with an infinite God--or a very carefully fine-tuned life, say a life where our capabilities grow without bounds but the problems set for these capabilities grow in such a way as to neither be too frustrating or too easy.

This makes plausible the model of hell on which the life of the damned is just a life they designed for themselves. For the damned would be designing a life apart from God, and yet being wicked would not be able to wisely fine-tune such a life.

But I don't think we should embrace without restriction the model on which the damned design their eternal life. For some clever but still wicked people could design an eternal life of infinite recurrence and great sensory pleasure, with amnesia between the recurrences. Such a life, while nightmarish from the perspective of an outsider who knows that all the pleasures are a cycle of repetition and forgetting, could be blissful from the inside. Likewise, a wicked person could design an eternal life at the level of a contented pig. Again, to the outsider it would be nightmarish, but from the inside the wallowing would be delightful. However, I think the biblical picture of hell makes hell not only miserable from the outside but also from the inside.

Perhaps we should have this model of hell: The damned design their own eternal life subject to the constraint that there is no longer room for self-deceit, forgetting, drunken stupor or the like. On this model, God imposes suffering on the damned, but he does it by means of bestowing three good things: (a) ensuring the damned are no longer capable of self-deceit, deadening of the intellect or the like; (b) giving the damned autonomy over their own infinite lives; and (c) ensuring that the life does not end. In fact, God could simply bestow these three good things on damned and blessed alike.

There are only finitely many persons

1. Humans in heaven will eventually have a personal love for all persons.
2. It is not possible for a human to have a personal love for infinitely many persons.
3. Therefore, there are only finitely many persons.

Let me clarify the premises. I mean the "all" in (1) and the "there are" in (3) to extend to all persons who ever exist--my quantifiers are eternalist ones. I mean "personal love" to contrast with the kind of "impersonal love" that even now the saints among us have towards all humans (and maybe even all persons) in general. A personal love, however, is a deeper relationship that requires an attitude directed at one specific person. An argument for (1) might go as follows: humans in heaven will be morally perfect and hence they will have a love for all persons. Now moral perfection doesn't itself require anything more than a general love--for it doesn't require anything more of us than we can have in this life, and in this life we cannot personally know billions of people. But while moral perfection doesn't require that the humans in heaven have more than a general love for all persons, when we have the right kind of general love for a person, we want to know the person specifically, to know the specific good features of that person, and in heaven such desires will be satisfied. So (1) is true. The argument for (2) involves either the finitude of our minds or something like my causal finitist thesis.

Presentists (and maybe some others) might want to replace (1) by the weaker claim that humans in heaven will eventually have a personal love for all persons who then exist. If so, then if we add the additional premise that all persons live forever, we get the weaker conclusion that at every present and future time there are only finitely many persons.

Some may worry about hell here. Do the people in heaven have a personal love for all the damned? Do they really know and delight in what good can be found in them? I would like to say "Yes". I can imagine someone, however, saying that (a) such a personal love for the damned would lead to mourning and (b) that mourning has no place in heaven. I would deny (a), I guess. But I can see that some people would find this line of thought implausible. Very well. Then I can revise premise (1) to say that humans in heaven will eventually have a personal love for all persons in heaven. And then the conclusion is that there are only finitely many persons in heaven. I can still, however, get the conclusion that there are only finitely many persons if I add the premise that if there are infinitely many persons not in heaven, then there are infinitely many in heaven as well. (It would be too tragic if infinitely many went to hell--or, worse, were annihilated--but only finitely many went to heaven.) Since there are finitely many in heaven, there are finitely many outside of heaven.

If one adds to the original argument the premise that one can only have a personal love at t for someone who exists at t, then (1) on the eternalist interpretation also yields the important thesis that all persons live forever.

The temporal insurpassability of heaven

Heavenly bliss lasts infinitely long. (Some theologians think of heaven as timeless, but that fits poorly with the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.) But wouldn't it be better to have a second heavenly life, after the first infinite one? And then instead of the usual order type ω for one's future days (1st future day, 2nd future day, 3rd future day, ...) one would have order type ω·2 (1st day, 2nd day, 3rd day, ..., infinitieth day + ωth day, (ω+1)st day, (ω+2)nd day, ...). And why stop there? Why not future days of order type ω·3? Or ω²? Or ω^ω? No temporal infinity seems insurpassable, so it seems that there could always be a longer afterlife.

Not so if my causal finitist thesis is true. For while the causal finitist thesis does not by itself deny the possibility of a longer infinite afterlife, it denies the possibility that any event could essentially depend on an earlier infinity of events. In particular, it means that if one had an infinite afterlife, and then continued to exist after that, it would be impossible to integrate that infinite afterlife in memory. But it is an important feature of the sort of creatures that we are that we integrate our past in our memory. Thus, given causal finitism, an afterlife whose events went beyond order type ω would be a disintegrated afterlife, unfitting for the sorts of beings we are.

This solves the third of the theological questions here.

By the same token, causal finitism makes implausible the following variant on universalism: "While hell is infinitely long, everyone who goes to hell is eventually saved (after that infinite time)." For presumably the salvation on that variant would be a result of a purification process in the infinitely long sojourn in hell, thereby being very likely to violate causal finitism.

Another model of hell worth thinking about?

Suppose that objectively, hell lasts forever. But while the first objective year of hell is experienced subjectively as a year long, the second objective year "goes by faster" as we say, and only takes half a year, the the third objective year "goes by even faster" and only takes a quarter of a year, and so on. Thus, while the damned will always exist and always be suffering, they will only experience two years' worth of suffering over that objectively eternal suffering.

Now the difficult question is whether this is an orthodox view of hell. When Jesus talks about the suffering being everlasting, is he talking of subjective or objective time? We certainly wouldn't find the analogous view of heaven satisfactory. But heaven and hell aren't exact parallels: in heaven one is with God, and the absence of God is not much of a parallel to God.

Now, without affirming the model, it can still be of some use in apologetics. For suppose a non-Christian objects that nobody deserves an everlasting hell. One answer is Anselm's: an infinite crime deserves infinite punishment and some crimes against an infinite being are infinite. But given the above model or the alternate model here, one can say that an everlasting hell could involve only a finite amount of suffering. So one can say: if someone is damned, then either she committed a crime that deserves infinite punishment or her total suffering is finite. Since both options are compatible with everlasting hell, in neither case does the objection to an everlasting hell go through. And one can give this disjunctive answer while strongly inclined to think that the Anselmian infinite crime model of hell is superior, as long as the alternate model is not a heresy (if it is, I will of course withdraw it).

Two desiderata for preaching about hell

1. Hell needs to be presented in such a way that nobody would be willing to go there.
2. It needs to be shown that hell is an expression of divine love.

Hell and Auschwitz

The oldest Holocaust survivor, Antoni Dobrowolski, who went to Auschwitz as punishment for teaching young poles has died at 108. The article quotes him as saying that Auschwitz was "worse than Dante's hell".

My initial reaction was that this is surely an overstatement. But a moment's reflection suggests that Dobrowolski is correct, at least as concerning hell itself (I won't comment on Dante's hell, since I am no Dante scholar). Hell is a place that upholds the dignity of its inmates by acknowledging their autonomous choice for evil, giving them justice and limiting their downward moral slide, while the concentration camps aimed at the destruction of autonomy and dignity. It is a terrifying thought that we humans can produce something worse than hell.

But at the same time, we have to remember that in a choice between hell and Auschwitz, we should choose against hell. So perhaps hell is worse? Or maybe we need to distinguish: in itself, in some sense, Auschwitz is worse, but hell also guarantees lack of union with God, while Auschwitz is compatible with union with God, just as the Cross was.

Punishment is good for those who are justly punished

Suppose Satan is the only creature in existence and Satan sins gravely through pride, does not repent, and goes to hell forever. Hell is a punishment from God. Now in punishing Satan in this world, God does something good to creation, since God does not do anything to creation that isn't good.

But every good is a good for someone. In that world, however, there is only God and Satan. So for whom is that punishment good? For God alone or for Satan alone or for both God and Satan?

It does not seem that the "for God alone" answer is satisfactory. For God, considered on his own, has an unchangeable perfect flourishing. Additionally, there is an extended well-being that God has when those that he loves receive goods, but that presupposes that God isn't the only recipient of the good. Besides, surely, when God acts in creation, he produces good effects--he is, after all, omnibenevolent.

Hence, the punishment of Satan in that world is good for Satan (and maybe for God, derivatively via extended well-being).

But if it is good for Satan in that world, why not in ours as well?

And why is it necessarily good for Satan? Presumably because in general punishment is good for those who justly receive it.

Retributive punishment is good for the evildoer

Everything that God does, he does for the sake of some good.  But to be a good is to be a good for one or more entities.  Thus, everything that God does, he does for the sake of some good for one or more entities.

One of the things God does is retributively punish some sinners.  This is controversial, but I think true, and I shall assume it.  If you don't buy it, then take the following to be an exploration of what would have to be true if God were to punish retributively.

It follows that he does this for the sake of some good for one or more entities that I will call the intended beneficiaries of the punishment.

God cannot be the only intended beneficiary.  For God is transcendent.  His intrinsic well-being is not affected by what happens in the creaturely realm.  If God is a beneficiary of the retributive punishment, it is only in the derivative sense in which anything that benefits someone one loves counts as benefiting oneself.

What are the remaining options for the intended beneficiary?  I think the only plausible ones are: the sinners themselves, the victims of the sin, and bystanders.

But the sin need have no victim beside the sinner.  It could, for instance, be a sin of blasphemy against God (and while the sin is against God, God is not victimized).  And God is not the only intended beneficiary.  So the victims of the sin cannot be the only beneficiaries.

How about bystanders?  Tertullian suggested that the saints in heaven will rejoice at the suffering of the wicked.  But a virtuous person rejoices only at something that is good for reasons independent of the rejoicing.  Hence the primary good of the punishment of the wicked cannot be that it enables rejoicing by the righteous.  Moreover, it would surely be possible for God to punish someone without there being any bystanders--for instance, God could have chosen to create only one person, and if this person sinned, God could have punished this person.

That leaves the sinner.

Of course, sometimes punishment benefits the person being punished by leading her to repentance.  But if that was the only good being pursued by God in punishing the sinner, then that would not be a case of retributive punishment.

I think the only remaining option is that retributive punishment is simply good in and of itself for the person receiving it.  It is good for one to get what one deserves, be it punishment or reward.  Think of the case of reward.  If you have done something good, and I reward you for it by giving you a gift, the value of the reward for you is not just the value of the item that I've given you--it is the value of the item as a reward from me for your good deeds.  Likewise, if you have done something wicked, and I have the authority to punish you for it by imposing harsh treatment on you, while the harsh treatment as mere harsh treatment has a disvalue, the fact that it is harsh treatment given as a punishment from me for your wicked deeds has a value, and it is a value for you (it's surely not a value for me, nor necessarily for the victims or bystanders).

Of course it is possible to receive something of value without appreciating its value.  The repentant sinner appreciates the value of justly deserved harsh treatment--that is, in fact, one of the signs of a criminal's repentance--but the unrepentant sinner does not appreciate it.  But it has a value, nonetheless.  If it didn't, it wouldn't be a sign of vice that one does not appreciate it.

No one would be better off not existing

1. (Premise) If t is a time at which a human being x exists, then x owes thanks to God for existing at t.
2. (Premise) If x would be better off not existing at t, then x does not owe anybody thanks for existing at t.
3. Therefore, there is no human being that exists at a time at which it would be better for her not to exist.

A corollary is that every human in hell is better off existing than not existing, and owes thanks to God for continuing to exist, as per my remarks here.  

This post is inspired by a remark I overheard wafting from another restaurant table near the Central APA that on some view (I didn't hear whose), even those in hell owe thanks to God.

The combination view of hell

There are four possible views on suffering in hell:

1. Traditional View (TV): Some people have everlasting suffering in hell.
2. Weak Universalism (WU): Everyone lives forever and nobody has everlasting suffering in hell.
3. Annihilationism: Nobody has any suffering in hell but some are annihilated.
4. Combination View (CV): Some suffer in hell and then are annihilated.

I called (2) Weak Universalism, since it's compatible with the idea that some people go to hell for a finite amount of time and with the idea that some people stay forever in hell but only suffer for a finite amount of time. In this post I want to examine and reject the Combination View.

In principle, CV could be motivated over and against TV by claiming that TV is too lenient—hell is too good for some people. Such a view is rare, I think, and I won't argue against it. Instead, I want to argue against those versions of CV on which TV is too harsh.

Those who accept CV presumably think that punishment is primarily retributive in nature—otherwise it's hard to see why CV is more appealing than straight Annihilationism. For if punishment is there to protect the innocent, Annihilationism seems to work even better than CV. And if punishment is there to reform the wicked, then either all the wicked are reformed by the punishment, and hence should not be annihilated at the completion of it, or else some of the wicked are not reformed. If some of the wicked are not reformed by the punishment, why shouldn't God prolong it, hoping for results? (And if there must be a cut-off, then why shouldn't that cut-off be at death instead?)

So suppose that punishment is primarily retributive. But now I worry that WU is a better view than CV. The CVer thinks that everlasting suffering in hell is too harsh, but that nonetheless some people deserve some post-death suffering in hell. Well, wouldn't it be better for God to keep those people in hell until their total punishment is sufficient to pay the penalty, and then once their penalty has been paid, give them a life that is neither heavenly nor hellish? I suppose one could insist on this odd view: no finite amount of post-death suffering in hell is sufficient penalty but an infinite amount of post-death suffering in hell is too harsh a penalty, and CV manages to produce a punishment that is in between, but this just does not seem very plausible.

I expect that the motivation for CV is often a hybrid of theological and philosophical reasoning. For reasons of Scripture and Christian tradion, WU and Annihilationism are rejected, and I think rightly so. For philosophical reasons, however, TV is rejected. CV is not philosophically superior to WU and Annihilationism but maybe in terms of Scripture and tradition it is superior. Still, I think CV is not a stable position. And if one really thinks a finite amount of suffering in hell is better, why not just hold to the traditional Christian view that hell is forever, but tweak it so that the total amount of suffering is finite? I am not defending that modified view, but it seems superior to CV in terms of conformity to Scripture and tradition, and philosophically no worse.

A common mistake about hell

A common mistake about hell, often made by both contemporary advocates of the doctrine and their opponents, is the Horrific Thesis:

(HT) It is better not to exist at all, or even not to have existed at all, than to spend eternity in hell.

Given HT, it is easy to argue against hell.  All things that exist, exist by the continual creation of God.  Everything that God creates, or continually creates, is on balance good.  Therefore, nobody is better off not existing.  Hence if HT is true, nobody spends eternity in hell.  

But HT is false.  First, consider its Scriptural warrant.  There is one New Testament text directly related to HT, given in Matthew and Mark:

As for that man [the betrayer], it would have been better [kalon] for him had he not been born [ei ouk eggenêthê] (Matthew 26:24, Mark 14:21).  

But that text simply does not sufficiently support HT.  First, it does not say that it was better for Judas not to have existed, but at most that it would have been better for him not to have been born.  Since Judas had already existed by the time of his birth--I say he existed about nine months before his birth, but in any case surely he existed some time before his birth--the counterfactual taken literally compares two scenarios: Judas being born and Judas dying in utero.  Now had he died prior to birth, his eternal destination would be wherever Jewish babies ended up after death--either heaven or limbo.  On this reading, then, we are told that Judas would have been better off dying in utero and ending up in heaven or limbo than wherever he ended up.  (If he would have ended up in heaven had he died prior to birth, then the text does not even entail that Judas went to hell.  Maybe he would have been better off had he died in utero because then he would have ended up in a better state in heaven or because then he would have avoided purgatory.)  Second, the word kalon might also have been translated as "noble" or "honorable"--in classical Greek that is the primary meaning and the word seems to have that meaning in some New Testament uses as well.  Thus, even if we take the "had he not been born" non-literally as meaning "had he not existed", the text could simply be telling us that it would have been more noble or more honorable for him had he not existed, rather than altogether better.

The other part of HT's Scriptural warrant are the scary descriptions--lake of fire, worm that dieth not--of what existence in hell is like.  But we should read Scripture consistently with Scripture.  And Scripture also tells us of a God who loves all, whose sun shines on sinner and righteous alike, who created everything and it was all good.  Thus we should temper our interpretations of the harrowing descriptions with the conviction that God does not create or sustain in existence that for which it would be better not to exist.

(Objection: Maybe it is agent-centeredly worse for the person in hell to exist than not to, but it is better that she exist than not.  Response: But better for whom or what?  God's activity is primarily guided by love.  When he acts for a good cause, he does so for someone or something.  Is it better for God that the person suffer?  The Christian tradition will not be happy with this reading.  Is it better for others?  But how?  Tertullian suggested that the saved will get joy from watching the punishment of the damned.  But even if he is right, this can only be true if the punishment of the damned has a value independent of the saved watching it, since the saved get joy only out of watching good things.  No, if it is better simpliciter that the person be in hell than not exist, it is better for the person in hell.)

One might ask, of course, if it is possible to have eternal suffering and yet to have a life worth living.  But surely the answer is positive.  One way for the answer to be positive is for Augustine and Aquinas to be right about the value of existence, or at least human existence: this value is such that it is worth existing no matter how much one suffers.  Another way would be if the overall suffering is combined with other valuable features that make the life overall worth living, whether or not the agent feels it to be worth living.  These could perhaps include:

• the intrinsic value of receiving one's just deserts
• the value of knowing various truths (such as that God exists and that one is a sinner)
• moral improvement (though one never actually reaches moral purity)
• the value of useful work
• playing a part in God's plan, especially the justice aspect of it
• etc.

It should also be remembered that an externally infinite length of suffering is logically compatible with the total amount of suffering being finite (though I am not endorsing the view that the total amount of suffering in hell is finite), e.g., due to asymptotic decrease or changes in the subjective flow of time.

We should, in fact, take the rejection of HT to be a part of the doctrine of hell.  For the rejection of HT follows from central theological commitments of the Christian tradition, and doctrines must be understood not in isolation but in the context of the implications for them of other doctrines.  And a fortiori we should not take HT to be an essential part of the doctrine of hell.  If we did that, we would have to absurdly say that neither Augustine nor Aquinas believed in hell, since they rejected HT.

Suppose we reject HT.  Then we can imagine the following.  God is considering creating ten billion people and then making sure, or all but making sure, that they are all saved, whether by means of offering them opportunity after opportunity for salvation, over a potentially infinite amount of time, until they agree, wiping their memories as needed, or by means of eventually canceling people's freedom and making them be saved whether they so choose or not, or by giving them such strong inclinations towards virtue that they are practically certain to do right.  But God might consider the following attractive alternative.  Create twenty billion people instead, where each has probability 3/4 of being saved.  So, about 15 billion people will be saved on this scenario (and so in terms of the number of people saved, it is better than the first scenario).  Moreover, each of these 15 billion people now has a much more serious chance of being damned, and hence her free choice has a greater significance and value than the choices that the ten billion people in the first scenario does.  Now, this scenario is tough on the approximately five billion people who will end up damned.  But these people are at least as well off existing as not, and so as long as God didn't intend them to be damned, and as long as God offered them serious opportunities for salvation, it does not seem that anything problematic has been done by God.  So there seems to be a serious case for God to actualize the second scenario instead--God could have a good reason to do so.  (This argument works poorly if Molinism is true.  Too bad for Molinism.)

Hence, if we reject HT, hell seems justifiable.  And we should reject HT.

Justification and love

Justification consists in God's forgiveness of our sins. What does this forgiveness consist in? At least partly in the taking away of the penalty. But what, most deeply, is the penalty? One thinks here of hell-fire. But while hell may contain fire (or it may contain great cold!), it is not constituted by fire, but by separation from God. Now, lack of charity—lack of the right kind of love for God—is at the heart of separation from God.

So: Divine forgiveness must consist, at least in part, in the removal of the penalty of separation from God, and the removal of our lack of charity. Therefore, the instilling of charity is at least partly constitutive of divine forgiveness. Hence, basic sanctification—the movement from lack of charity to the presence of charity—is not merely causally tied to justification, but is at least partly constitutive of justification. Moreover, this sanctification is not appropriate, and maybe not possible, apart from justification, since a just being is unlikely to waive punishment without forgiving.

Perfection and purgatory

Our Department's (unofficial) weekly Bible study is on 1 John. We meet for about 55 minutes every week. The last three weeks, we've been struggling through 1 John 2:28-3:10 (last week we "covered" only two verses). The dilemma is that the text seems to be telling us that if we are children of God, then we do what is right and love our brother, and if we do not do what is right or fail to love our brother, then we are not children of God. This makes it seem that unless we are perfect, we have no hope of salvation. But we are not perfect (or at least, I am not, and none of my colleagues wanted to claim perfection)—and, besides, 1 John begins by warning us against claiming we are perfect.

I am beginning to wonder if this isn't the right place to bring in the notion of purgatory.