"Hell, Calvinism, and those wretched Dwarfs"

I'll begin by quoting Reppert's entire post (for the sake of context) before commenting:

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You die a faithful believer, you are ushered into heaven, and as you begin to sing your song in the heavenly choir, you notice the people in the fires of hell, suffering eternal torment wailing and gnashing their teeth. Your initial reaction is to

A) Feel sorry for them, and ask, as Lucy did concerning the Dwarves in the Last Battle, what can be done for the poor wretches.

B) Sing louder, praising God that while God's glory is demonstrated in the just punishment of the wicked, you reflect on the wonderful graciousness of your own salvation, that you were spared, by grace, the punishment that you otherwise would have received.

I'm A all the way, which makes me a lousy Calvinist.

This is the passage from the Last Battle.


“Aslan,” said Lucy through her tears, “could you — will you — do something for these poor Dwarfs?
“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised the golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.”
But soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at least they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding nose, they all said:
“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.

This is the only conception of hell that has ever made any sense to me. But perhaps there is another option Aslan isn't considering here. Maybe Aslan can perform and act of irresistible grace and convert the dwarfs into dwarfs who are for Aslan as well as for the dwarfs, and can release them from the prison of their own minds. Or predestined that they never get into that state of mind in the first place. If either of those is a plausible alternative, then Aslan's reply to Lucy collapses.

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/06/hell-calvinism-and-those-wretched.html

1.It isn’t clear to me why Reppert singles out Calvinism on the attitude of the saints towards the fate of the damned.

I don’t think Calvin had a fundamentally different view of hell than Wesley or Moody or Charles Fuller or Charles Stanley or W. A. Criswell or Robert Bellarmine, &c.

A Calvinist believes that God predestined the damned to be in hell, but Calvinism doesn’t have a distinctive view of what hell like. Supralapsarian Calvinism has a theodicean explanation for hell, but that doesn’t affect what hell is like.

As for the attitude of the saints towards the damned, does Reppert think that Calvinism has a unique position on this issue? To my knowledge, that’s not the case.

Mind you, it’s fine with me if Reppert wants to use Calvinism as the standard of comparison. But if, in this case, he’s picking on Calvinism because he thinks it represents a unique and uniquely repellent view of hell, then I’d be curious to know his source of information.

2.There’s the addition question of what damnatory model Reppert is targeting. Literal flames? Actual gnashing of teeth?

In my opinion, this is picture language.

3.Is hell a torture chamber? Is that the model he’s targeting?

I don’t think you can infer that from the picturesque descriptions of Scripture.

4.As far as I can see, what makes hell hellish is not the place, but the people. If there is an element of “torment” in hell, it’s not because the damned are tormented by their hellish surroundings, but because the damned are tormented by their hellish companions.

5.I’d add that people who have the best of everything can be perfectly wretched.

6.Apropos (4)-5), I have no particular reason to think that hell is uniformly one way or the other. I think it’s unending, and I think that it’s a terribly despairing way to spend eternity–but beyond that I don’t assume that all the damned have the same experience.

7.Then there’s the further assumption that the saints are specifically aware of the damned. Once again, though, I think that gets carried away with picture language.

Which view of hell is Reppert targeting? A kind of zoo which the saints go on tours for the entertainment value?

If we clear away the figurative window-dressing, to what extent would the saints even be aware of the damned? Speaking for myself, I doubt they have any direct awareness of the damned.

And I think their specific knowledge of the damned would be severely limited. Of all the billions of human beings who ever lived and died, the fraction that you and I are individually aware of is infinitesimal. It comes down to two tiny little groups: celebrities and personal acquaintances.

In their case, I’d only be obliquely aware of them in the negative sense that I’d be aware of their absence. I wouldn’t see them in heaven. I’d register the fact that they are missing.

8.I’m also not sure why I’d have to have the same attitude towards the handful of the damned I even know about.

There’s no antecedent reason, as far as I can see, why I should feel exactly the same way about Josef Mengele as I would about the classmate I barely knew in high school.

So the initial problem with Reppert’s question is that it’s staggering under a load of dubious assumptions–assumptions which skew the preferred answer.

9.Having said all that, I’d add that one of the refrains running through the pages of Scripture is “How Long, O Lord?” Throughout the Bible there’s a yearning for divine justice.

If some of us can’t identify with that yearning, it’s because we’ve been blessed to lead a pretty charmed existence. But if, instead of sweet, girlish little Lucy, we’re talking about a survivor of a concentration camp–and if, instead of cute little dwarves, we’re talking about Josef Megele, then the tearful sentiments expressed by Lucy are a decadent luxury which only the pampered few can indulge while they stroll through the gardens of Versailles.