Is Hell Just? (Part 1) - Real Atheology

For better or worse, I get into a lot of religious discussions. In most cases, however, nothing much seems to come of them. I take that back. The average religious discussion is often depressing. Which is why I have had to learn to pick my battles with more care. But whenever the topic of hell (in the form of eternal conscious torment) comes up, I feel compelled from deep within to have my say. This happened recently on Facebook with an OP featuring the following video:

In all honesty, I find the handling of this topic by most Christians to be infuriating. It is my position that Hell is actually the epitome of injustice. But don’t mistake me as saying God is unjust. I’m saying if God exists, then “He” would not institute anything like Hell. In what follows, I’ll lay the groundwork for justifying this claim.

Suppose God exists. Then by definition God is omnibenevolent. This entails that God is maximally loving and maximally merciful. God is also perfectly just. Each of these traits must be considered together, since they are not independent of one another. Thus, maximality and perfection are to be understood in light of the requirement of consistency. For instance, God is maximally merciful under the constraint that “He” is also perfectly just. Let’s briefly elaborate on each of these:

Love

Although love is familiar and intuitive, nailing down a rigorous definition is somewhat difficult. As a first pass, consider the following definition of maximal love:

A being $X$ loves a being $Y$ maximally with respect to the abilities of $X$ if and only if $X$ desires only what is in the best interests of $Y$ and, to the greatest extent possible for $X$ , acts in such a way (whether directly or indirectly) to bring about states of affairs that are consistent with the best interests of $Y$ .

If God loves humans maximally, then because of “His” omnipotence, “He” can always bring about states of affairs that are in the best interests of each human. Furthermore, God’s omniscience guarantees that “He” knows what states of affairs to bring about.

– A Salient Consideration

In an ultimate sense, I don’t think it is difficult to determine what is in the best interest of each human being. Key to the idea of God is that “He” is the source of all good, even, in some sense, goodness itself (or The Good). Given this, it is clearly the case that every person’s ultimate best interest lies in knowing God. Since love desires relationship whenever possible, it follows that God will work to bring about this state of affairs.

– Possible Objection and Response

One might object here that free will presents a problem. Above I said that God’s omnipotence guarantees that God can bring about the state of affairs that is in the best interest of any person. But surely forcing a person against his or her will into a relationship wouldn’t be in that person’s best interest, right? This seems to me based on a misunderstanding. Any properly functioning rational person in a sufficient epistemic state willfully works toward his or her best interests. If God is objectively the greatest possible being and the source of all good, then this is recognizable by a free agent who will naturally gravitate toward it. It would not be a violation of will for God to ensure that every person operates properly and rationally and with the means necessary to achieve an appropriate epistemic position.

Mercy

Mercy is generally regarded as the decision to withhold deserved punishment out of compassion and/or forgiveness. We might say the following:

$A$ shows mercy to $B$ if and only if $B$ is subject to $A$ ‘s power and $A$ withholds punishment/harm based on compassion for $B$ or out of forgiveness for a wrong perpetrated by $B$ .

A maximally merciful being simpliciter would be one who shows mercy on every relevant occasion. That is, such a being would never punish or inflict harm. However, recall that God is maximally merciful under the constraint of perfect love and perfect justice. So for our case, to say that God is maximally merciful is to say that God shows the greatest amount of mercy on every occasion that is consistent with maintaining perfect justice and perfect love.

Justice

Justice too is a very deep topic. For our purposes I think we can simply say that justice concerns fairness, restoration and the doling out of proper punishment.

For God to be perfectly just would mean something like:

In all circumstances, God acts fairly. Also, God always acts to bring about restoration, which, depending on the circumstance, may require meting out appropriate punishment.

Now To Punishment

Hell is clearly about punishment. That is to say, one goes to hell as a punishment for his or her sins. We are well acquainted with the notion of punishment in our physical world. It is a response to a person who has violated the right(s) of another. More specifically, punishment is (at least) something like

the authorized imposition of deprivations – of freedom or privacy or other goods to which the person otherwise has a right, or the imposition of special burdens – because the person has been found guilt of some criminal violation, typically (though no invariably) involving harm to the innocent
SEP

The implementation of punishment is based on a variety of values and needs. But punishment itself can be immoral (e.g. punishing the innocent), so the goals of punishment must be evaluated. It is also important to consider how the implementation of punishment actually realizes such goals and whether such goals can be achieved by other means. It is clear that the disparity between humans and God entails that the analysis of these issues will be different for each. These issue and more will be dealt with in the sequel(s). Stay tuned!

Postscript

If you’re a Christian interested in understanding other interpretations of hell that aren’t of the eternal conscious torment variety, check out the Facebook page Rethinking Hell here or the corresponding website. There’s even a book! Click on the picture below to check it out.