Will we tell them it's a false hope?

Jeffrey Long, a prominent researcher in the field of near-death experiences (NDEs), recently did an interview with Danny Jones. Long has collected a large database of NDEs at the NDERF web site. He and his collection of NDEs are often mentioned in discussions of NDEs and related phenomena. I want to comment on some significant parts of his recent interview with Jones.

The Growth Of Sin In The Afterlife

"But if sin in the retrospect be the sting of death, what must sin in the prospect be? My friends, we do not often enough look at what sin is to be. We see what it is; first the seed, then the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. It is the wish, the imagination, the desire, the sight, the taste, the deed; but what is sin in its next development? We have observed sin as it grows; we have seen it, at first, a very little thing, but expanding itself until it has swelled into a mountain. We have seen it like 'a little cloud, the size of a man's hand,' but we have beheld it gather until it covered the skies with blackness, and sent down drops of bitter rain. But what is sin to be in the next state? We have gone so far, but sin is a thing that cannot stop. We have seen whereunto it has grown, but whereunto will it grow? for it is not ripe when we die; it has to go on still; it is set going, but it has to unfold itself forever. The moment we die, the voice of justice cries, 'Seal up the fountain of blood; stop the stream of forgiveness; he that is holy, let him be holy still; he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.' And after that, the man goes on growing filthier and filthier still; his lust developes itself, his vice increases; all those evil passions blaze with tenfold more fury, and, amidst the companionship of others like himself, without the restraints of grace, without the preached word, the man becomes worse and worse; and who can tell whereunto his sin may grow?" (Charles Spurgeon)

How The Afterlife Completes And Makes More Sense Of This Life

"Many murderers have died in their beds unpunished; where then is the righteousness of God? Yea, ofttimes a murderer guilty of fifty murders is beheaded once; where then shall he suffer punishment for the forty and nine? Unless there is a judgment and a retribution after this world, thou chargest God with unrighteousness. Marvel not, however, because of the delay of the judgment; no combatant is crowned or disgraced, till the contest is over; and no president of the games ever crowns men while yet striving, but he waits till all the combatants are finished, that then deciding between them he may dispense the prizes and the chaplets. Even thus God also, so long as the strife in this world lasts, succours the just but partially, but afterwards He renders to them their rewards fully." (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 18:4)

We Must Give Pain To Our Hearers

"I know that a chill comes over you on hearing these things; but what am I to do? For this is God's own command, continually to sound these things in your ears, where He says, 'Charge this people;' and ordained as we have been unto the ministry of the word, we must give pain to our hearers, not willingly but on compulsion. Nay rather, if you will, we shall avoid giving you pain. For saith He, 'if thou do that which is good, fear not:' [Romans 13:3] so that it is possible for you to hear me not only without ill-will, but even with pleasure….The argument is irksome and pains the hearer: were it only by my own feelings, I know this. For indeed my heart is troubled and throbs; and the more I see the account of hell confirmed, the more do I tremble and shrink through fear. But it is necessary to say these things lest we fall into hell." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On First Corinthians, 9:1-2)

He refers to church leaders and hell, but his comments also have a broader application. There are a lot of subjects that get discussed much less than they should. People are overly interested in short-term comforts and conveniences and being liked and respected and having a higher rather than lower social status, especially among their relatives. If you love people, you'll bring some pain into their lives in these contexts.

Arguing For Hell

We've written a lot over the years in support of a traditional Christian view of hell. See, for example, pages 145-57 of The End Of Infidelity, where Steve Hays and I responded to Keith Parsons on the subject. We address a lot of issues there (objections to the fiery images of hell in scripture and later Christian tradition, whether everybody in hell will suffer equally, how many people will go there, whether children go there, etc.). There's other relevant material in the archives of this blog.

I recently heard Greg Koukl discuss the view that hell is self-perpetuating, in the sense that hell will keep going because people in hell will keep sinning. He thinks highly of the view, but isn't committed to it and isn't aware of any Biblical passage affirming it. However, he refers to how Amy Hall, who works with him at Stand To Reason, advocates the view. I advocate it as well, and I briefly discuss what I consider some Biblical support for it in the section of The End Of Infidelity cited above.

And I want to highlight a point about hell that's often neglected. It's common for people to say that they reject a particular organized religion or organized religion more broadly because of what it teaches about hell. Or it will be suggested that nobody would believe in hell if they weren't told to believe in it by a religious book, religious authority figures, and so on. It's common to assert that some religious belief or another, whether hell or something else, was fabricated by religious authorities to control people, influence them, or whatever.

For a Christian, the teaching of scripture on hell is our primary reason for accepting the concept and a sufficient reason for accepting it. But the extrabiblical evidence has some significance.

We've occasionally discussed some of the philosophical issues associated with hell. For example, as discussed above, if sinning continues in hell, then hell would be self-perpetuating in that sense, even if one were to reject the concept of one sin warranting eternal punishment. And philosophical arguments aren't equivalent to organized religion.

Several years ago, I wrote an article on hellish near-death experiences (NDEs). As I document there, hellish NDEs are more common than is often suggested. I suspect the large majority of people, in fact, underestimate how common such NDEs are. They vary widely, but some of them do involve a hell that's perceived as lengthy or eternal or that has some other characteristic that people object to when that characteristic is taught by an organized religion.

The significance of such NDEs will be different for different people. I'll provide some examples.

Some people have a view of the afterlife that's largely shaped by paranormal phenomena. For those who hold the highest sort of view of the veridicality of NDEs, the evidence from hellish NDEs will be more significant accordingly.

But even for those who hold a more subjective view of NDEs (as I do), they offer some support for the concept of hell. Even if NDEs are generally something like a supernatural dream or supernatural virtual reality, a state the soul enters when released from the body by some mechanism, it doesn't follow that every NDE is of that nature. One or more could be some sort of highly objective foretaste of the afterlife, whether it involves traveling there, so to speak, a vision, or whatever else. And the fact that God allows people to have hellish NDEs, even if all of them are highly subjective (something I don't see how we could prove), demonstrates that God isn't of such a nature as to not let anybody have such an experience. It would be similar to how the existence of wars, genocide, famine, natural disasters, etc. casts doubt on views of God that have him being highly accommodating to our intuitions, our preferences, our practices as parents, and so on. If your God wouldn't allow something like genocide or famine, then your God doesn't exist. And if your God wouldn't allow anybody to experience a hellish NDE, then your God doesn't exist. Similarly, the degree to which hellish NDEs occur tells us the degree to which God is willing to let such things happen. At a minimum, hellish NDEs increase the plausibility of hell.

As the thread I've linked above mentions (read the comments section as well, since there's some relevant material there), people who have hellish NDEs seem to report them less than people who have heavenly NDEs report theirs. Given the difficulty involved in reporting a hellish NDE, such as the shame involved, there's more reason to accept the sincerity of the people reporting such accounts accordingly. (I don't deny that other factors have to be taken into account, such as whether somebody sells a book about his hellish NDE or makes money from it in some other way. But the fact that we take such factors into account doesn't mean that we don't take the other factors I've mentioned into account as well.) Some people have a conversion experience, involving some kind of major change in their life, as a result of a hellish NDE, as discussed in the thread linked above, so that's another factor that adds to the credibility of such accounts.

Can We Talk about Death?

https://www.reformation21.org/blog/can-we-talk-about-death

All hell breaks loose

1. A putative evidence for reincarnation are cases of individuals who have corroborated memories of a past life. I haven't examined any case-studies to verify that claim, but suppose we grant the phenomenon for the sake of argument. Christians often default to demonic possession as the explanation. Suppose we consider that first. Here's one objection:

He accentuates the fact (if it is a fact) that cases of reincarnation involve personal continuity whereas cases possession involve personal discontinuity. 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/possession-reincarnation.html

A problem with Almeder's objection is the basis on which he makes those classifications. It seems to be circular. Do the phenomena themselves provide evidence for that distinction, or is he applying his classifications a priori to the phenomena, where he simply assumes the continuity/discontinuity distinction? How does he know possession is inconsistent with less continuity?

There are, however, other objections to the demonic explanation. Offhand, there's no reason to assume a correlation between a particular demon and a particular decedent whose memories a living person shares. Why would a demon have such intimate knowledge of the decedent? The demon might have such knowledge if both the decedent and the living person who shares those memories are possessed by the same demon, but we'd need evidence that's the case.

2. A more direct explanation for why some people have memories of dead people (assuming, ex hypothesi, that's the case) is that the souls of damned (i.e. human souls) sometimes take possession of the living. 

Some Christians object because they don't think the damned are allowed to contact the living. But there's no theological reason to deny that possibility. The church age is a mixed up time. The saints and the damned aren't separated in this life. The realm of light makes incursions into the realm of darkness while the realm of darkness makes incursions into the realm of  light–like a lighthouse at night. 

The ability of damned souls to contact the living doesn't mean hell has a back door, if we're using "hell" in the technical sense of the final state of the damned. An absolute separation between the two groups only takes place at the day of judgment, not the moment of death.

"Distressing Near-Death Experiences: The Basics"

A brief overview of hellish NDEs (2014) from NDE researchers Nancy Bush and Bruce Greyson, MD at the University of Virginia.

Should we warn children about hell?

Looming large in many deconversion accounts are apostates who complain that their parents terrorized them by threatening them with hell. Their childhood was haunted by fear of God. Should Christian parents warn children about the danger of hell? 

i) Christian pedagogy, like pedagogy in general, needs to be age-appropriate, suited to the cognitive development of children. What we teach a 5-year-old and what we teach an 15-year old may be two different things. We may save some teachings for a later age.

ii) There's certainly a point at which the doctrine of hell should certainly be part of their instruction in the Christian faith. And they can also pick that up on their own when they're old enough to read an adult version of the Bible. 

iii) Is "warning" children about the danger of hell a euphemism for threatening children with hell when they misbehave? The whole issue of whether any children are in peril of hell is an open question in theology. I don't think we have sufficient revelation to answer that question with any degree of certainty. I don't think we should issue a warning unless we have good reason to think they're at risk. Threats should be credible threats, not empty threats. 

iv) It can also be just lazy parental disciple to threaten young children with hell. Especially for childish misbehavior that's quite unlikely to rise to the level of damnable offenses. How much of that is just an expression of parental exasperation, because it's so easy to threaten them with hell? 

v) What about adolescents and teenagers? Do they need to be warned about hell? One question is whether there's a distinction between teaching them about hell and warning them about hell. If they already understand the nature of hell, and the believe it, do they also need a personal parenting warning? I mean, just reading about hell in the Bible will acquaint them with warnings about hell.

vi) Apropos (v), do you need to be warned not to stick your fingers in a blender, then push the start button? If you know what a blender is, you don't need a warning over and above your understanding of the blender not to stick your fingers inside when it's running. 

vii) I think what young children need is not to fear God but to be taught to love and trust God. Taught that God is someone to turn to in time of need. Or pray to for the needs of others. Young children need a sense of security. 

viii) It might be objected that just as it's proper and necessary for young children to both love and fear their parents, the same holds true for God. But I think the comparison breaks down. Although God can manifest himself to children directly, I think God is ordinarily an abstraction for children in a way that parents are not. If, say, Christian parents must spank a misbehaving child, that will be followed by an act of reconciliation–reaffirming their love for the child. That's very tangible in a way that a child's relationship with God generally is not. 

Of course, above a certain age, children should cultivate a more complete and adult understanding of God and hell, which includes a God-fearing attitude, as well as love, trust, devotion. 

BTW, my parents never threatened me with hell, so my own position isn't in reaction to my childhood. 

Eschatological genocide

@RandalRauser

Some Christians seem to view the relationship between heaven & hell as being like a luxury resort beside a slum of misery. All the people holidaying at the resort have a wonderful time because a massive wall blocks out the misery just on the other side. That's a terrible picture.

https://twitter.com/RandalRauser/status/1249841346862395392

i) That's pretty rich coming from the likes of Rauser. After all, Rauser's an annihilationist. In Rauser's celestial resort, all the people holidaying have an even better time. Their view isn't blocked by an ugly wall. Rather, they enjoy an unobstructed view of the scenic countryside because God zapped the slum-dwellers out of existence. 

ii) It's ironic that Rauser constantly defames the OT as endorsing "genocide". What is annihilationism if not eschatological genocide? 

iii) BTW, notice that Rauser can never bring himself to discuss damnation in moral categories. 

Locked on the inside

1. In this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMCDMvNRQUM

apostate Randal Rauser takes issue with the view popularized by C. S. Lewis that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. Keep in mind that Rauser is an annihilationist with a soft spot for universalism, so he's attacking Lewis's position to attack everlasting punishment. 

2. Lewis's idea is that hell is justifiable because it's self-imposed exile. Self-inflicted suffering/misery. The damned choose hell. 

Rauser objects in part on exegetical grounds. Although there's an element of truth to the fact that God turns some sinners over to self-destructive behavior (Rom 1), the Bible also depicts God as the agent of judgment. 

3. Rauser then objects to the justification of hell based on the notion that it's self-inflicted, by using two examples: solitary confinement and people who practice self-harm.

4. There are some problems with his comparison vis-a-vis solitary confinement:

i) Inmates in solitary confinement don't choose to be in solitary confinement. Indeed, they hate it.

ii) To my knowledge,  the purpose of solitary confinement isn't typically punitive but to control inmates who don't play by the rules. Inmates who attack prison guards or attack other inmates. They are separated from the general population because they don't get along with anyone else. They are too disruptive to fit into the prison regime.

In addition, some high-value witnesses are put in solitary confinement for their own protection as they wait to testify at trial. So his parallel breaks down at several points. 

iii) Rauser's second example concerns individuals who suffer from pathological self-loathing. They resort to self-harm to temporarily release emotional and psychological stressors.

He cites a personal anecdote about a high school girl cutting herself in the kitchen. He and others took the knife away. It would be wrong to stand by and do nothing just because it was self-inflicted harm.

Of course that's true but Rauser typically omits a key consideration. Intervention is morally mandated in the case of "cutters" because they are mentally ill. It's for their own protection. 

But the comparison falls apart in the case of the damned because they aren't suffering through no fault of their own. Damnation isn't a misfortune. That's quite different from someone whose actions are self-destructive but blameless due to exculpatory or extenuating circumstances like mental illness. There are no mitigating factors in the case of the damned. 

5. In addition, Rauser blurs the distinction between self-inflicted suffering or misery from self-inflicted punishment. But while suffering or misery can be punitive, suffering or misery can also be innocent or unjust. So these are not equivalent categories. Just desert is not a necessary condition of suffering or misery.

6. It's revealing how Rauser oscillates between moralism and amorality. Rauser is very moralistic and judgmental when it comes to things he disapproves of, like OT ethics, but when he attacks everlasting punishment, he switches to amoral illustrations which leave guilt and retributive justice out of consideration. 

Bishop Barron Q/A

This month, Bishop Barron did another Q/A, this time from non-Catholics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_dQOHyfts

1. I didn't watch the whole thing since not all of the questions interest me. He did a pretty good job of fielding the question about alleged pagan parallels because Jesus and mythic heroes. 

2. He also gave an adroit answer to how a loving God can send people to hell: 

It's like someone at a party, everyone is having a great time, but you've decided, because you're in a kind of a funk, to sit sullenly in the corner and refuse to participate. Not only are you happy in yourself but the party around you is making you more unhappy. If you're in a really bad frame of mind, who are the most annoying people? Those who are in a good mood.

We're often our own worst enemies. Drug addicts. Choosing contrary to self-interest. 

There's a grain of truth to those explanations. They're useful up to a point.

But what was glaringly absent from his justification is any reference to the punitive function of hell, even though that's fundamental to the biblical concept. 

In Scripture, damnation isn't primarily about rejecting God's love but retributive punishment from wrongdoing. The theme of eschatological justice, which is hell's primary rationale in Scripture, has disappeared from Barron's concept of damnation.

That may be because Barron is a hopeful universalist, so he believes in remediation rather than retribution. 

In contemporary Catholicism as well as contemporary freewill theism, the concept of damnation and warrant for damnation has been recast in terms of love rather than justice. It's all about rejecting God's love, not about just deserts.  

Self-inflicted punishment

@RandalRauser

Christians sometimes defend the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment by saying that hell is self-imposed (rather than divinely-imposed) torment. But it is doubtful that this qualification helps much. 

It's true that that in itself is an insufficient justification. The criterion of self-affliction is too facile to stand on its own, although it can be a morally relevant factor.

If a person was engaging in egregious self-harm, wouldn't you restrain them, forcibly if necessary? Hell on this view is surely the ultimate form of self-harm. And we are to suppose nobody intervenes for eternity? 

The problem here is that Rauser is recasting the issue as if we were dealing with innocent victims of mental illness. People who engage in self-harm through no fault of their own. He uses the morally neutral language of "person" rather than the "wicked". Rauser's outlook is amoral. 

If, however, a terrorist was about to accidentally step on a cobra or a serial killer was about to accidentally step into quick sand, I wouldn't intervene to save them from self-inflicted harm. Hell is about retributive punishment, not misfortune. 

Does annihilation fit the crime?

A sequel to my prior post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/self-refuting-annihilationism.html

One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime.

http://rethinkinghell.com/explore/

Does annihilation fit the crime? What are ways in which a punishment is fitting or unfitting, proportionate or disproportionate, in relation to the offense?

Here the annihilationist takes issue with the temporal disparity. According to that objection, eternal punishment is quantitatively disproportionate. I already addressed that in the prior post. 

But what about about punishment that's qualitatively fitting or unfitting? Punishment in kind. Consider the concept of poetic justice or lex talons, where the punishment is ironically akin to the offense. The perpetrator suffers the same kind of thing he inflicted or intended to inflict on his victims. 

A classic example is financial restitution for a property crime. Here the punishment corresponds to the nature of the crime. 

To take a harsher example, if a hacker makes a living by ID theft, it is fitting that he should experience ID theft. Likewise, if a mugger beats up the victim, it's fitting that he should undergo public flogging. A violent punishment for a violent crime. If an arsonist burns down someone's house with everything in it, it is fitting if he should suffer the same fate.

Here the principle is proportionality in kind as well as degree. That can be taken to an inhumane or mechanical extreme. Lex talionis is controversial in some circles, but it's intuitively popular. A straightforward concept of just desert. It's mainly frowned upon by overbred critics who've been insulted from certain kinds of harm. At a safe distance, they can afford to be disapproving.  

Compare that to everlasting oblivion. How does that have anything in common with the offense? Isn't that utterly arbitrary in relation to the nature of the wrongdoing? How does everlasting oblivion correspond to different kinds of sin? 

Self-refuting annihilationism

One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime.

http://rethinkinghell.com/explore/

I quoted this once before in a different context, but now I'd like to comment on the objection directly. This is, of course, a stock objection to everlasting punishment. I've responded to that objection on many occasions, so I having nothing to new say on that front. 

What's striking about the objection in this context is that an annihilationist organization is lodging the objection. And in that context, the objection is ironic and incongruous. 

1. How is everlasting oblivion a proportionate punishment for temporal sins? Isn't never-ending oblivion out of proportion to whatever a sinner did in a few decades on earth? 

So the objection backfires. If you grant the principle, it cuts both ways. It cuts against any kind of infinite punishment for finite wrongdoing, whether infinite conscious misery or infinite oblivion. Given the principle, both kinds of punishment are vastly incommensurate with the offense. 

2 Moreover, annihilationism is inequitable in another regard, because the damned are punished equally regardless of their sins. All the damned suffer the same fate: eternal oblivion. So the punishment is indiscriminate.

If memory serves, some annihilationists try to rectify this inequity by posting that God doesn't annihilate all the damned instantly. Some undergo temporary punishment before they are zapped.

That, however, doesn't solve the problem. There are different factors that make punishment punitive. Memory can be a factor. Some people continue to be haunted by what happened to them even if its a thing of the past. Some people never recover from psychological injuries. 

Conversely, foreboding can be a factor. Dread of what awaits you. The fear that things will never get any better. You will never put the worst behind you. 

But even if some of the damned suffer temporary punishment prior to annihilation, oblivion erases memory and foreboding alike. They can't fear the future and they can't be haunted by the past. Once they cease to exist, they can't suffer at all. So, at the end of the day, annihilationism metes out a disproportionate punishment in two respects. 

Two-faced annihilationism

Sic

Evangelical conditionalists hold to a view of hell that results from a firm commitment to the truthfulness and perennial relevance of the Bible, and not from a desire to have its message be more palatable to our own culture.  We are not seeking to construct a more tolerable version of hell, as though primarily motivated by an emotional aversion to the idea of eternal torment.

http://rethinkinghell.com/statement/

Et Non

One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime. Philosophical and subjective intuitions about the justice of God are certainly not to override what the scriptures teach, but such reasoned counter-indications at least ought to warn us and make us reconsider our current understanding of scripture.

Bertrand Russell, articulating the sentiments of many who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, said, “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that he believed in hell.” (Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 17.) Charles Darwin said, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so . . . men who do not believe . . . will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 87.)

Few reasons for rejecting Christianity are given more often than the prospect that the lost face an eternity of torment as punishment for their sins. Many people cannot conceive of worshiping a God so malicious (in their mind) as to cause endless suffering forever. Others simply scoff at the message of Christ, finding the traditional view of hell to be an absurdly ludicrous, laughable notion.

http://rethinkinghell.com/explore/

Reasons for hell

Recently I was listening to philosophical theologians give bad answers on hell. I've probably discussed most of this before at one time or another, but it may be useful to summarize them in one place. By way of preliminary comment, the primary reason Christians believe in hell is because they believe what the Bible says about hell. It isn't necessary to provide an independent, philosophical defense of hell. It's useful in apologetics and evangelism to be able to do that, but the warrant for believing in hell doesn't rely on that.

1. Infinite God

i) A typical objection goes like this: how can a just God mete out infinite punishment for finite sin? How can the sins of a lifetime merit infinite punishment? The typical reply is that a sin against an infinite God is infinitely culpable, and merits infinite punishment. 

That's a popular answer because it's compact and uses the same principle as the critic, only turning that principle against the objection. But as it stands, it's a bad argument: 

ii) It equivocates over the nature of infinitude. The objection is to a quantitative infinite punishment. A temporal infinite. Everlasting punishment. For finite, discrete sins. 

However, to say a sin may be infinitely culpable swaps in a qualitative concept. An infinite degree of badness. I'm not sure if that's even meaningful. 

In addition, what does it mean in this context to say that God is "infinite." In what morally relevant sense is God infinite in this argument? Perhaps what is meant is that God is infinitely good, so that a sin against an infinitely good God is infinitely bad, meriting infinite punishment. "Infinite" in the sense that God is as good as anything can be. Indeed, better than anything else. The uppermost maxima of goodness or exemplar of goodness. Something like that. 

When you try to unpack the argument, it gets messy. I don't think this is a good argument as it stands. It does, however, contain a grain of truth, so I think it can be rehabilitated in some respect:

iii) There is a moral principle where the same action may be worse depending on who you do it to. It's worse to betray a friend than a stranger. It's worse to mistreat your elderly mother than to mistreat the telemarketer. So there can be degrees of culpability, not due to the action itself, but who it's directed to. Taken to a logical extreme, the argument is that we owe the most to God, we have the greatest obligation to God, so sinning against God is the worst kind of sin. 

iv) There is, though, another complication to this argument. In what sense can we sin against God? We can't harm God. 

It is, however, possible, to wrong someone without harming them. A thankless, malicious son can dishonor his father's memory. Suppose his dad was a conscientious father, but the son spreads scurrilous rumors about his late father that destroy his father's reputation. In one sense it's too late to harm is father. But there's still something terribly wrong about the action. 

2. Eternal existence

i) A basic reason hell is forever is because human beings are forever. If human beings have an immortal soul (not to mention the resurrection of the body), then whatever happens to human beings will last forever. They have an unending destiny because they have an unending existence. So whatever happens to them will go on forever. It continues because they continue. Annihilationists duck that by denying that human beings are naturally immortal. 

ii) Now this is more of a necessary rather than sufficient condition for eternal punishment. In principle, it could be a argued that while whatever happens to them is never-ending, it needn't be the same thing forever. It can change. That's the contention of the universalist, as well as exponents of postmortem salvation. That requires a separate response. 

It is, however, important to make the initial point that one reason damnation is inescapable is because existence is inescapable. Damnation never ceases because the damned never cease to exist. 

3. Apropos (2), a supporting argument is that damnation is forever because the damned continue to sin. An objection to this argument is that people have a capacity for change. 

That can be true, but what causes them to change? In Christian theology, God's grace is transformative. If, however, God withholds his grace from the damned, then they don't get better. If anything, they get worse. More hardened. 

4. Apropos (3), why doesn't God enable the damned to change? Why doesn't God grant them the ability to repent? 

This goes to another principle in Christian theology: in terms of eschatological judgment, some sinners get what they deserve while others get better than they deserve (no one gets worse than they deserve).

The reason the damned never leave hell is because they don't deserve to leave hell. They don't deserve a better life. That's their just desert, and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, there's something right with God.

In Christian theology, God doesn't treat all equally-undeserving sinners alike. He draws a distinction. You shouldn't expect to get better than you deserve. To get just what you deserve is the essence of justice. They don't get out of hell because they deserve nothing better. They are in their natural element. 

There's something nihilistic, something morally subversive–even diabolical–about the idea that no matter what anyone ever does, it makes no ultimate different to what happens to them. To treat good and evil alike. 

5. Suppose (ex hypothesi) that human agents start out as a clean slate. By that I mean, suppose that initially they have no rap sheep. Their moral record is spotless. 

The first time I do something evil, that puts me behind. Because I can't change my past, if I do something evil, I can't get back to where I was before I did evil. I can't get out from under that. If I did something evil, then it will always be the case that I did something evil. That's indelible. It doesn't fade with the passage of time. I don't become less guilty. Once I do something evil, there's no way to put that behind me. It's permanent. Evil has a timeless moral quality. There's no decay rate. The past is irrevocable. 

And the more evil things I do, the further behind I fall. A lifetime of cumulative wrongdoing. 

This is why vicarious atonement and penal substitution are fixtures of Christian redemption. Without a Redeemer who atones for your sin, on your behalf and in your stead, your culpability because increasingly hopeless. 

6. Counterfactual guilt

Another factor I've discussed, although it has yet to catch on, is that it's very nearsighted to limit culpability to the sins of a lifetime. The sins we commit are related to our circumstances. Change the circumstances and we'd commit a different set of sins. It's not so much about committing a particular sin, but the character of the sinner. Put him in a different situation and he will commit different sins. It's arbitrary to exclude from consideration all the wrongdoing he'd commit if the opportunity presented itself, and he could get away with it, as if guilt and innocence in God's eyes is a matter of lucking or unlucky timing or setting. Wrong place. Wrong time. Just missed it. Had you been there an hour sooner or later. 

7. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, critics of hell approach this issue from the wrong end. In Christian theology, the default assumption is that sinners are already lost. They didn't start out in the right direction, then take a wrong turn. Rather, sinners are in a lost condition from the outset. They don't have to do anything extra to go to hell. They didn't lose their way at some point along the journey. There was no fork in the road where they made a fatal moral choice. To be saved requires divine intervention. 

It's like a movie villain. He's already a villain when the movie begins. There's no backstory about how or when he became a villain. Does it have something to do with his childhood? Did he gradually turn to evil? Was there a crossroads where he made a decisive choice for evil?

That's not where the story begins. As far as the plot goes, there was never a time when he wasn't on the wrong path. 

"The infernalists"

This is at the heart of Hart’s unforgiving rhetoric in his book towards the “infernalists”. We no longer live in Tertullian’s or Dante’s world where we can look gleefully upon our enemies writhing in unquenchable flames and think that they are receiving their just comeuppance. It’s simply “not done”, no lady or gentleman (or their contemporary “woke” counterpart) would deign to sink so low. I can’t help but think that Hart’s Episcopalian upbringing enters into all of this. Had he been raised in, for instance, a Catholic barrio having to fight off three separate bullies just to get home (no idea why that example came to mind), maybe he would be far more hesitant to condemn the ideas of Christians through the centuries who concluded that, yes, there are people who are indeed that bad.

https://arturovasquez.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/david-bentley-harts-end-of-history/

Why do people believe in hell?

I'm going to comment on an article by David Bentley Hart:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/christianity-religion-hell-bible.html

He's an essayist and Eastern Orthodox theologian. One of those chic fashionable theologians like Miroslav Volf or Eugene Peterson with a following among those who view themselves as progressive Christian cognoscenti. This is their idea of intellectually respectable Christianity. The Protestant counterpart to Catholic Thomists. 

It raises a troubling question of social psychology. It's comforting to imagine that Christians generally accept the notion of a hell of eternal misery not because they're emotionally attached to it but because they see it as a small, inevitable zone of darkness peripheral to the larger spiritual landscape that–viewed in its totality–they find ravishingly lovely. And this is true of many. 

i) I don't have a precise idea regarding the scale of damnation, but I hardly think it's small. 

ii) And I regard eternal retributive justice as a necessary background for a moral universe. That's not peripheral. 

But not of all. For a good number of Christians, hell isn't just a tragic shadow cast across one of an otherwise ravishing vista's remoter corners; rather, it's one of the the landscape's most conspicuous and delectable details. 

"Delectable"? 

After all, the idea comes to us in such a ghastly gallery of images: late Augustinianism's unbaptized babes descending in their thrashing billions to perpetual and condign combustion; Dante's exquisitely psychotic dream of twisted, mutilated, broiling souls. St. Francis Xavier morosely informing his weeping Japanese converts that their deceased parents must suffer an eternity of agony.

Hart's tactic is to discredit hell by amalgamating an image of hell based on disparate literary and ecclesiastical traditions. But that's an exercise in misdirection. We can strip away the traditional accretions. The core doctrine goes back to the witness of Scripture. 

Surely it would be welcome news if it turned out that, on the matter of hell, something got garbled in transmission. And there really is room for doubt.

Welcome for whom? Welcome for the wicked? No doubt it would be welcome to the wicked to elude justice in the afterlife as well as this life. 

No truly accomplished NT scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity's opulent mythology of God's eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts. 

The principle of hell isn't "torture" but retributive justice. In some cases that may involve torture. It would be poetic justice for someone who tortured (or ordered the torture of) the innocent in this life to be on the receiving end of the process. But that's not the essence of eschatological punishment. 

It's entirely absent from St. Paul's writings. The only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Cor 3:15). 

How did Hart miss this passage?

4 Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. 5 All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. 6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed (2 Thes 1:5-10).

He goes on to say:

There are a few terrible, surreal, allegorical images of judgment in the Book of Revelation, but nothing that, properly read, yields a clear doctrine of eternal torment. 

So he asserts. But that brushes aside exegetical arguments to the contrary 

Even the frightening language used by Jesus in the Gospels, when read in the original Greek, fails to deliver the infernal dogmas we casually assume to be there. 

He acts like he's the only person who can read the Gospels in the original Greek. 

On the other hand, many NT passages seem–and not metaphorically–to promise the eventual salvation of everyone.  

i) Arminians and universalists help themselves to the same prooftexts. As a Calvinist, the universalist prooftexts present no new or special challenge for me because I interpret them the same way I interpret Arminian prooftexts. I don't have to make any adjustments. I already have a counter-interpretation.

ii) But over above that, there's also the problem of arranging passages into a particular chronological sequence. Consider two eschatological sequences:

a) The dead pass into the intermediate state. On the day of judgment there's the general resurrection. They saints experience everlasting bliss while the wicked experience everlasting misery. 

b) Some of the dead experience postmortem remedial punishment, after which they go to heaven. They pass through a purgatorial hell on the way to heaven.

Biblical eschatology as a consistent (a) sequence. But the universalist sequence is nowhere found in Scripture. Indeed, it requires splicing and rearranging the standard sequence. 

Still, none of that accounts for the deep emotional need many modern Christians seem to have for an eternal hell. And I don't mean those who ruefully accept the idea out of religious allegiance, or whose sense of justice demands that Hitler and Pol Pot get their proper comeuppance, or who think they need the prospect of hell to keep themselves on the straight and narrow. Those aren't the ones who scream and foam in rage at the thought that hell might be only a stage along the way to a final universal reconciliation. 

i) Being the demagogue that he is, Hart has engineered a rhetorical dilemma. He imputes an untoward motive to many Christians who uphold hell. In one sense it's hard to defend yourself against the charge. If you really do harbor untoward motives, you'd deny it. So it's a maliciously circular allegation. 

ii) Then there's the false dichotomy of insinuating that if you believe something because you're supposed to believe it, you can only do so ruefully or grudgingly. If, however, something is true, it may also be morally, emotionally, and/or intellectually satisfying. We can believe something out of duty but also believe it to be good or admirable. In that event we don't even have to reach for duty. 

iii) I suspect that like many Christians, I have mixed feelings about hell. On the one hand I hope all my loved ones are saved. And natural human compassion extends that impulse to many (but not all) strangers.

On the other hand, injustice is galling. A world without ultimate justice mocks the good. Erases the difference between virtue and vice, good and evil. Ironically, universalism is casting the same shadow as atheism in that regard. Nothing you do ultimately makes any difference. Universalism has a nihilistic underbelly in that respect. Like Hinduism and Buddhism, where enlightened reality is beyond good and evil. Nihilism and fatalism go together. 

iv) While universalism has an undoubted element of appeal, there's a coercive quality to the universalist bargain. The offer is that God will save your murdered daughter for a price: only if God also saves the man who murdered her. Save both or damn both. Sophie's Choice transposed to the key of universalism. 

v) Compassion is the ability to care about the plight of those whose misfortunate you haven't personally experienced. Despite that, you imaginatively project yourself into their situation. What if that was me? Paradoxically, while it may be wrong to harbor vengeful feelings toward your personal enemies, if you have any, it can be commendable to wish the worst for someone else's enemies. That's a disinterested kind of vengeance. A longing that justice be done on behalf of others. 

Theological history can boast few ideas more chilling than the claim (of, among others, Thomas Aquinas) that the beatitude of the saved in heaven will be increased by their direct vision of the torments of the damned.

That's another trope that opponents of hell constantly trot out. Again, it's just an ecclesiastical tradition. 

But as long as he brings it up: while it would be wrong for the saints to derive glee from watching the damned suffer forever, there's nothing intrinsically wrong–indeed, there's something intrinsically right–about victims seeing assailants punished. That's not the same thing as hell mounted with cameras so that saints can voyeuristically tune into the miseries of the damned. But when victims see their assailants punished, that's a way to put the ordeal behind them and move on to better things.  

But as awful as that sounds, it may be more honest in its sheer cold impersonality than is the secret pleasure that many of us, at one time or another, hope to derive not from seeing but from being seen by those we leave behind. 

Well that depends. Suppose a Muslim woman converts to Christianity. As punishment she is gang-raped and beheaded. On the day of judgment, is there something wrong with her waving goodbye to her assailants? They watch her turn around and enter the everlasting light of paradise while they are left behind. It sinks in that they were blindly following a false prophet. They never once paused to ask whether there was any decent evidence for Muhammad's prophet pretensions? They used Islam as a pretext for sadism. They were the winners in this life but the losers in the next life. Their victim was the loser in this life but the winner in the next life.

How can we be winners, after all, if there are no losers? Where's the joy in getting into the gated community and the private academy if it turns out the gates are merely decorative and the academic has an inexhaustible scholarship program for the underprivileged? What success can there be that isn't validated by another's failure? What heaven can there be for us without an eternity in which to relish the impotent envy of those outside its walls. 

i) To begin with, the Bible does have a doctrine regarding the reversal of fortunes. 

ii) That said, Hart's imputed motive is twisted. Christian missionaries are like escapees who got out of the war zone but keep going back to rescue others. They don't say, "I made it! To hell with the rest of you!" No, having found the way out, they go back into the hellhole to lead as many of the lost as they can into the light. 

iii) Speaking for myself, when I look forward to the afterlife, it has nothing to do with keeping a tally of the losers. It has nothing to do with thinking about the damned at all.