8/8/2008
On Hell
When I
think of hell, I think of three famous literary descriptions of it. The first
is Dante’s Inferno. The second is the
sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” by the famous New England
Congregationalist, Jonathan Edwards. The third is James Joyce’s description of
an Irish Catholic retreatmaster’s sermon in Portrait
of the Artist as a Young
What is my description?
The first problem I face in trying to describe hell in my own way is the mismatch between the image of God preached by Jesus and the idea of unending torture inflicted on his creatures by that same God. My problem is not new. Already in the 200’s the theologian Origen had suggested that God ultimately redeems everyone. The Church rejected his suggestion. A watered-down version of the same idea is one that I have held for many years: “I have to believe in the existence of hell, but I don’t have to believe that there is anyone actually present in it.” Is my solution too easy?
Metaphor
“Eternal fire.”
These two words are metaphors for hell. Jesus himself used them in his description of the last judgment in Matthew 25. I want to examine them one by one.
Fire.
Many writers, including Dante, see the term “fire” as a metaphor for other kinds of punishment. Part of Dante’s hell is a frozen wasteland.
But what about Jesus’ use of the term? Doesn’t he use the term “fire”?
Yes, he
does. But Jesus often used metaphors in his preaching. He told his followers
that if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. I know of only one
person in Christian history who took that statement literally. St. Anthony of
Once the Church had made peace with using judgment and power as legitimate ways to further Jesus’ kingdom, fire became a useful metaphor for social control. Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, who burned heretics and witches, no doubt justified their behavior by saying that such punishment is trivial compared to the fires of hell. The fire metaphor has served to justify many practices that we today consider inhuman.
We no longer burn heretics. Most thoughtful Christians today probably see fire as a metaphor for “a really bad experience,” and quit trying to spell out the details.
But we have more trouble with the other metaphor, “eternal.” I can see how some people deserve really bad punishment for the evils they have done. But eternal punishment? The punishment is disproportionate.
The term “eternal” immediately suggests the human experience of time. Some theologians reject the relevance of that experience for life after death. They describe heaven as a sort of an instantaneous “now,” with no relationship to time. There is something to be said for this. But I have two problems with the explanation.
The first problem is that, when I hear the word “eternal,” my human way of thinking seems naturally to go to my experience of time. The second is our belief in the resurrection of the body. For me, “body” means “physical,” and “physical” means “time.”
I recognize that Einstein shook up our human conceptions of time. Perhaps an Einsteinian theologian could come up with an eternal “now” that would be compatible with what we understand as physical. But the solution seems far-fetched. We humans know what we experience as time, and it is not compatible with an instantaneous “now.”
Why could we not see the term “eternal” as metaphorical in the same way that we see the term “fire” as metaphorical? Maybe what Jesus means was just “a really long time,” just as he meant “a really bad experience” when he used the term “fire.”
I would like to think that the resurrection of the body means that heaven, and hell, will continue our experience of time. More specifically, heaven and hell will continue the most significant aspects of our experience, our interaction and involvement with others and with God. If love is passionate, respectful, vulnerable, and faithful involvement, the experience of such involvement will be the essence of heaven.
But what about hell? Theologians agree that hell will be the absence of love. Presumably a man or woman whose life here on earth was characterized by an absence of love will continue that experience in eternity.
I like to think that purgatory will be my having to face each person I have harmed, and work through the painful process of reconciliation with that person. My lack of love in this life will be healed by the fire of a reconciling involvement in eternity.
I have wondered if God’s redeeming love is so powerful that there is no person who will not be able to experience that kind of healing. But suppose that the lack of loving involvement will continue indefinitely. Suppose that hell means that I will continue to reject all attempts by others and by God to involve me in love. Here is where the mystery of our experience of eternity joins up with the mystery of our experience of freedom.
Surely heaven will not mean the end of my experience of freedom. I will continue to love freely. But if I can continue to love freely, perhaps I can continue to reject love freely.
Our Christian belief in hell seems to imply the possibility that I could go on indefinitely in a free rejection of love, on and on and on in a self-perpetuating cycle from which I will never escape. As the theologians say, it is not God who puts me into this state. I do it to myself, freely.
Will it never end?
Our faith forbids us to answer that question. We are like Job, addressed by God after all his friends have tried to explain his suffering rationally. “Be still. I am God. That is all you need to know.”
Scary thinking. Jesus may have been using metaphor when he spoke of “fire” and “eternal.” But he did not take away the mystery that surrounds our existence as creatures who experience time, freedom, and love.