Suppose that God exists. Our main concern, here, is to consider what such a supposition entails. What would we expect to observe if such a being were to exist? Can we make any predictions? An answer to questions like these is going to depend on a proper understanding of the claim itself. This, in turn, hinges on what is meant by “God”.
There is no doubt that God is supposed to be a unique sort of being. There is a notion of “ultimism” or supremeness inherent in the idea. God is generally considered to have a very specific sort of nature with attributes that make “It” the greatest possible being. The primary subset of attributes relevant to our considerations includes
- Omnipotence
- Omniscience
- Omni-Benevolence
- Holiness
Let’s unpack these a bit.
Omnipotence: Although there is some controversy surrounding how exactly to understand what it means to be “all powerful”, it shouldn’t be too problematic to take this as meaning that God can instantiate anything that is metaphysically possible.
Omniscience: As with omnipotence, there are some philosophical concerns regarding what it means to be “all knowing” and whether such a thing is even possible. For our purposes, I’ll take this to mean (roughly) that God’s awareness ranges over the entire space of possibilities and actualities.
Omni-Benevolence: I’m using this a something of an umbrella term that includes such things as being all loving and all merciful.
I suggest that for God to be all loving means three things:
- God is perfectly loving.
- God is maximally loving.
- God is universally loving.
Before explicating each of these, let’s gain some insight into the nature of love by considering a paradigmatic example viz. the love of a parent for their child(ren). It is uncontroversial to say that love is meant to refer to actions/feelings aimed at other agents. It seems equally uncontroversial to say that love is supposed to pick out, upon reasoned reflection, the most desirable or preferable way(s) one person could act toward another. We might say that loving action is action that seeks the well-being or best interests of another. This is what we observe in loving parents, who seek to be in healthy, fulfilling, and meaningful relationships with their children and seek to promote their best interests and flourishing as much as they are able.
With this in mind, I’ll now explicate the three aspects of being all loving:
- A person A loves a person B perfectly if A never fails to love B. That is, person A always acts (and seeks to act) in a way that is maximally consistent with the best interests of B.
- A person A loves person B maximally if it is not possible to love B more.
- A being loves universally if the scope of their love includes all other persons.
Holiness: This is a term that includes God’s moral perfection. Not only does God always do what is right and good, but God is perfectly just. Like being perfectly loving, to be perfectly just means that God never fails to act justly. But what conception of justice is consistent with God’s attribute of omni-benevolence? This is an important question because there isn’t just one idea about what justice amounts to. The common theme, however, seems to be something like giving to each person their due. So, ultimately we are saying that God always gives to each person what they deserve. Of course, one might wonder: what do people deserve? This is a broad question and the answer depends on the context, but since we’re speaking of ultimate things, we might wonder about what people deserve overall or from God. This is especially true when it comes to our moral failings. How would we expect a being like God to act toward us when doling out punishments?
I will contrast two broad approaches to justice and punishment: retributive and what I’ll call restorative.
Retributive: Broadly speaking, the focus of retributive justice/punishment is on inflicting some appropriate amount of suffering on an individual in response to an offending action. This is the sort of justice we typically see in impersonal situations like courts.
Restorative: While this form of justice/punishment may also respond to certain actions with an appropriate amount of suffering, the broad focus of restorative justice/punishment is on rectifying wrongs and correcting/restoring the individual. This is the sort of justice we typically see in more personal settings like families.
If we now reflect on the sort of being God is, we have strong reasons for thinking that God would prefer the latter form of justice. This is because God’s love for humans leads God to desire what is in their best interests. And being restored is clearly in our best interest. It is from here that we can make a definitive argument against Hell as absolutely incompatible with God. Here’s a sketch of such an argument.
Given the nature of God (as described above), God would love all humans perfectly and maximally. This means that God desires what is in the best-interests of humans both individually and collectively. Since God is all-powerful, “It” is able to bring about those best-interests. An essential aspect of this is being in right relationship with God and each other. We see then that punishment and justice would have to serve an essential purpose consistent with these desires and goals. God’s focus would be on restoration and correction. But now consider Hell. This is a punishment that in a very real sense consists in infinite suffering. This suffering serves no purpose outside the suffering itself. Since it never ends, it is the worst possible state of affairs for any person. But this is in no way in the best interests of the individual and it contradicts God’s goals and desires. It permanently cuts off any possibility of restoration and makes correction impossible. Furthermore, as a perfect being, God would desire to bring about the best possible state of affairs. But the best possible state of affairs can’t include within it God’s creatures suffering the worst possible state of affairs. We see then that instituting Hell would contradict God’s very nature. Thus, if God exists, then Hell cannot exist.