On a number of occasions I've proposed counterfactual guilt as a justification for eternal punishment. Here's a striking illustration:
What we do is also limited by the opportunities and choices with which we are faced, and these are largely determined by factors beyond our control. Someone who was an officer in a concentration camp might have led a quiet and harmless life if the Nazis had never come to power in Germany. And someone who led a quiet and harmless life in Argentina might have become an officer in a concentration camp if he had not left Germany for business reasons in 1930.The third category to consider is luck in one's circumstances. I shall mention it briefly. The things we are called upon to do, the moral tests we face, are importantly determined by factors beyond our control. It may be true of someone that in a dangerous situation he would behave in a cowardly or heroic fashion, but if the situation never arises, he will never have the chance to distinguish or disgrace himself in this way, and his moral record will be different.A conspicuous example of this is political. Ordinary citizens of Nazi Germany had an opportunity to behave heroically by opposing the regime. They also had an opportunity to behave badly, and most of them are culpable for having failed this test. But it is a test to which the citizens of other countries were not subjected, with the result that even if they, or some of them, would have behaved as badly as the Germans in like circumstances, they simply did not and therefore are not similarly culpable. Here again one is morally at the mercy of fate, and it may seem irrational upon reflection, but our ordinary moral attitudes would be unrecognizable without it. We judge people for what they actually do or fail to do, not just for what they would have done if circumstances had been different. Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," Moral Questions (Cambridge 1991). chap. 3.
i) It's a matter of "circumstantial luck" that some people commit atrocities while others lead decent lives. If their situations were reversed, their conduct would be reversed.
ii) In addition, this often involves circumstances beyond their control. The situation in which they find themselves. They didn't create the situation.
iii) I don't quite agree with Nagel's conclusion. As a matter of penology, we punish people for what they actually do or fail to do, not for what they would have done if circumstances had been different. That's in part because, unlike God, we lack counterfactual knowledge. In addition, penology is largely practical. About social incentives and disincentives rather than ultimate justice.
iv) But from the standpoint of eschatological justice, which concerns itself with meting out what people deserve, the considerations are different. It's not so much that they are directly judged by what they might have done or failed to do, but what counterfactual scenarios expose about their character defects.
While it could perhaps be debatable as to whether or not counterfactual evil will be punished in hell, it seems certain from Luke 10:13-14 that counterfactual righteousness mitigates some of the punishment, else how could it be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon (who would have repented) than for Bethsaida?
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I think your final sentence hits the nail on the head. What is being punished in hell is the sinner, not the sin. People's actions are derived from their fundamental self--their nature--and this is the entire reason that "by your fruits you shall know them" is even possible. It's that aspect, the nature of the tree itself, that causes the separation between man and God, not the fruit which merely demonstrates what kind of tree it is. In other words, bad fruit does not make a bad tree, but rather a bad tree makes bad fruit.
So if someone would have committed some evil action had they been in a position to do so, it's the very fact that the person is so evil that he would have done that evil action if he could have that deserves condemnation. Simply having lacked the opportunity to act in the world that is instantiated does not change the *being* of the one who would have acted. And that is consistent with the passage cited above, given that the people of Tyre and Sidon had the character that if they had seen the miracles they would have repented, and thus were superior down to their very ontology to the citizens of Bethsaida.
This brings to mind the further, deeper analysis of why the farmer in that old Aesop's warmed up the snake:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18802
TLDR:
--Every atrocity is proof of suffering. Every crime reveals a tormented soul. The worst monsters must have endured more abuse than we could possibly imagine. Evil is saintly and good is privileged.
That is the problem of the farmer who believes that inside he is really a snake, and the snake who believes he is really a farmer. For if there is no difference between good and evil, but that those who do good have had good done to them, and those who do evil, have had evil done to them-- then we can welcome in the snakes and all will be well because we are all snakes inside. And it is only by warming snakes, that we change that.
This in essence is the worldview of liberalism. This is the key to much of its madness. And so they pick up the snake, and are bitten and die, wondering why their worldview which seemed so right, proved to be so wrong.--