Purgatory is something I find necessary for Universalism not to descend into cheap grace or minimise evil.
We’re talking about eternity here - by comparison, the few decades we spend down here in this vale of tears are irrelevant. A speck of dust in a galaxy, a rontosecond in a millennium, except smaller and less significant overall than either of those things. One divided by infinity. And any evil that occurs during that nothingth of eternity is therefore equally irrelevant.
If I could make the choice I’d choose the cheapest grace possible, the most sure and certain guarantee of paradise for everyone regardless of anything they do here. I’d make this life one big, stupid, consequence-free do-what-you-bloody-like-who-gives-a-fuck shindig after which everyone gets the prize of eternal paradise.*
Of course, once I’d made all those choices I’d probably go on to get stupendously pissed (UK definition) for about a month, get high as fuck on as many exotic drugs as I could get my grubby little hands on, then top myself so I can be done with this shitrag existence and get on with the eternal paradise part.
All in all it’s a pity I’m not able to make the choice, really. But there it is - We’re all stuck living in a crapsack world with a nonzero possibility of spending eternity in Hell afterwards, and like the OP I have no idea how anyone copes with that.
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*= Hell, I’m not even sure I’d bother with this life at all if I was somehow put in charge of starting existence over from scratch. Just put everyone in paradise from the start. Boom. Mic drop. No pain, ever (unless that’s what floats your boat, I guess). No evil, ever. What’s not to like?
I noticed that when you listed the allegedly horrible things you'd do with a do-whatever-you-like card, that none of them are harmful to anybody else (except possibly indirectly, through their feelings for you). Would you really create a free-for-all that included all-the-abuse-you-want-to-inflict on others, particularly children and the super vulnerable? I can't see it myself, and I doubt you could either, no matter how short a "nothingth of eternity" might seem by comparison. I also suspect you'd not be able to call that sort of evil irrelevant.
One reason is that experiencing that sort of evil FEELS like eternity, and the effects of it last for what feels like another eternity. I really don't think we can ignore the feelings of those subjected to evil during your nothingth of eternity (speaking as a child abuse survivor).
I noticed that when you listed the allegedly horrible things you'd do with a do-whatever-you-like card, that none of them are harmful to anybody else (except possibly indirectly, through their feelings for you). Would you really create a free-for-all that included all-the-abuse-you-want-to-inflict on others, particularly children and the super vulnerable? I can't see it myself, and I doubt you could either, no matter how short a "nothingth of eternity" might seem by comparison. I also suspect you'd not be able to call that sort of evil irrelevant.
But God did create such a free-for-all. Punishment after the fact doesn't change what goes on here, even in the church.
I meant a free-for-all where everybody could do whatever evil they wanted, with absolutely no consequences, and was also aware of that fact. What e we currently have sucks in so many ways, but consequences exist and people know that, even if you rule out the supernatural altogether.
Truly, i think a world like Marvin pictures is impossible if for no other reason than because doing evil causes internal consequences. Take, say, Trump to paradise, and he will still be the kind of person he is, regardless of his surroundings—he’s never going to be happy, is he? My reading of him even now is that he’s miserable—constantly angry, never at peace, and utterly unwilling to do the least thing that might move him closer to peace or happiness—because that would involve working on himself. All the money and power in the world isn’t enough to make him happy. He’s constantly scowling, constantly punishing other people for his unhappiness. It’s awful.
Given that people need to live and work together, the free-for-all you describe, "without consequences," is a social impossibility. It's the fever dream of rich libertarians. But its impossibility is cooked into our DNA.
A streaming show about a fictional afterlife, I think. Multiple people told me I'd enjoy it, but I never got around to watching.
Yes, exactly. Not sure where it is currently streaming. It’s worth a watch, or at least I can vouch for it up through where I left off. It’s also very funny…
I've watched the whole of it. Yes its bizarre and unpredictable, but actually a great series. Think it was on Netflix
As an aside, if you go to the site https://www.justwatch.com/ you can enter the name of a series or film and it'll tell you which platforms carry it (you can also append a two letter iso country code and search for the availability in a country other than the one you are in at the moment.
I noticed that when you listed the allegedly horrible things you'd do with a do-whatever-you-like card, that none of them are harmful to anybody else (except possibly indirectly, through their feelings for you).
I never said they were horrible, just that they're what I'd probably do in such a world. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we go to an eternity of bliss.
Would you really create a free-for-all that included all-the-abuse-you-want-to-inflict on others, particularly children and the super vulnerable? I can't see it myself, and I doubt you could either, no matter how short a "nothingth of eternity" might seem by comparison. I also suspect you'd not be able to call that sort of evil irrelevant.
One reason is that experiencing that sort of evil FEELS like eternity, and the effects of it last for what feels like another eternity. I really don't think we can ignore the feelings of those subjected to evil during your nothingth of eternity (speaking as a child abuse survivor).
I have no intention of belittling your pain, especially as the world I described is not the one in which we actually live.
And as I said in my footnote, if I was going to set up an "eternal paradise for everyone in the next life, no questions asked" system then the obvious next question would be why I would even bother with this brief existence where pain and suffering happen. Why not just put everyone in eternal paradise from the start? Where's the downside?
Making everyone suffer through this dumpster fire of a reality before gaining eternal paradise seems unnecessarily cruel. Making us suffer through it with the possibility of eternal damnation to come if we end up so broken by it that we're unfit for heaven is just sadistic. If I can imagine a system that's better for the people within it than this one then what does that say about God?
It says that you, as countless human beings have before you, created God in a different image of humanity, which is only reasonable, and especially necessary in an age so far removed from the Old and New Testaments. That's my take, of course, comforting as it is.
This sounds like free will with both arms tied behind its back.
Two responses come to mind:
1.) Tempt me with a good time… 😛
Hah! (It was an ironic reference to KarlLB's comment about "Jesus twisting God's smiting arm behind his back".)
2.) Jokes aside, how do you mean? In this concept, the person still has free will, whether they use it to choose God and love and others, or just to serve themselves.
That is a rather constrained free choice - a freer choice would be between either God and love and others, or love and others (but not God). As a storyteller, Lewis is adept at presenting his characters' fate as hanging on simple binary choices. (Maybe free will involves having more than two options.)
The Great Divorce requires us to accept Lewis' caricatures of self-serving individuals, lacking any trace of selflessness, who exist in a bleak parody of society - a society which apparently directly reflects the desires of its inhabitants. Yet it doesn't appear to occur to any of them to help each other, create or appreciate beauty, act with goodness or kindness. In any practical sense, it seems the free will of the inhabitants is significantly constrained. And they have no choice about the weather.
Whatever kind of free will these people have, it isn't the free will that commits itself to loving others - that deals on a daily basis with choices about acting selfishly or unselfishly. Lewis seems to have constructed a world in which the *only* unconstrained choice available is to leave. Back at the quote, the inhabitants aren't choosing to be in Hell, they're failing to choose to leave.
Something I got from reading some of Lesslie Newbigin's works is that we are not so much saved from something as saved for the benefit of others. That they too end up receiving God's free gift of Grace - the gift that we are just 'gift-bearers' of. This helped me a lot.
It seems to me that there are only four possibilities:
There is no afterlife (and therefore either there’s no God or God is irrelevant). Shit just happens, deal with it and try to make it better if you can before the lightbulb of your life goes pop. The upside (if you can call it that) is that our suffering, however severe it may be, is only temporary.
The traditional Heaven/Hell afterlife. Shit still happens, but at least it has a point - albeit the distasteful point of being a sifting mechanism that divides the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the tares. The possibility of Hell if we get it wrong looms over every moral decision we make. How we cope with that is where this thread started.
Universalism, whereby everyone goes to Heaven after they die (with or without a period in Purgatory in between). Awesome in the long term, but makes this life - and therefore our suffering - somewhat pointless.
Reverse Universalism, whereby everyone goes to Hell/Gehenna/Hades after death. All the worst parts of 2 and 3, without even the dubious upside of 1. I don’t think anyone these days actually believes this.
Apart from 1, all options raise questions about the God that created them.
The purpose of this life is being our first opportunity to experience the love of God. The point of growth and experience is to deepen that experience. I just see that continuing after death, in whatever form God has ordained. This is life is not pointless by any means, but neither is it, as I see it, a test environment after which we get assessed. It's just one mode in which we live for a period.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
And what is your preferred alternative stance?
Hmm...
As an evangelical, my stance was that we should spend rather less time talking about what we were saving people *from*, and rather more on what we were saving them *for*. (I've just seen Merry Vole's post. The *for* I had in mind wasn't the benefit of others.)
A (somewhat bleak and uncompromising) perspective is that if someone has confidence that God has created Hell, they should also have confidence that He would use it for its intended purpose.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
This sounds like free will with both arms tied behind its back.
Two responses come to mind:
1.) Tempt me with a good time… 😛
Hah! (It was an ironic reference to KarlLB's comment about "Jesus twisting God's smiting arm behind his back".)
2.) Jokes aside, how do you mean? In this concept, the person still has free will, whether they use it to choose God and love and others, or just to serve themselves.
That is a rather constrained free choice - a freer choice would be between either God and love and others, or love and others (but not God). As a storyteller, Lewis is adept at presenting his characters' fate as hanging on simple binary choices. (Maybe free will involves having more than two options.)
The Great Divorce requires us to accept Lewis' caricatures of self-serving individuals, lacking any trace of selflessness, who exist in a bleak parody of society - a society which apparently directly reflects the desires of its inhabitants. Yet it doesn't appear to occur to any of them to help each other, create or appreciate beauty, act with goodness or kindness. In any practical sense, it seems the free will of the inhabitants is significantly constrained. And they have no choice about the weather.
Whatever kind of free will these people have, it isn't the free will that commits itself to loving others - that deals on a daily basis with choices about acting selfishly or unselfishly. Lewis seems to have constructed a world in which the *only* unconstrained choice available is to leave. Back at the quote, the inhabitants aren't choosing to be in Hell, they're failing to choose to leave.
My responses in order…
If God is the source of love, indeed, Love Himself, then it’s not really a matter of rejecting God but accepting love, in the end. We are told in scripture that if we do not love our neighbor that we see, how can we love God who we don’t see, and also there are the passages talking about people showing kindness and mercy to people in need, or not doing so, and how they treat those people in need is a specific reflection, whether they know it or not, of their relationship to God.
I do agree with both Lewis and traditional Christianity that, in the end, it really will come down to one or the other, an eternity of bliss dwelling in the Love of God, or an eternity of torment in final rejection of God, goodness, and love.
Remember, the people in Hell in The Great Divorce are in Hell. And near the end (spoilers!) the possibility is raised that what the viewer is seeing is the reality behind their choices in this lifetime, not necessarily something after death—or at the end of time. And the name of the most excellent book in question is “The Great Divorce” precisely in response to the title of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” pointing out that a final decision must be made, ultimately, for one or the other.
Lewis sees “a great assembly of gigantic forms…standing…about a little silver table…[with]… little…chessmen…[who] went to and fro…[each a] representative of… one of the great presences that stood by… the immortal souls of those same men and women”.
This vision terrifies Lewis and he asks MacDonald whether “these conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”. His teacher says that you might alternatively say they were “anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things”, but that it would be better to say neither. The important point was that, on this journey, Lewis had seen the choices we make a bit more clearly than he had on earth.
The purpose of this life is being our first opportunity to experience the love of God.
Why couldn’t that happen in Heaven? Why does it require a world packed with evil and pain?
The point of growth and experience is to deepen that experience. I just see that continuing after death, in whatever form God has ordained. This is life is not pointless by any means, but neither is it, as I see it, a test environment after which we get assessed. It's just one mode in which we live for a period.
OK, but it’s also a mode in which we get to experience pain and suffering. What does that add? Wouldn’t it be better for us to never experience it at all?
This sounds like free will with both arms tied behind its back.
Two responses come to mind:
1.) Tempt me with a good time… 😛
Hah! (It was an ironic reference to KarlLB's comment about "Jesus twisting God's smiting arm behind his back".)
2.) Jokes aside, how do you mean? In this concept, the person still has free will, whether they use it to choose God and love and others, or just to serve themselves.
That is a rather constrained free choice - a freer choice would be between either God and love and others, or love and others (but not God). As a storyteller, Lewis is adept at presenting his characters' fate as hanging on simple binary choices. (Maybe free will involves having more than two options.)
The Great Divorce requires us to accept Lewis' caricatures of self-serving individuals, lacking any trace of selflessness, who exist in a bleak parody of society - a society which apparently directly reflects the desires of its inhabitants. Yet it doesn't appear to occur to any of them to help each other, create or appreciate beauty, act with goodness or kindness. In any practical sense, it seems the free will of the inhabitants is significantly constrained. And they have no choice about the weather.
Whatever kind of free will these people have, it isn't the free will that commits itself to loving others - that deals on a daily basis with choices about acting selfishly or unselfishly. Lewis seems to have constructed a world in which the *only* unconstrained choice available is to leave. Back at the quote, the inhabitants aren't choosing to be in Hell, they're failing to choose to leave.
My responses in order…
If God is the source of love, indeed, Love Himself, then it’s not really a matter of rejecting God but accepting love, in the end. We are told in scripture that if we do not love our neighbor that we see, how can we love God who we don’t see, and also there are the passages talking about people showing kindness and mercy to people in need, or not doing so, and how they treat those people in need is a specific reflection, whether they know it or not, of their relationship to God.
I do agree with both Lewis and traditional Christianity that, in the end, it really will come down to one or the other, an eternity of bliss dwelling in the Love of God, or an eternity of torment in final rejection of God, goodness, and love.
Remember, the people in Hell in The Great Divorce are in Hell. And near the end (spoilers!) the possibility is raised that what the viewer is seeing is the reality behind their choices in this lifetime, not necessarily something after death—or at the end of time. And the name of the most excellent book in question is “The Great Divorce” precisely in response to the title of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” pointing out that a final decision must be made, ultimately, for one or the other.
Lewis sees “a great assembly of gigantic forms…standing…about a little silver table…[with]… little…chessmen…[who] went to and fro…[each a] representative of… one of the great presences that stood by… the immortal souls of those same men and women”.
This vision terrifies Lewis and he asks MacDonald whether “these conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”. His teacher says that you might alternatively say they were “anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things”, but that it would be better to say neither. The important point was that, on this journey, Lewis had seen the choices we make a bit more clearly than he had on earth.
Either the choice presented is a clear honest choice - bliss or torment - in which case no-one's going to say "Oh, torment for me then", or it's some kind of trick bloody question where you think you've chosen something else only to get told "sorry - you didn't learn the code - this is actually the Hell door - Going Down!"
Your big problem is this binary extreme opposite two options, and the fact that humans follow a normal distribution for just about any property you can think of.
“Man is perishing. That may be, and if it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate.”
― Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
This sounds like free will with both arms tied behind its back.
Two responses come to mind:
1.) Tempt me with a good time… 😛
Hah! (It was an ironic reference to KarlLB's comment about "Jesus twisting God's smiting arm behind his back".)
2.) Jokes aside, how do you mean? In this concept, the person still has free will, whether they use it to choose God and love and others, or just to serve themselves.
That is a rather constrained free choice - a freer choice would be between either God and love and others, or love and others (but not God). As a storyteller, Lewis is adept at presenting his characters' fate as hanging on simple binary choices. (Maybe free will involves having more than two options.)
The Great Divorce requires us to accept Lewis' caricatures of self-serving individuals, lacking any trace of selflessness, who exist in a bleak parody of society - a society which apparently directly reflects the desires of its inhabitants. Yet it doesn't appear to occur to any of them to help each other, create or appreciate beauty, act with goodness or kindness. In any practical sense, it seems the free will of the inhabitants is significantly constrained. And they have no choice about the weather.
Whatever kind of free will these people have, it isn't the free will that commits itself to loving others - that deals on a daily basis with choices about acting selfishly or unselfishly. Lewis seems to have constructed a world in which the *only* unconstrained choice available is to leave. Back at the quote, the inhabitants aren't choosing to be in Hell, they're failing to choose to leave.
My responses in order…
If God is the source of love, indeed, Love Himself, then it’s not really a matter of rejecting God but accepting love, in the end. We are told in scripture that if we do not love our neighbor that we see, how can we love God who we don’t see, and also there are the passages talking about people showing kindness and mercy to people in need, or not doing so, and how they treat those people in need is a specific reflection, whether they know it or not, of their relationship to God.
I do agree with both Lewis and traditional Christianity that, in the end, it really will come down to one or the other, an eternity of bliss dwelling in the Love of God, or an eternity of torment in final rejection of God, goodness, and love.
Remember, the people in Hell in The Great Divorce are in Hell. And near the end (spoilers!) the possibility is raised that what the viewer is seeing is the reality behind their choices in this lifetime, not necessarily something after death—or at the end of time. And the name of the most excellent book in question is “The Great Divorce” precisely in response to the title of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” pointing out that a final decision must be made, ultimately, for one or the other.
Lewis sees “a great assembly of gigantic forms…standing…about a little silver table…[with]… little…chessmen…[who] went to and fro…[each a] representative of… one of the great presences that stood by… the immortal souls of those same men and women”.
This vision terrifies Lewis and he asks MacDonald whether “these conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”. His teacher says that you might alternatively say they were “anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things”, but that it would be better to say neither. The important point was that, on this journey, Lewis had seen the choices we make a bit more clearly than he had on earth.
Either the choice presented is a clear honest choice - bliss or torment - in which case no-one's going to say "Oh, torment for me then", or it's some kind of trick bloody question where you think you've chosen something else only to get told "sorry - you didn't learn the code - this is actually the Hell door - Going Down!"
Your big problem is this binary extreme opposite two options, and the fact that humans follow a normal distribution for just about any property you can think of.
It’s not so much “would you like bliss or torment” as “do you choose love and redemption — or not,” as I understand it. The lack of love is, itself, what makes Hell Hell.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
If you believe that Hell exists and is not empty, then yes it is. If you don’t believe that then fair enough.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
They could be, as long as you have reasons to trust. If you don't, which seems to be the case for at least some people here, you're left with the vicissitudes of hope. (Trust and hope are related, but do not operate in the same way.)
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
They could be, as long as you have reasons to trust. If you don't, which seems to be the case for at least some people here, you're left with the vicissitudes of hope. (Trust and hope are related, but do not operate in the same way.)
Heh. We've had people on here in the past who label that "trust" as the "sin of presumption"
But even allowing for Trust - am I the only one on this thread who finds the concept of other people going to Hell just as disturbing as the idea of going their oneself? I've lost too many people close to me with no discernible religious beliefs whatsoever to be able to cope with traditional Christian beliefs on the matter. I'd have to be a psychopath, or at the least totally self-absorbed.
Either the choice presented is a clear honest choice - bliss or torment - in which case no-one's going to say "Oh, torment for me then", or it's some kind of trick bloody question where you think you've chosen something else only to get told "sorry - you didn't learn the code - this is actually the Hell door - Going Down!"
Lewis's Hell doesn't have any external torment.
Let's imagine someone is offered a choice between eternal bliss on condition that they stop hating immigrants or continuing to hate immigrants for eternity. Are you still quite sure that everyone would choose eternal bliss?
And that's even if everyone concerned is making a fully rational dispassionate choice. If someone defines their self-identity so it becomes bound up with hating immigrants then giving that up would feel like ceasing to exist.
Lewis's view is that in many ways we all risk being like that, even if the examples he tells of things his characters bind their identity up with are less obviously soul-destroying than hating people not like us.
This may be more intuitive to people like me who have a tendency to procrastinate.
I mean, I think he's right. Hell is clinging to parts of my psyche that stop me from loving other people. If everyone is saved then it's because Jesus saves us from ourselves.
Either the choice presented is a clear honest choice - bliss or torment - in which case no-one's going to say "Oh, torment for me then", or it's some kind of trick bloody question where you think you've chosen something else only to get told "sorry - you didn't learn the code - this is actually the Hell door - Going Down!"
Lewis's Hell doesn't have any external torment.
Let's imagine someone is offered a choice between eternal bliss on condition that they stop hating immigrants or continuing to hate immigrants for eternity. Are you still quite sure that everyone would choose eternal bliss?
I find it so hard to understand hating people so much that I can't really get my head around it. Especially to the degree that:
someone defines their self-identity so it becomes bound up with hating immigrants then giving that up would feel like ceasing to exist.
I mean, my identity is tied around any number of things but I can't imagine being so bound to any of them that I'd choose my eternal destiny on it.
I do agree with both Lewis and traditional Christianity that, in the end, it really will come down to one or the other, an eternity of bliss dwelling in the Love of God, or an eternity of torment in final rejection of God, goodness, and love.
Remember, the people in Hell in The Great Divorce are in Hell. And near the end (spoilers!) the possibility is raised that what the viewer is seeing is the reality behind their choices in this lifetime, not necessarily something after death—or at the end of time.
In Lewis' conception, people in Purgatory can end up in Heaven or Hell. (Hell is Purgatory that you never leave.) This is retrospectively applied, depending on their final destination - Hell or Heaven - their final "choice" works backwards through a person's existence in Purgatory ("that town"), and even back into their life (before death) on earth:
‘Son,’ he said, ‘ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: ... But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven”, and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.’
...
‘Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?’
‘Hush,’ said he sternly. ‘Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.’
In this, Lewis is setting the scene to explicitly address both Predestination and Universalism (as he goes on to do in the passage just before the one you quoted), and which depend on his understanding of free will, and how our apprehension of this relies on the perspective of time (in contrast to eternity):
That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn’t is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it’s truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic’s vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. And wouldn’t Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. The Lord said we were gods. How long could ye bear to look (without Time’s lens) on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?’
I think it kind of hangs together, if you accept his premises. I wonder if he's being consistent (in the book) with his definition and application of free will. I note that there's a good deal of Lewis' individualism in his approach and narrative.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
They could be, as long as you have reasons to trust. If you don't, which seems to be the case for at least some people here, you're left with the vicissitudes of hope. (Trust and hope are related, but do not operate in the same way.)
Yes, I very much get that some have little or no reason to trust. As I said before, I sometimes think I may be the anomaly on the Ship in not ever having been subjected as a child to the kind of stuff that deprives people of reasons to trust.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
If you believe that Hell exists and is not empty, then yes it is.
No , it’s not. They are too many assumptions in there:
that hell is “a horrible place of burning fire”;
that God “throws” people into hell;
that God throws people into hell “because they don’t bow down to him”;
that people in hell “suffer unutterable pain for all eternity.”
Possible alternatives to each of these assumptions have been discussed in this thread and in the many discussions we’ve had about hell in the past on the Ship.
How you seem to think of hell isn’t necessarily how I think of hell; not everyone works from the same assumptions you do.
And that’s before getting to what I mean by “hoping hell is empty” (though I’d generally state it positively, more like “I hope all experience salvation.”) I’ve said more about it in the past so didn’t go into it here, but it’s more than “gee, I sure hope hell is empty.” Rather, it’s part of the same hope that @pease described above as “the sure and certainly hope of salvation.” The two things are the same hope. It is a hope that I believe the Scriptures give us every reason to rely on.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
This is the wonderful thing about Christianity -- everyone can have their own view. Is your God one of tyrannical cruelty? You are correct. Is your God one of endless mercy and love? You are correct. Any understandings are possible and valid.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
This is the wonderful thing about Christianity -- everyone can have their own view.
Perhaps a bit more accurate, I think, to say one can find a variety of views in various traditions and strands of Christianity. Not quite the same as “everyone having their own view.” My view comes out of the particular strand of Christianity in which I was formed and have lived, coupled with insights and perspectives learned from other strands of Christianity.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
They could be, as long as you have reasons to trust. If you don't, which seems to be the case for at least some people here, you're left with the vicissitudes of hope. (Trust and hope are related, but do not operate in the same way.)
Heh. We've had people on here in the past who label that "trust" as the "sin of presumption"
But even allowing for Trust - am I the only one on this thread who finds the concept of other people going to Hell just as disturbing as the idea of going their oneself? I've lost too many people close to me with no discernible religious beliefs whatsoever to be able to cope with traditional Christian beliefs on the matter. I'd have to be a psychopath, or at the least totally self-absorbed.
Of course you’re not. I lost December to heartsickness over an aunt of mine who just died with no signs of faith. Of course I’m telling myself all the things you do tell yourself when that happens, namely that no one knows the true state of anybody else, that God may have done something we don’t know about during her week of unconsciousness, and so forth. But I’m still heartsick over it. And I’m likely in for much more of this, as almost all of what remains of my family now is not Christian, or really anything much. And i love them.
Indeed, @Nick Tamen . And there are strands within strands too of course.
@mousethief will be aware that there are various views within Orthodoxy for instance- and I'm sure that applies within Roman Catholicism and the various Protestant traditions too.
You'll find people with wierd and wonderful ideas about 'Heavenly Tollbooths' within Orthodoxy which other Orthodox find abhorrent.
There are others who take a 'medieval' view of it rather like the one which - understandably - upsets @KarlLB.
Others understand these things more in the way @Nick Tamen articulates these things.
I don't think these views are all on a par and would certainly reject the tollbooth thing and the Dante-esque medieval view, whilst accepting that the scriptural material we might cite can be both scary and hyperbolic.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
This is the wonderful thing about Christianity -- everyone can have their own view.
Perhaps a bit more accurate, I think, to say one can find a variety of views in various traditions and strands of Christianity. Not quite the same as “everyone having their own view.” My view comes out of the particular strand of Christianity in which I was formed and have lived, coupled with insights and perspectives learned from other strands of Christianity.
I'd probably say more precise re: yourself, @Nick Tamen. But I'd also think each of us could conjure a claimed Christian belief that we disagree with, and yet it too stands. Reminds me obliquely of the lines from the film THE KINGOM OF HEAVEN:
"Who has claim? NO ONE has claim... All have claim."
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
They could be, as long as you have reasons to trust. If you don't, which seems to be the case for at least some people here, you're left with the vicissitudes of hope. (Trust and hope are related, but do not operate in the same way.)
Heh. We've had people on here in the past who label that "trust" as the "sin of presumption"
But even allowing for Trust - am I the only one on this thread who finds the concept of other people going to Hell just as disturbing as the idea of going their oneself? I've lost too many people close to me with no discernible religious beliefs whatsoever to be able to cope with traditional Christian beliefs on the matter. I'd have to be a psychopath, or at the least totally self-absorbed.
Of course you’re not. I lost December to heartsickness over an aunt of mine who just died with no signs of faith. Of course I’m telling myself all the things you do tell yourself when that happens, namely that no one knows the true state of anybody else, that God may have done something we don’t know about during her week of unconsciousness, and so forth. But I’m still heartsick over it. And I’m likely in for much more of this, as almost all of what remains of my family now is not Christian, or really anything much. And i love them.
Thing is - I know that the people in question do not deserve Hell. This is what I mean by the Binary Problem - you've got eternal bliss or eternal nasty and most people aren't good enough or bad enough to deserve either. There's no justice in the idea; if it really is what happens then God's a monster.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. There are some things that simply cannot and will not make it into heaven/paradise/the kingdom of God. Things like racism, abuse, being power hungry and controlling, making oneself the center of the universe—none of those will pass the door. And if a person refuses to be separated from those evils, over and over and over again—clings to them more closely than you’d cling to your liver or kidney—well, what then is going to happen to them? They’re going to be excluded too along with the garbage they refuse to give up. That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. And from what I’ve seen over the years, it’s amazing how little some people will sell their soul for—that is, what garbage they will embrace and refuse to give up, even when it’s evident to the whole world that they’re losing family, health, community, pleasure, happiness and life itself, just so they can maintain their connection with x. (I knew someone for whom it was literally a collection of furniture, and she lost family and health and nearly her life because she could not, would not, let go of it—even to the extent of putting it in storage. And she was not by ordinary standards mentally ill. Spiritually ill, yes. But that’s not a treatable diagnosis in health care.
How you seem to think of hell isn’t necessarily how I think of hell; not everyone works from the same assumptions you do.
From your posts on this thread I'd put you in the "Hell exists but is empty" category.
I didn’t say otherwise. What I said was that your underlying assumptions about hell—what exactly hell is, how people end up there, etc.—are not my underlying assumptions. And those differing underlying assumptions mean that you are wrong when you say that, if I believe hell exists but is empty, it means I also believe that God is “a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity.”
Either the choice presented is a clear honest choice - bliss or torment - in which case no-one's going to say "Oh, torment for me then", or it's some kind of trick bloody question where you think you've chosen something else only to get told "sorry - you didn't learn the code - this is actually the Hell door - Going Down!"
Lewis's Hell doesn't have any external torment.
Let's imagine someone is offered a choice between eternal bliss on condition that they stop hating immigrants or continuing to hate immigrants for eternity. Are you still quite sure that everyone would choose eternal bliss?
I find it so hard to understand hating people so much that I can't really get my head around it. Especially to the degree that:
someone defines their self-identity so it becomes bound up with hating immigrants then giving that up would feel like ceasing to exist.
I mean, my identity is tied around any number of things but I can't imagine being so bound to any of them that I'd choose my eternal destiny on it.
I think your lack of ability to relate to this is a very good thing. I'm sure you have your own issues, as do I, but I think we're currently seeing a very scary number of people who at least act like that kind of hatred is bound up with their sense of identity. Or lots of other horrible things. Imagine that attitude (or any negative attitude) getting worse for millennia or longer... to me, that would be Hell, even if the external situation would be otherwise pleasant.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. There are some things that simply cannot and will not make it into heaven/paradise/the kingdom of God. Things like racism, abuse, being power hungry and controlling, making oneself the center of the universe—none of those will pass the door. And if a person refuses to be separated from those evils, over and over and over again—clings to them more closely than you’d cling to your liver or kidney—well, what then is going to happen to them? They’re going to be excluded too along with the garbage they refuse to give up. That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. And from what I’ve seen over the years, it’s amazing how little some people will sell their soul for—that is, what garbage they will embrace and refuse to give up, even when it’s evident to the whole world that they’re losing family, health, community, pleasure, happiness and life itself, just so they can maintain their connection with x. (I knew someone for whom it was literally a collection of furniture, and she lost family and health and nearly her life because she could not, would not, let go of it—even to the extent of putting it in storage. And she was not by ordinary standards mentally ill. Spiritually ill, yes. But that’s not a treatable diagnosis in health care.
None of that describes the people I'm talking about. But according to traditional Christian theology, they're doomed.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
No. That may be some people’s view of God, but not it’s not my view.
This is the wonderful thing about Christianity -- everyone can have their own view. Is your God one of tyrannical cruelty? You are correct. Is your God one of endless mercy and love? You are correct. Any understandings are possible and valid.
That's here on Earth, but ultimately, and (assuming there is an afterlife in which we will indeed more clearly understand the Divine, of course), we'll know what the true answer actually is, whether our possible understandings got closer or further from that truth.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. ... That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. ...
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
But "outer darkness" doesn't preach as well to particular segments of Christianity as "fire and brimstone".
I don't know about anyone else here, but I find hoping that Hell is empty, a pretty thin prospect. One problem is that it's only viable for those who don't have to rely on it.
I don't follow. Do you want to unpack that thought?
It's that the hope of salvation, of being saved, is a sure and certain hope - something that can be relied on. In contrast, the hope that hell is empty is a different kind of hope - the hope that something disturbing isn't true. That a threatened future won't come to pass.
I would see them both as trust in the love, mercy and faithfulness of God.
They could be, as long as you have reasons to trust. If you don't, which seems to be the case for at least some people here, you're left with the vicissitudes of hope. (Trust and hope are related, but do not operate in the same way.)
Heh. We've had people on here in the past who label that "trust" as the "sin of presumption"
But even allowing for Trust - am I the only one on this thread who finds the concept of other people going to Hell just as disturbing as the idea of going their oneself? I've lost too many people close to me with no discernible religious beliefs whatsoever to be able to cope with traditional Christian beliefs on the matter. I'd have to be a psychopath, or at the least totally self-absorbed.
Of course you’re not. I lost December to heartsickness over an aunt of mine who just died with no signs of faith. Of course I’m telling myself all the things you do tell yourself when that happens, namely that no one knows the true state of anybody else, that God may have done something we don’t know about during her week of unconsciousness, and so forth. But I’m still heartsick over it. And I’m likely in for much more of this, as almost all of what remains of my family now is not Christian, or really anything much. And i love them.
If this is helpful for your (and my and many other people's) situation...
“Of course it should be pointed out that, though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life. And it should (at least in my judgment) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected.”
--C.S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” God in the Dock
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. There are some things that simply cannot and will not make it into heaven/paradise/the kingdom of God. Things like racism, abuse, being power hungry and controlling, making oneself the center of the universe—none of those will pass the door. And if a person refuses to be separated from those evils, over and over and over again—clings to them more closely than you’d cling to your liver or kidney—well, what then is going to happen to them? They’re going to be excluded too along with the garbage they refuse to give up. That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. And from what I’ve seen over the years, it’s amazing how little some people will sell their soul for—that is, what garbage they will embrace and refuse to give up, even when it’s evident to the whole world that they’re losing family, health, community, pleasure, happiness and life itself, just so they can maintain their connection with x. (I knew someone for whom it was literally a collection of furniture, and she lost family and health and nearly her life because she could not, would not, let go of it—even to the extent of putting it in storage. And she was not by ordinary standards mentally ill. Spiritually ill, yes. But that’s not a treatable diagnosis in health care.
None of that describes the people I'm talking about. But according to traditional Christian theology, they're doomed.
'Traditional Christian theology' as channelled through certain strands and emphases. Some of the early Fathers were quite universalist. I don't think there's been any one monolithic understanding within traditional Christian theology of either East or West.
Yes, at certain times a more fire and brimstone view tended to predominate but I think it's a mistake to think that everyone- Dante included - subscribed to a highly literal view of these things.
Jonathan Edwards in 18th century New England, yes.
Jesuit preachers in 19th century Ireland, yes.
But there were a range of views in the Patristic period as there are now.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. ... That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. ...
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
Is it that different from CS Lewis ("Great Divorce" version) ? I'd seem Hell in similar terms to that, albeit its possible that what we see near the end of Revelation corresponds more to some form of annihilation in the long term.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. ... That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. ...
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
Is it that different from CS Lewis ("Great Divorce" version) ? I'd seem Hell in similar terms to that, albeit its possible that what we see near the end of Revelation corresponds more to some form of annihilation in the long term.
Not read much CS Lewis outside Narnia and Screwtape - I was just commenting on the basis of the thread.
I've no idea what Revelation means - and suspect no one else does either, including the person who wrote it.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. ... That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. ...
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
Is it that different from CS Lewis ("Great Divorce" version) ? I'd seem Hell in similar terms to that, albeit its possible that what we see near the end of Revelation corresponds more to some form of annihilation in the long term.
Not read much CS Lewis outside Narnia and Screwtape - I was just commenting on the basis of the thread.
The last of the Narnia books, The Last Battle, reflects Lewis’s view of hell, where the dwarfs refuse to believe they are free to see Aslan’s Country inside the stable, seeing any argument that they are free or are in Aslan’s Country as attempts to “take them in.” Of this, Aslan says, “Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and are so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. ... That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. ...
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
But "outer darkness" doesn't preach as well to particular segments of Christianity as "fire and brimstone".
I fear there are people within the Christian church who take actual pleasure in the concept of hell, which I regard as a scary sign they might wind up with an up-close-and-personal view of it. Millions of miles away from Jesus' own views.
Though I'm curious what in Lewis specifically makes you think he's "fire and brimstone"--unless I'm misunderstanding your post, which I may well be.
The thing is, hell isn’t practically speaking about what someone deserves. It’s about choice. ... That’s what lies behind the descriptions of hell as outer darkness. It’s exclusion—but it’s self chosen exclusion. ...
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
It's Lewis's understanding in The Great Divorce. It's not so explicitly there in Screwtape but IIRC everything in Screwtape is consistent with it. Dante I think hints at it on the literal level and it's implicit in an allegorical reading in which what on the literal level are punishments are on the allegorical level depictions of the vices themselves.
Comments
We’re talking about eternity here - by comparison, the few decades we spend down here in this vale of tears are irrelevant. A speck of dust in a galaxy, a rontosecond in a millennium, except smaller and less significant overall than either of those things. One divided by infinity. And any evil that occurs during that nothingth of eternity is therefore equally irrelevant.
If I could make the choice I’d choose the cheapest grace possible, the most sure and certain guarantee of paradise for everyone regardless of anything they do here. I’d make this life one big, stupid, consequence-free do-what-you-bloody-like-who-gives-a-fuck shindig after which everyone gets the prize of eternal paradise.*
Of course, once I’d made all those choices I’d probably go on to get stupendously pissed (UK definition) for about a month, get high as fuck on as many exotic drugs as I could get my grubby little hands on, then top myself so I can be done with this shitrag existence and get on with the eternal paradise part.
All in all it’s a pity I’m not able to make the choice, really. But there it is - We’re all stuck living in a crapsack world with a nonzero possibility of spending eternity in Hell afterwards, and like the OP I have no idea how anyone copes with that.
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*= Hell, I’m not even sure I’d bother with this life at all if I was somehow put in charge of starting existence over from scratch. Just put everyone in paradise from the start. Boom. Mic drop. No pain, ever (unless that’s what floats your boat, I guess). No evil, ever. What’s not to like?
One reason is that experiencing that sort of evil FEELS like eternity, and the effects of it last for what feels like another eternity. I really don't think we can ignore the feelings of those subjected to evil during your nothingth of eternity (speaking as a child abuse survivor).
But God did create such a free-for-all. Punishment after the fact doesn't change what goes on here, even in the church.
Truly, i think a world like Marvin pictures is impossible if for no other reason than because doing evil causes internal consequences. Take, say, Trump to paradise, and he will still be the kind of person he is, regardless of his surroundings—he’s never going to be happy, is he? My reading of him even now is that he’s miserable—constantly angry, never at peace, and utterly unwilling to do the least thing that might move him closer to peace or happiness—because that would involve working on himself. All the money and power in the world isn’t enough to make him happy. He’s constantly scowling, constantly punishing other people for his unhappiness. It’s awful.
As an aside, if you go to the site https://www.justwatch.com/ you can enter the name of a series or film and it'll tell you which platforms carry it (you can also append a two letter iso country code and search for the availability in a country other than the one you are in at the moment.
I never said they were horrible, just that they're what I'd probably do in such a world. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we go to an eternity of bliss.
I have no intention of belittling your pain, especially as the world I described is not the one in which we actually live.
And as I said in my footnote, if I was going to set up an "eternal paradise for everyone in the next life, no questions asked" system then the obvious next question would be why I would even bother with this brief existence where pain and suffering happen. Why not just put everyone in eternal paradise from the start? Where's the downside?
Making everyone suffer through this dumpster fire of a reality before gaining eternal paradise seems unnecessarily cruel. Making us suffer through it with the possibility of eternal damnation to come if we end up so broken by it that we're unfit for heaven is just sadistic. If I can imagine a system that's better for the people within it than this one then what does that say about God?
The Great Divorce requires us to accept Lewis' caricatures of self-serving individuals, lacking any trace of selflessness, who exist in a bleak parody of society - a society which apparently directly reflects the desires of its inhabitants. Yet it doesn't appear to occur to any of them to help each other, create or appreciate beauty, act with goodness or kindness. In any practical sense, it seems the free will of the inhabitants is significantly constrained. And they have no choice about the weather.
Whatever kind of free will these people have, it isn't the free will that commits itself to loving others - that deals on a daily basis with choices about acting selfishly or unselfishly. Lewis seems to have constructed a world in which the *only* unconstrained choice available is to leave. Back at the quote, the inhabitants aren't choosing to be in Hell, they're failing to choose to leave.
Apart from 1, all options raise questions about the God that created them.
As an evangelical, my stance was that we should spend rather less time talking about what we were saving people *from*, and rather more on what we were saving them *for*. (I've just seen Merry Vole's post. The *for* I had in mind wasn't the benefit of others.)
A (somewhat bleak and uncompromising) perspective is that if someone has confidence that God has created Hell, they should also have confidence that He would use it for its intended purpose.
My responses in order…
If God is the source of love, indeed, Love Himself, then it’s not really a matter of rejecting God but accepting love, in the end. We are told in scripture that if we do not love our neighbor that we see, how can we love God who we don’t see, and also there are the passages talking about people showing kindness and mercy to people in need, or not doing so, and how they treat those people in need is a specific reflection, whether they know it or not, of their relationship to God.
I do agree with both Lewis and traditional Christianity that, in the end, it really will come down to one or the other, an eternity of bliss dwelling in the Love of God, or an eternity of torment in final rejection of God, goodness, and love.
Remember, the people in Hell in The Great Divorce are in Hell. And near the end (spoilers!) the possibility is raised that what the viewer is seeing is the reality behind their choices in this lifetime, not necessarily something after death—or at the end of time. And the name of the most excellent book in question is “The Great Divorce” precisely in response to the title of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” pointing out that a final decision must be made, ultimately, for one or the other.
https://www.pintswithjack.com/s2e21/
Why couldn’t that happen in Heaven? Why does it require a world packed with evil and pain?
OK, but it’s also a mode in which we get to experience pain and suffering. What does that add? Wouldn’t it be better for us to never experience it at all?
This isn't making any sense.
Either the choice presented is a clear honest choice - bliss or torment - in which case no-one's going to say "Oh, torment for me then", or it's some kind of trick bloody question where you think you've chosen something else only to get told "sorry - you didn't learn the code - this is actually the Hell door - Going Down!"
Your big problem is this binary extreme opposite two options, and the fact that humans follow a normal distribution for just about any property you can think of.
“Man is perishing. That may be, and if it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate.”
― Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life
The love, mercy, and faithfulness of a monster that created a place of horrible burning fire to throw people in who didn't bow down to him, to suffer unutterable pain for all eternity?
It’s not so much “would you like bliss or torment” as “do you choose love and redemption — or not,” as I understand it. The lack of love is, itself, what makes Hell Hell.
If you believe that Hell exists and is not empty, then yes it is. If you don’t believe that then fair enough.
Heh. We've had people on here in the past who label that "trust" as the "sin of presumption"
But even allowing for Trust - am I the only one on this thread who finds the concept of other people going to Hell just as disturbing as the idea of going their oneself? I've lost too many people close to me with no discernible religious beliefs whatsoever to be able to cope with traditional Christian beliefs on the matter. I'd have to be a psychopath, or at the least totally self-absorbed.
Let's imagine someone is offered a choice between eternal bliss on condition that they stop hating immigrants or continuing to hate immigrants for eternity. Are you still quite sure that everyone would choose eternal bliss?
And that's even if everyone concerned is making a fully rational dispassionate choice. If someone defines their self-identity so it becomes bound up with hating immigrants then giving that up would feel like ceasing to exist.
Lewis's view is that in many ways we all risk being like that, even if the examples he tells of things his characters bind their identity up with are less obviously soul-destroying than hating people not like us.
This may be more intuitive to people like me who have a tendency to procrastinate.
I mean, I think he's right. Hell is clinging to parts of my psyche that stop me from loving other people. If everyone is saved then it's because Jesus saves us from ourselves.
I find it so hard to understand hating people so much that I can't really get my head around it. Especially to the degree that:
I mean, my identity is tied around any number of things but I can't imagine being so bound to any of them that I'd choose my eternal destiny on it.
In this, Lewis is setting the scene to explicitly address both Predestination and Universalism (as he goes on to do in the passage just before the one you quoted), and which depend on his understanding of free will, and how our apprehension of this relies on the perspective of time (in contrast to eternity): I think it kind of hangs together, if you accept his premises. I wonder if he's being consistent (in the book) with his definition and application of free will. I note that there's a good deal of Lewis' individualism in his approach and narrative.
No , it’s not. They are too many assumptions in there:
- that hell is “a horrible place of burning fire”;
- that God “throws” people into hell;
- that God throws people into hell “because they don’t bow down to him”;
- that people in hell “suffer unutterable pain for all eternity.”
Possible alternatives to each of these assumptions have been discussed in this thread and in the many discussions we’ve had about hell in the past on the Ship.How you seem to think of hell isn’t necessarily how I think of hell; not everyone works from the same assumptions you do.
And that’s before getting to what I mean by “hoping hell is empty” (though I’d generally state it positively, more like “I hope all experience salvation.”) I’ve said more about it in the past so didn’t go into it here, but it’s more than “gee, I sure hope hell is empty.” Rather, it’s part of the same hope that @pease described above as “the sure and certainly hope of salvation.” The two things are the same hope. It is a hope that I believe the Scriptures give us every reason to rely on.
This is the wonderful thing about Christianity -- everyone can have their own view. Is your God one of tyrannical cruelty? You are correct. Is your God one of endless mercy and love? You are correct. Any understandings are possible and valid.
Of course you’re not. I lost December to heartsickness over an aunt of mine who just died with no signs of faith. Of course I’m telling myself all the things you do tell yourself when that happens, namely that no one knows the true state of anybody else, that God may have done something we don’t know about during her week of unconsciousness, and so forth. But I’m still heartsick over it. And I’m likely in for much more of this, as almost all of what remains of my family now is not Christian, or really anything much. And i love them.
@mousethief will be aware that there are various views within Orthodoxy for instance- and I'm sure that applies within Roman Catholicism and the various Protestant traditions too.
You'll find people with wierd and wonderful ideas about 'Heavenly Tollbooths' within Orthodoxy which other Orthodox find abhorrent.
There are others who take a 'medieval' view of it rather like the one which - understandably - upsets @KarlLB.
Others understand these things more in the way @Nick Tamen articulates these things.
I don't think these views are all on a par and would certainly reject the tollbooth thing and the Dante-esque medieval view, whilst accepting that the scriptural material we might cite can be both scary and hyperbolic.
I'd probably say more precise re: yourself, @Nick Tamen. But I'd also think each of us could conjure a claimed Christian belief that we disagree with, and yet it too stands. Reminds me obliquely of the lines from the film THE KINGOM OF HEAVEN:
"Who has claim? NO ONE has claim... All have claim."
Thing is - I know that the people in question do not deserve Hell. This is what I mean by the Binary Problem - you've got eternal bliss or eternal nasty and most people aren't good enough or bad enough to deserve either. There's no justice in the idea; if it really is what happens then God's a monster.
From your posts on this thread I'd put you in the "Hell exists but is empty" category.
I think your lack of ability to relate to this is a very good thing. I'm sure you have your own issues, as do I, but I think we're currently seeing a very scary number of people who at least act like that kind of hatred is bound up with their sense of identity. Or lots of other horrible things. Imagine that attitude (or any negative attitude) getting worse for millennia or longer... to me, that would be Hell, even if the external situation would be otherwise pleasant.
None of that describes the people I'm talking about. But according to traditional Christian theology, they're doomed.
That's here on Earth, but ultimately, and (assuming there is an afterlife in which we will indeed more clearly understand the Divine, of course), we'll know what the true answer actually is, whether our possible understandings got closer or further from that truth.
That seems closer to my understanding of what Hell will be like than Dante, CS Lewis and various pieces of Medieval art.
But "outer darkness" doesn't preach as well to particular segments of Christianity as "fire and brimstone".
If this is helpful for your (and my and many other people's) situation...
'Traditional Christian theology' as channelled through certain strands and emphases. Some of the early Fathers were quite universalist. I don't think there's been any one monolithic understanding within traditional Christian theology of either East or West.
Yes, at certain times a more fire and brimstone view tended to predominate but I think it's a mistake to think that everyone- Dante included - subscribed to a highly literal view of these things.
Jonathan Edwards in 18th century New England, yes.
Jesuit preachers in 19th century Ireland, yes.
But there were a range of views in the Patristic period as there are now.
Is it that different from CS Lewis ("Great Divorce" version) ? I'd seem Hell in similar terms to that, albeit its possible that what we see near the end of Revelation corresponds more to some form of annihilation in the long term.
Not read much CS Lewis outside Narnia and Screwtape - I was just commenting on the basis of the thread.
I've no idea what Revelation means - and suspect no one else does either, including the person who wrote it.
I fear there are people within the Christian church who take actual pleasure in the concept of hell, which I regard as a scary sign they might wind up with an up-close-and-personal view of it. Millions of miles away from Jesus' own views.
Though I'm curious what in Lewis specifically makes you think he's "fire and brimstone"--unless I'm misunderstanding your post, which I may well be.