essay about hell

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Centre for Christian Living

Bringing biblical ethics to everyday issues

• CCL Acting Director
• CCL Executive Assistant
• Audio archive
• Book reviews

A hell of a difference: How our understanding of hell affects the Christian life

This essay was adapted from Paul Williamson’s talk on “A hell of a difference” at our 24 October 2018 event. Watch or listen to his talk on our website.

Introduction

What do you think of when you think of hell? A psychological state of mind? A burning pit of fire and brimstone? Perhaps even a small village in Norway? (Some friends at church visited there in July, so they can now honestly say that they’ve been to “hell” and back.)

Our English word is of Germanic origin—derived from an Indo-European root meaning “to cover/hide”. It was associated with burial and thus the “realm of the dead”. In modern speech, the word “hell” is used to express irritation or displeasure, as in the question, “What the hell’s going on?” Or it’s used as an expletive: “Oh hell!” is a fairly typical response when something goes wrong. We also see it used to voice strong dissent—as in “Hell no!” But all such usage constitutes “a hell of a problem”—another phrase that employs the term in a rather vacuous manner.

The very concept of hell is a terrifying reality: it’s not a word we should take on our lips casually, nor is it something we should be cracking jokes about. Even if we know little of what the Bible says on the topic, we’re probably familiar with graphic literary depictions of hell. Take Dante’s Divine Comedy , for example, where Inferno’s rivers flow with boiling blood, sadistic demons torture the damned, and hell’s gates are inscribed with that ominous warning, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here”. Or consider Milton’s Paradise Lost , where hell is a visible darkness in a lake of fire and demons build their Pandemonium—a pale and sinister imitation of heaven. Little is left to the human imagination in classical literature or art, and unlike some of today’s more popular images, hell is definitely not portrayed as somewhere any sane person would ever wish to go.

This is also equally true of the biblical depiction. While admittedly less graphic and detailed, the biblical scenario is no less frightening. The images depicted are clearly designed to evoke fear and dread: a lake of eternal fire; blazing sulphur with smoke ascending forever; outer or blackest darkness; weeping and gnashing of teeth; and flesh-eating worms or maggots that never die. Hell in the Bible is a grim and terrifying prospect.

But the biblical portrayal inevitably leaves us with certain questions—some of which are exegetical and some of which are ethical or theological. Furthermore, often these questions are interconnected. How exactly should we understand the biblical depiction of hell? To what do these rather graphic biblical images refer? Indeed, do they really depict eschatological or eternal punishment at all? Or, as one North American Presbyterian minister has recently argued, does this simply misconstrue what Jesus actually intended? 1

Rather than thinking of hell as a place of eschatological judgement, Keith Wright controversially suggests that “the Hell Jesus talked about is actually a present reality we create for ourselves and each other through our destructive behaviours”. 2 Moreover, he’s adamant that the usual concept of hell is not only “inconsistent with the biblical message of God’s long love affair with humanity” (his words, not mine!), but “leads to a far too narrow view of God’s grace and saving activity … [and] to an image of God that has turned many thoughtful people away from the Christian faith”. 3 Wright obviously represents a more liberal brand of Christianity, but I suspect that his views represent many in the theological mainstream today—including some who might even label themselves “evangelical”.

But even within the more conservative camp, there is little unanimity today on how we should understand the biblical depiction of hell. For example, are the biblical images we’ve mentioned above literal or metaphorical? 4 And even if we understand the more graphic imagery as being metaphorical, what about the more straightforward language that seems to depict hell as an actual place in God’s universe—a place where rebellious sinners experience eternal punishment? These are the exegetical questions that Scripture’s portrayal of hell raises, and very different answers are offered—even among those who respect the Bible as the inspired and infallible word of God.

Furthermore, the answers given evoke important theological and ethical questions: does not the penalty far outweigh the crime? Whether in its severity, its duration or both, is hell not disproportionate to the offences it serves to punish? Does the concept of hell not undermine God’s justice, never mind his love? With respect to the latter question, how can a loving and merciful God inflict such extreme retribution on those he has created? Does the concept of hell seriously undermine the idea of a good and benevolent God? In addition, what about God’s sovereignty and universal rule? How can God really be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) if a place remains in God’s universe for all eternity where created beings continue to resent his authority and gnash their teeth against him in anger and hostility?

While we will certainly take time to consider some of the answers to these and other such theological questions, my main concern in this essay is how the doctrine of hell impacts the Christian life—our social, moral and ethical values, our thoughts and our behaviour. In other words, if we truly embrace the biblical doctrine of hell, what difference should it make to the way we think, speak and live?

But let us begin with the most fundamental question: what exactly does the Bible teach us about hell?

1. The biblical teaching on hell

While this may seem a very straightforward question, the answer is a bit more complicated. As already noted, various Christians interpret the relevant biblical material very differently. Currently, even among those who claim to treat the Bible with utmost seriousness and as the final authority for all matters of faith and practice, there are at least three sharply different understandings of hell. Two of these view hell as an actual place and one sees it more as a state of existence (or non-existence, to be more precise). I’ll briefly summarise each of these different interpretations in turn, beginning with the traditional idea of hell as a place of unending punishment.

a) Unending punishment or “eternal conscious torment”

Those of us who espouse the common, conservative view believe that hell is a place of everlasting and conscious punishment. Those consigned there are sentient beings, acutely aware of their situation and surroundings, and able to experience some kind of genuine torment—whether physical, psychological or both. Among those who hold this viewpoint, some take the biblical depictions of hell quite literally, 5 whereas others would interpret much of the actual language as metaphorical—that is, not all to be taken at face value, but instead depicting graphically a conscious and ongoing experience that is truly terrifying. 6

The biblical evidence for eternal conscious torment (hereafter referred to as “ECT”) is drawn mainly from the New Testament, although it’s often also inferred from Old Testament texts such as Isaiah 66:22-24 and Daniel 12:2-3, as well as some of the Old Testament references to “ sheol ”. 7 The bulk of the biblical support for the idea of ECT comes from the Gospels, the general epistles and Revelation. Particularly important are Jesus’ references to “ Gehenna ” as a place of “unquenchable” or “eternal” fire (Mark 9:43), 8 a fate worse than death (Matt 18:6; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:2), where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 13:42, 50). All this seems to imply ongoing conscious activity, rather than the idea of being annihilated. 9

Also significant is Paul’s depiction of God’s coming wrath in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10. There, the “trouble” ( thlipsis ) that God will pay back to the persecutors of his people seems to involve conscious agony. 10 Moreover, if understood as annihilation, “eternal destruction” (v. 9) would be a very strange tautology: annihilation has no need to be qualified in this way; one is either annihilated or one is not. This also undermines the suggestion that Paul is describing here separate stages of divine punishment (i.e. trouble, leading to annihilation, resulting in separation from God). The latter (separation from God) is equally redundant if these people have just been annihilated. Thus the idea of “eternal destruction” does not rule out some kind of ongoing existence. Something can be destroyed without necessarily being annihilated—for example, a car wreck.

Moreover, Peter’s description of Tartarus has much in common with the traditional concept of hell: Peter portrays it as a gloomy dungeon in which rebellious angels are held in darkness and bound with everlasting chains (2 Pet 2:4).

But particularly significant is Revelation 14:9-11, where those worshipping the beast face the torment of unmitigated divine wrath: “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever” and “they have no rest, day or night”. The imagery here may indeed be metaphorical, but what the metaphors patently convey is agony without respite.

The same point is made with respect to the evil trio in Revelation 19-20: the beast, the false prophet and the devil are cast alive into the lake of burning sulphur (Rev 19:20, 20:10), 11 where they will be “tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev 20:10). It’s clear from the end of chapter 20 that they will be joined there by their human allies (Rev 20:15; cf. 19:21, 21:8). Thus eternal conscious torment in the lake of fire is not exclusively prepared for the devil and his angels; rather, as Jesus underlined in his portrayal of final judgement in Matthew 25:41, reprobate humans can anticipate such eternal fire as well.

b) Terminal punishment or “annihilationism”

Unpersuaded by the traditional view, however, a growing number of evangelicals have embraced a rather different perspective—most accurately labelled “terminal punishment” or “annihilationism”. 12 This position holds that the dominant biblical language for the fate of the wicked does not imply never-ending conscious existence; rather it suggests finite punishment, but with everlasting effects. Sooner or later, the lost simply cease to exist; their lives will, in every sense, be snuffed out or terminated.

Key biblical vocabulary or imagery that describes the fate of the lost (for example, “perishing” or “destruction”; “fire”, “smoke” and “maggots”) is associated in the Old Testament with judgement that involves nothing more than physical death and destruction. Key texts such as Isaiah 66:24 envisage smouldering and rotting corpses , rather than endless torment. Likewise, Daniel 12:2 speaks of “shame and everlasting contempt”, rather than ongoing personal existence and suffering. Moreover, cataclysmic judgements such as the flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah become, in the New Testament, symbols or analogies for the final destruction of the ungodly (cf. 2 Pet 2:4-9, 3:5-7; Jude 7).

Thus understood, when Jesus alludes to the Old Testament in his depictions of Gehenna as a place of unquenchable fire and undying maggots, the dominant image is bodies being burned by fire and left to rot, rather than any notion of perpetual conscious torment. The idea is that of being treated ignominiously—dumped like human garbage. Any experience of emotional terror or physical torment will be short-lived; the effect of being consumed by the fire of God’s wrath will be terminal. The lost will simply cease to exist; they will be annihilated. This is what is signified by the notorious lake of fire in Revelation: it’s plainly explained there as being “the second death” (Rev 20:14; 21:8). Thus understood, the Bible consistently presents the wages of sin as death (Rom 6:23)—physical death in the present age and eternal death (i.e. final destruction) in the age to come. In other words, it’s the consequence of such eschatological punishment that endures forever, rather than the punishment itself. The latter may be relatively short-lived, but its effects are everlasting. 13

Particularly significant for this interpretation is the idea of conditional immortality—the premise that humans are not intrinsically immortal; rather, immortality belongs exclusively to God (1 Tim 6:16), and is something conferred on humans by divine grace (2 Tim 1:10; cf. John 3:16; Rev 22:2). Immortality is not something we already have (Rom 2:7), but something we will put on (1 Cor 15:53-54). This being so, the idea of God conferring such immortality on the wicked is considered incongruous and without any clear biblical support. Thus one of the theological convictions that often underpins a terminalist perspective on hell is this idea that humans are not innately immortal: immortality is something God conditionally bestows; it is divinely granted to the righteous, but not the wicked, and therefore the wicked are simply incapable of surviving eschatological punishment. As mere mortals, sooner or later, their life will ebb away: they will be vanquished by the second death and cease to exist.

One further observation used to support terminal punishment relates to the nature of the atonement. As John G Stackhouse puts the argument,

Just as Jesus did not suffer eternally, even for the sins of the whole world, so each person who makes atonement on his or her own will not suffer eternally, either. Finite beings can perform only a finite amount of sin, and therefore a finite amount of suffering is sufficient to atone for it. 14

In other words, if even Jesus did not have to suffer eternally for the sins of the world, why must reprobate sinners suffer eternal punishment, rather than the clearly stated penalty for sin: death (Rom 6:23)? It should thus be clear that, whatever the weaknesses in its arguments, the terminalist or annihilationist position is not based merely on human sentiment, but on an exegetical and theological reflection on Scripture.

c) Temporary punishment or “evangelical universalism”

This is likewise true of the third perspective that a small number within the “evangelical” camp have more recently embraced: 15 temporary punishment or “evangelical universalism”. Essentially, this is the view that however horrific it may be, eschatological judgement is simply not God’s last word. Punishment in hell is not final; rather, sooner or later, there will be deliverance from it, and hell will finally be emptied, as those God has consigned there come to their spiritual senses, repent of their sin and are reconciled to God through Jesus.

As is clear from this, “evangelical universalism” differs radically from the pluralist ideology that naively suggests that all roads and religions lead to God. 16 “Evangelical universalism” is certainly not the ecumenical, multifaith, all-inclusive brand that suggests that we’re all simply at various points along the same spiritual path, or that we all represent different spokes in the wheel of divine truth, which ultimately has God and heaven as its hub or centre. Rather, “evangelical universalism” insists that there is but one way to escape God’s judgement, and that is through the cross of Christ. Advocates are keen to point out that such universalism has a fairly long pedigree, reaching back to some of the Early Church Fathers. Moreover, most “evangelical universalists” would endorse a high view of Scripture—and thus seek to establish their position from a theological and exegetical interpretation of the biblical text. In other words, they are not boldly attempting to dismiss or set aside what Scripture clearly teaches; rather, they are seeking to interpret what the Bible teaches about hell in the light of what they consider to be “a theological hermeneutic, rooted in the gospel itself, that is sensitive to the contours of this story”. By this, they mean “the Trinitarian, gospel-shaped narrative … known as ‘the rule of faith’”. 17

Thus for “evangelical universalists” like Robin Parry (aka Gregory MacDonald), any doctrine of hell must make sense within the context of the biblical metanarrative—the overarching story of creation and redemption that runs from Genesis to Revelation. As Parry obviously contends, only temporal punishment in hell truly correlates with this. Let me explain.

Texts like Romans 11:36 and Colossians 1:20 are of key importance for the universalist understanding of the biblical metanarrative. In Romans 11:36, Paul states that “all things” are “from [God] and through him and to him”, and in Colossians, he claims that through the Son, God has reconciled all things to himself—“whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross”. How, Parry logically asks, can being damned forever in hell tally with the concept of such peace or reconciliation? Moreover, if all things have their telos or destiny in God, and that destiny is to be conformed to the image of the Son as God reverses the effects of the fall, “will God allow sin to thwart his purposes to beautify the cosmos?” asks Parry. According to Romans 5, he will not; rather, the second Adam more than undoes the havoc and destruction wrought by the first (vv. 12-21). This and similar texts are thus understood as suggesting that just as death came on all humanity through the sinful disobedience of Adam, our first representative, so eternal life comes to all humanity through the perfect obedience of Christ, our final representative. As such, Jesus died to redeem all people, and through his resurrection, he is the firstfruits of a new humanity—one that ultimately will be all-inclusive. Eventually everyone will share in the salvation that has been achieved by Christ. Not only will all Israel be saved (Rom 11:26), but all the nations and even the kings of the earth will bring their tribute into the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:24-27). That is to say, even those rebellious kings and nations depicted earlier in the book of Revelation will eventually repent and be reconciled to God. Everyone will eventually bow the knee, not grudgingly or forcibly, but willingly and sincerely, fulfilling the expectations of Isaiah 45:22-23 and Philippians 2:9-11. 18 Thus God will “unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10), and God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

So how does hell fit into this very positive ending? Well, “evangelical universalists” like Parry do take seriously its retributive aspect. Those in hell are being justly punished as their sins deserve. But—and here’s the rub—biblical justice is ultimately “about putting wrong things right” 19 —something that retribution alone cannot achieve. Punishment in hell thus also functions as

a corrective for those being punished—a means by which they can come to appreciate the true significance of what they have done, and its consequences. 20

Thus understood, hell reflects both retributive and restorative justice. Indeed, it allegedly reflects the pattern that recurs in the Old Testament time and again—both for Israel and the nations: “ judgement followed by restoration ”. 21

It follows from this pattern, as well as the biblical metanarrative as a whole, that condemnation cannot be God’s final word. Deliverance from hell must be possible. Indeed, it is alleged that nothing in the Bible clearly suggests that post-mortem judgement or eschatological condemnation is irreversible. 22 Rather, post-mortem salvation is considered highly consistent with the all-important doctrine of God’s love and his eschatological victory over sin.

Thus “evangelical universalists” endorse the biblical fact that some people will certainly end up in hell. But they insist that the Bible also teaches that all will eventually be saved, thus deliverance from hell must be possible. While Revelation portrays the lost as outside the New Jerusalem, the gates of that city will never be shut (Rev 21:25)—which is understood to indicate that the opportunity to vacate hell and join those in the New Jerusalem forever remains possible for whoever chooses to. Furthermore, eventually everyone will do so—including Hitler, Pol Pot and (according to some evangelical universalists) even Lucifer himself! 23

d) Synthesis

While markedly different, all three perspectives on hell share several significant points in common. As already noted, they all attempt to ground their understanding of hell in the teaching of Scripture. Each points to particular biblical texts in support.

Secondly, they all consider the matter of sin to be extremely serious. Sin is not something that God can simply brush under the mat, so to speak. Rather, sin is something God must and will punish—either by the cross of Christ, or through retributive justice in hell (however this is conceived). If you take just one thing from this essay, it should surely be this: hell highlights how very serious sin is.

Thirdly, the consequences of unforgiven sin are considered to be extremely severe: whether this is conceived as eternal conscious punishment in the caverns of the damned, a terrifying second death by consuming flames in the lake of fire, or even retributive and corrective suffering in a more purgatorial-like hell, God’s judgement on sin is understood as a terrifying prospect.

Fourthly and consequently, the biblical doctrine of hell exercises a significant role in deterring sinful people from continuing in their rebellion against God. It acts as a strong incentive—the stick rather than the carrot—to be reconciled to God through the atoning work of Christ.

However, while all three views share these points in common, their more precise correlation to these matters remains a matter of debate.

2. The theological and ethical objections to hell

This brings us to the theological and ethical objections to hell. Some people, of course, object in principle to the idea of retributive justice; it’s simply not a concept that aligns with their moral values, because it conjures up images of revenge or vindictiveness. Keith Wright is firmly of this persuasion: indeed, he is convinced that such a punitive concept of hell is a primary factor in turning thinking people away from the Christian faith. 24 He notes as one example the case of RG Ingersoll, the agnostic son of a Presbyterian minister back in the 19 th century: after expressing concern about the portrayal of God in the Old Testament and being assured that the numerous “atrocities” had happened under the “old dispensation of law” rather than the “new dispensation of grace and mercy”, Ingersoll replied,

As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely worse than the Old. In the Old Testament there is no threat of eternal pain. Jehovah had no eternal prison—no everlasting fire. His hatred ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was dead. 25

There can be little doubt that the idea of such retributive justice and a punitive concept of hell is indeed an obstacle or problem for some people. But each of the three perspectives on hell that we’ve examined above agrees on the biblical teaching about God’s retributive justice: God is just, and so he will punish those who hate him and pay back trouble to those who have afflicted his people.

It’s usually the practical implementation of such justice in the various perspectives on hell that people have expressed problems with. Obviously this differs, depending on which particular viewpoint one has in mind. With the traditional view, it’s the extremity of God’s punishment that poses the major problem. The horrors of hell, as traditionally conceived, have been likened to some kind of eternal torture chamber—encouraged, no doubt, by the depictions in classical literature and the more lurid word pictures used by hellfire preachers such as Jonathan Edwards. As already mentioned, this is compounded by the fact that such extreme suffering is construed as unending— eternal conscious torment. This seems so utterly disproportionate to the temporal offences being punished. How can it be just for God to mete out eternal condemnation for temporal offences—infinite punishment for a finite amount of sins?

Various answers have been offered to this particular objection. The first relates to the character of the one sinned against. The second concerns the persistence of sinful rebellion against God—even in hell. The third stresses the free will of the reprobate and argues that they stay in hell by choice—that is, they actually prefer to remain in hell, rather than go to heaven.

According to the first response, since the one sinned against is the infinite and eternal God, such rebellion arguably warrants an infinite and eternal response (i.e. ECT). According to the second response, since those in hell cannot and do not repent, the fact that they maintain their sinful hostility toward God makes their perpetual punishment absolutely fair and just. In either case, ECT does not really undermine God’s just and righteous character. It does not make him some kind of moral monster. Rather, it highlights his perfect justice and his righteous character by underlining that such punishment is entirely warranted and deserved; it is not excessive or extreme at all. According to the third response to this justice issue, God is simply giving the reprobate what they want: he’s handing them over to their foolish and rebellious wills. As CS Lewis famously put it, God is simply saying to them: “ Thy will be done”. 26 So, as Lewis puts it elsewhere, “the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end … the gates of hell are locked on the inside”. 27

All three explanations have been challenged: they generate a number of philosophical questions that cannot adequately be discussed in this essay and, more importantly, they lie outside my field of expertise. 28 But whatever the philosophical debate they evoke, these explanations are commonly proposed to resolve the divine justice issue in relation to ECT.

With the annihilationist view of hell, this justice issue may seem less of a problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. After all, the objection of unfairness still applies: even though the punishment is not being continually meted out forever, its effects still last forever, and thus it’s still a case of infinite punishment for finite offences. 29 But the more particular concern with this view is that the punishment involved hardly seems extreme enough. Indeed, for some, it may not seem to be punishment at all. For example, those who genuinely long for death in this life and who are strongly tempted to take such matters into their own hands would hardly baulk at the idea of eschatological annihilation. Isn’t this what they might actually wish for? Thus it would not seem a deterrent in any sense. More acutely, how can annihilation be considered adequate or just retribution for mass murderers or perpetrators of the most heinous crimes on earth? In particular, how does this amount to justice in the case of those who have escaped (through death) the scales of human justice? Annihilating such people seems a rather inadequate divine response to balance the scales of justice for the atrocities they’ve committed. In response to such criticism, some point to the terror or torment leading up to annihilation in the lake of fire, or to the fact that some may take longer to be annihilated than others. However, this still seems to be incompatible with the biblical concept of retributive justice, 30 as well as undermining one of the chief arguments used to defend the view of hell as annihilation—that God’s punishment for sin is simply death and destruction throughout all of Scripture.

Justice may seem less of a problem for the third view (i.e. that God gives the reprobate what they want): after all, those who end up in the universalist’s hell experience a severe measure of punishment for their sins, but only until they embrace the Lord Jesus, whose atoning sacrifice has paid the penalty for humanity’s sin in full. Moreover, it’s arguably no more unjust for God to allow such sinners to escape the consequences of their sins in the age to come than it is for him to allow Christians to escape the consequences of such in the present age or at the final judgement.

But the ethical issue for this view is at least twofold: the first relates to the idea of a second chance—a post-mortem opportunity for people to be reconciled to God. Why is there so much biblical emphasis on the urgent need of repentance if there’s a further opportunity (or multiple opportunities) to do so in the afterlife? At the very least, this seems to imply that repentance is not so urgent after all, as it surely won’t require much thought or persuasion for anyone in hell. If this is countered with the proposition that only God can bring people to genuine repentance, this seems to introduce the spectre of a God who unnecessarily prolongs eschatological suffering by denying such sinners the ability to repent. One might also ask how it can be considered fair for God to insist on a life of self-denial and faithful service in the present age, yet in the age to come, insist on nothing other than an act of repentance? But we must obviously be cautious with that kind of objection in the light of Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers in Matthew 20:1-16.

Nevertheless, another fundamental ethical objection remains: why should God demand any payment from sinners whose sin has already been atoned for totally through Christ? Such double payment “diminishes the glorious all sufficient work of Christ on the cross”. 31 This, of course, raises an underlying theological premise with respect to the universal nature of the atonement—but that’s well beyond the parameters of our main focus—which is, I hasten to remind you, the significance of hell for the Christian life.

3. The ethical and practical ramifications of the doctrine of hell

Some insist that the doctrine of hell has had little or no impact on human thought or behaviour, nor should it have. Others argue, however, that this is not the case, and that there may well be some correlation between modernity’s rejection of hell, and the licentiousness of contemporary society. 32 So we’ll start by considering how the doctrine of hell might influence our moral choices and decisions.

a) Moral choices and decisions

Someone has suggested that “If the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person is your religion, then you are already a horrible person”. 33 There’s possibly some truth in that. After all, it does appear to resonate with the biblical doctrine of sin—that is, that we are all horrible people, corrupted by sin and with a natural propensity to do the wrong thing, even if this means hurting other people. So to some extent, it’s true: all of us are horrible people who, without the restraints of common grace, would instinctively do the wrong thing.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we’re all equally horrible, just that we all have the same horrible potential—should there be no restraints, and should the right (or wrong) buttons be pushed or the appropriate circumstances catch us off-guard.

But it’s obviously difficult to say if there’s any direct correlation between society’s ills and a decline in its belief in hell. The correlation is probably much broader than that, with disbelief in God or at least a practical atheism being the more decisive factor. But the two ideas—God and hell—are evidently related, therefore the removal of the stick (i.e. ultimate consequences) may well be a significant factor in society’s declining moral standards—at least, as these might be measured by a Judeo-Christian ethic.

But what about Christian people, rather than the world at large? What influence or impact should the doctrine of hell have on our morality and ethical behaviour? Well in one sense, the answer is probably none—in that, having been justified freely by God’s grace, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). Our sins have been forgiven, so we need not fear death and hell any longer. As Christians, we don’t seek to obey and honour God in our lives primarily out of a desire to escape the flames of hell, but rather out of genuine gratitude and a loving desire to please God by offering him the worship and respect that he alone deserves.

And yet, while this is absolutely true, it’s interesting that Jesus and his apostles do seem to use the danger of hell as one of the factors that should influence our behaviour, including the moral decisions we make: “whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt 5:22). Also,

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matt 5:29–30)

Similar warnings appear in Matthew 18 in the context of Christian discipleship, and the pastoral care of ourselves and other believers:

whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. (Matt 18:6-10) 34

Furthermore, in the context of being prepared for his return, Jesus tells four parables in which those who are not ready—that is, those who are not reflecting kingdom values or living in the light of the returning king—will forfeit their reward and be shut out or consigned to hell (cf. Matt 24:51; 25:11-12, 30, 41-46).

Similar warnings can also be found in the New Testament epistles, 35 particularly in the letter to the Hebrews. Take, for instance, these sobering words in Hebrews 6:

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. (Heb 6:4-9)

Or take the equally strong warning in chapter 10:

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? (Heb 10:26-29)

While the status of those to whom these warnings are directed is debated, the most straightforward interpretation is that they are believers, 36 not apostates or pseudo-Christians, as some suggest. As such, these believers must “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb 12:1), for it is only those who persevere to the end who will be saved—that is, receive the eschatological prize of eternal life. And thus in this epistle, the author issues several strong warnings to those who are clearly flagging in their faith and tempted to throw in the towel. But the warnings should not be understood as hypothetical; they are real. Yet these very real warnings are a means of grace—an instrument through which flagging disciples will be encouraged to persevere and finish the course. 37

Thus understood, New Testament warnings about hell serve to prevent believers from apostatising or abandoning their faith. They encourage us to persevere in our faith and godliness by reminding us just how high the stakes really are. So while the doctrine of hell may not be the primary motivation for Christian faith and behaviour, it remains a significant motivation nonetheless.

b) Social issues/concerns

As well as having some bearing on our morality, the doctrine of hell may also have significant implications for some contemporary social issues. The most obvious such issue is that of voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. The primary rationale behind such a radical step is, of course, to die—or to help someone else to die—with dignity, rather than to suffer intolerably. Thus this issue is particularly pressing or tempting in cases of terminal illness that involves a great deal of physical discomfort, psychological distress, or both. In such circumstances, euthanasia is considered to be the most humane and merciful thing imaginable—to permit or to help such a patient, friend or relative to end their life more pleasantly (and quickly). And it evidently makes best sense if we consider death to be the end, or if we have a very optimistic view of the afterlife. In other words, if we’re simply helping someone on their way to oblivion, or we’re facilitating a fast track to some kind of everlasting paradise, assisted suicide might indeed be construed as a “mercy-killing”, despite the other ethical and moral issues it raises. 38

However, our concept of hell must surely have a significant bearing on any such thought or decision. If we believe death is not the end and that a much bleaker situation could await people after they die or after the general resurrection of the dead, the idea of euthanasia loses much of its appeal. It’s no longer such an obvious solution to a temporal problem. Rather than facilitating a “happy ever after” or permanent non-existence, the premature ending of a life could well be doing quite the opposite—and irreversibly so. Indeed, even if someone perceives hell to be of more limited duration, it can hardly be considered an improvement on the physical or mental suffering anyone is enduring in their present life. Granted, some may well find this very hard to imagine, especially given the extreme anguish they may currently be facing or experiencing. But in such circumstances people may easily lose sight of the biblical depiction of hell—the most extreme terror imaginable.

Bearing that in mind, the doctrine of hell must inevitably inform our attitude to voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. If we believe that hell exists, we surely cannot, in all good conscience, advocate or endorse such a radical step. It’s not just someone’s life that’s at stake, but possibly their eternity. Of course, I’m not suggesting that it’s okay for believing friends or loved ones; there are plenty of other reasons why such extreme action should be avoided. But the doctrine of hell should arguably provide at least some reason for pause: it should stop us from naively thinking that euthanasia can unquestionably deliver on its promise of a “good death”.

c) Christian evangelism

Historically, the idea of hell has been a fairly key motivating factor in the practice and, indeed, the urgency of Christian evangelism. This is hardly surprising, given that Jesus himself seems to have set the pattern. In the Gospel accounts, Jesus explicitly mentions “hell” a number of times 39 —nearly always referring to the dreadful consequences of unforgiven sin. 40 The good news Jesus preached assumes or is expressly grounded in bad news—not just as regards to our sinful human condition, but also with respect to its terrible consequences, should we fail to repent and embrace, through faith, God’s king and kingdom. 41

This pattern—of preaching the gospel of grace against a backcloth of terrifying judgement—is likewise reflected in the preaching and teaching of the apostles. We see hints of this in the book of Acts, 42 but it is perhaps more plainly evident in the epistles and Revelation. For example, while Paul never explicitly mentions “hell”, 43 he often alludes to the conceptual reality as the consequence of unforgiven sin, using interrelated terminology such as “wrath” (e.g. Rom 5:9; Col 3:6; 1 Thess 1:10, 5:9), “death” (e.g. Rom 6:23), 44 “perishing” (e.g. Rom 2:12; 2 Cor 4:3; 2 Thess 2:10), 45 “destruction” (e.g. Rom 9:22; Gal 6:8; Phil 1:28, 3:19; 2 Thess 1:9), “condemnation” (e.g. Rom 8:1; 1 Cor 11:32; 2 Thess 2:12), “curse” (cf. 1 Cor 16:22; Gal 1:8-9, 3:10, 13), “punishment” (e.g. 1 Thess 4:6; 2 Thess 1:8, 9), “trouble” (Rom 2:9; 2 Thess 1:6), “distress” (Rom 2:9), and [implicitly] “exclusion” (2 Thess 1:9). 46 As Doug Moo insightfully concludes,

One cannot adequately explain … [Paul’s] passion for preaching the gospel without assuming that Paul believed human beings who did not respond to the gospel face a bleak and extremely distressing fate. 47

This seems equally true for the other New Testament authors. We’ve only to think of those strong warnings in Hebrews, 48 the sobering exhortations in James, 49 the rationale for holistic (i.e. life and speech) evangelism in 1 Peter, 50 and the anticipated end for false teachers and the reprobate in 2 Peter, 51 Jude and Revelation. 52

The fact that the good news is consistently set within the context of extremely bad news cannot be denied or ignored. Consequently, if we are to follow the pattern set by Jesus and his apostles, the doctrine of hell will and must fuel our evangelistic zeal and our attempts to follow Jude’s exhortation: “save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear” (Jude 1:23). So I guess if our doctrine of hell fails to do so, either it’s the wrong doctrine, or we’re not taking it seriously enough.

We have explored what contemporary evangelicals understand by the doctrine of hell, some of the significant issues this raises, and how this doctrine impacts our decisions, our thinking and our behaviour. Obviously it’s impossible to address this topic comprehensively in a single essay, and undoubtedly you’ve been left with many more questions than answers.

There is, however, one final but very important point that must be made concerning the biblical doctrine of hell, and that is this: it’s possible to know all about it—to have an orthodox view of hell—indeed, even to preach the most orthodox sermons on it—and yet still go there. Remember those sobering words of Jesus:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matt. 7:21-23).

So whatever the differences in the contemporary understanding of hell, the most important thing is to ensure that we don’t end up there. Knowing the truth is not the same thing as rightly responding to it. On the final day, it’s the latter that will make all the difference. And as the title of this essay clearly implies, this is no small or insignificant matter.

1 Keith Wright, The Hell Jesus Never Intended , Northstone, Kelowna BC, Canada, 2004.

2 Extract from publisher’s blurb on the back cover of Wright, The Hell Jesus Never Intended .

3 Wright, The Hell Jesus Never Intended , pp. 30, 33. Please note: these quotes were printed in bold in his original text.

4 By literal, I mean taking all these images at face value—as descriptions of what punishment in hell will actually look like and entail. By metaphorical, I mean taking the images as figurative, yet faithful depictions of the eternal conscious torment experienced in hell.

5 For example, John F Walford, “The Literal View”, in Four Views on Hell , edited by William V Crockett, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1996, pp. 11-39.

6 See William V Crockett, “The Metaphorical View”, in Four Views on Hell , pp. 43-88. Unlike the first 1996 edition, in the 2016 edition (edited by Preston Sprinkle), there is only one representative of the traditional view (Denny Burk, “Eternal Conscious Torment”), who “generally take[s] the metaphorical approach and recognize[s] that the realities symbolized by the metaphors are no less dreadful for their being depicted symbolically” (pp. 28-29). For more on this issue (literal or metaphorical?), see Andrew David Naselli, “Hellfire and Brimstone: Interpreting the New Testament’s Descriptions of Hell,” 9Marks eJournal Vol 7:4, September-October, 2010, pp. 16-19.

7 “Sheol” is the proper noun used with respect to the Hebrew underworld. It’s translated as “hell” in the King James Version 31 times.

8 “Gehenna” takes its name from the Old Testament’s Valley of [ben] Hinnom, a notorious site where children were burned as sacrifices to idols (Jer 7:31, 19:5-6, 32:35; cf. 2 Kgs 16:3, 21:6). The valley became synonymous with the destruction and ignominious end of such idolaters (Jer 7:31-33; cf Isa 30:33, 66:24, which arguably allude to this same location). While clearly associated in this manner with “human garbage”, there is no justification for thinking that Jesus was simply referring to Jerusalem’s municipal dump. (This idea was first suggested in medieval times.) Something more sinister than death and dishonour (being treated as rubbish) would appear to be on view in Mark 9:42, where Jesus associates Gehenna with “unquenchable” fire (Mark 9:43), etc.

9 See also the demonic anticipation of “torment” in Matthew 8:29 (cf. Rev 20:10) and the rich man’s experience of “torment” and “agony” in Hades (Luke 16:23-25, 28). While the latter seems to denote the intermediate rather than the final state of the lost, Jesus’ depiction of Gehenna suggests significant experiential overlap.

10 Even Edward Fudge concedes this, but sees this “trouble” as culminating in extermination ( The Fire that Consumes: A biblical and historical study of the doctrine of final punishment , Wipf and Stock, Eugene, 2011, p. 193).

11 Admittedly two of these may refer to institutions. However, institutions are comprised of people, and thus the latter are implicitly included. In any case, arguably the beast and false prophet refer here to the leaders of such institutions and those they represent (see Gregory K Beale, “The Revelation on Hell”, in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment , edited by CW Morgan and RA Peterson, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2004, pp. 127–29).

12 For a concise overview and some of the seminal twentieth-century contributions, see Christopher M Date, Gregory G Stump and Joshua W Anderson (eds), Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism , Cascade, Eugene, 2014.

13 The first line of Matthew 25:46 is thus interpreted to signify the eternal consequences of punishment, rather than its eternal or infinite duration (as the adjective arguably suggests in the second line of this verse, although in both phrases, it more accurately signifies “of the coming age”—which is unending in any case).

14 John G Stackhouse, “Terminal Punishment” in Four Views on Hell , edited by Preston Sprinkle, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1996, pp. 61–81.

15 While proponents label themselves as “evangelical”, more conservative evangelicals object to this label on the grounds that this viewpoint (universalism) is inconsistent with evangelicalism. See, for example, D Hilborn (ed), The Nature of Hell: A Report by the Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth Among Evangelicals (ACUTE) , Paternoster, Carlisle, 2000. For a more penetrating critique highlighting some of the serious flaws in their theological method, philosophical premises and “exegetical” approach, see Edward Loane, “An Evangelically Flawed Theological Method: A Response to Robin Parry’s The Evangelical Universalist”, Churchman , 2016, 130:4, pp. 349-60.

16 This is plainly the kind of universalism espoused by Keith Wright: “It is inconceivable to me that the Creator of the universe, the architect of this small planet, the parent of all humanity, would limit the divine effort to heal a broken world and build a kingdom of peace and love on this earth to one small clan of people who came to be called the Jews. I cannot imagine a God who sends only one messenger to embody the divine love and to teach people the true essence of God, so that they may cease their fear of God and find their peace in God’s presence. It seems to me to be the height of arrogance to believe that God has only revealed God’s self to my particular religious group and that the rest of the world is damned because they have not yet heard of this particular revelation, or have not suitably responded to it if they have heard.” ( The Hell Jesus Never Intended , p. 33.)

17 Robin A Parry, “A Universalist View”, in Four Views on Hell , edited by Preston Sprinkle, p. 103. Parry notes how “all sides can point to verses that seem to support their view”, but insists that “Everyone in this discussion who thinks that the Bible is not contradictory will need to interpret some passages in ways that run counter to their prima facie meaning” (pp. 102-103). However, at times, Parry’s exegesis is primarily driven by his presuppositions, and he acknowledges as much when he writes, “clearly my interpretation is underdetermined by the [biblical] texts” (Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist: The Biblical Hope that God’s Love Will Save Us All , SPCK, London, 2012, second edition, p. 140).

18 It should be noted that the expectation in both texts is not quite as positive as Parry suggests. Indeed, when these texts are read in the light of their wider contexts (cf. Isa 45:14-17, 24b-25 [cf. also Isa 49:23b]; Phil 1:28; 3:19-21), neither seems to be expressing any hope of universal salvation. (Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist , pp. 67-72, 97-100).

19 Parry, “A Universalist View”, p. 113.

20 Ibid, p. 114.

21 Ibid, p. 114. While this pattern is certainly true of Israel and also applies to some nations (Egypt as in Isaiah 19:22), it is hardly as universal as Parry implies. Particularly problematic is his understanding that God promises even to restore Sodom in any “literal” sense (Ezek 16:53). Both Samaria and Sodom rhetorically function in this text as despised peoples who, like Judah, will also experience “restoration”—primarily to expose and shame Jerusalem over her sin. There is absolutely no mention here of repentance. Even if some kind of actual restoration is in view, it is not in the sense of national rejuvenation, but rather being incorporated with Israel in the blessings of the messianic age through the Gentile mission of the church. In any case, the rhetorical point here is as follows: “If God is able and willing to pardon and restore you [Israel], then Sodom will be no problem to him.” (Christopher JH Wright, The Message of Ezekiel , BST, IVP, Nottingham, 2001, p. 153.) As Preston M Sprinkle likewise observes, “Ezekiel’s focus is on the wickedness of Judah, not the future salvation of ancient Sodom. Jesus employs a similar rhetorical move when he describes Sodom as being better off than the Jewish cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum (Matt 12:20-24). And Jesus says that Sodom will be judged and not ultimately saved, as do both Peter and Jude.” ( Four Views on Hell , 2016, p. 201.)

22 Parry believes that the Bible “does not directly address the issue”, claiming that “[t]here are no biblical texts that say death is a point of no return” while conceding that “neither are there texts that unambiguously say that one can repent after death” (“A Universalist View”, p. 116). In particular, he takes issue with any appeal to Hebrews 9:27, insisting that “all that this text claims is that all humans die once and then face judgement … To go further and insist that this judgement leads to irreversible punishment is to go beyond anything said in the text”. While this may indeed be so, Parry seems to overlook other New Testament texts that suggest there is no hope of escape from hell for the reprobate (e.g. Luke 13:22-30), as well as texts that depict the judgement of the wicked using images that imply finality (i.e. burned up chaff, weeds or branches [cf. Matt 3:12, 7:19, 13:40; John 15:6]; chopped to pieces or burnt to ashes [cf. Matt 24:51; 2 Pet 2:6]). Moreover, it is difficult to understand why there is so much urgency in New Testament calls to repentance and faith if “the time of God’s favour, the day of salvation” extends beyond the present gospel era and into eternity.

23 E.g. Parry (see MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist , pp. 130-31). Others are more agnostic on the fate of the devil or restrict universal salvation to humanity.

24 Wright, The Hell Jesus Never Intended , p. 33.

25 Robert G Ingersoll, Ingersoll’s Greatest Lectures , Wehman Bros, New Jersey, 1940, p. 20. (Cited in Wright, The Hell Jesus Never Intended , p. 34.)

26 CS Lewis, The Great Divorce: A Dream , Geoffrey Bles, London, 1946, p. 67 (emphasis original). The full quotation is: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘ Thy will be done.’”

27 CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain , The Centenary Press, 1940, p. 127. The main problem with this view is its incompatibility with the biblical emphasis on God imposing such punishment on the lost—although some also point to the moral problem of why God would not put such people out of their self-imposed misery.

28 Interested parties might find the following discussion helpful: CP Ragland, “Hell” , in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-reviewed Academic Resource (accessed 14th September, 2018). For some solutions, see Loane, “An Evangelically Flawed Theological Method”, pp. 350-52.

29 Christopher D Marshall expresses this objection as follows: “Annihilationism faces fewer moral difficulties than eternal suffering, but it still encounters the problem of how an eternal punishment can be regarded as a just and proportionate recompense for temporal, finite sins. An eternity of nothingness is as much an infinite penalty for finite sin as an eternity of pain” (“Divine and Human Punishment in the New Testament”, in Christopher Date et al [eds], Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism , Cascade, Eugene, 2014, pp. 217-18). However, Marshall’s proposed solution to the conundrum—finding non-retributive categories for explaining the doctrine of final judgement—plays down the meaning of the Bible’s retributive language altogether.

30 It does not seem to reflect any sense of the punishment fitting the crime, since presumably the same fate might be experienced by the self-righteous Pharisee and the mass-murdering psychopath.

31 Loane, “An Evangelically Flawed Theological Method”, p. 356.

32 Such a correlation may be suggested by some statistics, although admittedly other factors might also account for some of the data. See, for example, Azim F Shariff and Mijke Rhemtulla, “Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates” (accessed 28 September, 2018). NB: The method and conclusions of this study have drawn sharp criticism from others. See, for example, Scott A McGreal, “Belief in Hell: Does it Benefit or Harm Society?” , Psychology Today (accessed 28 September, 2018).

33 Cited in web article by Bo Bennett, “Does Society Need the Threat of Hell and the Promise of the Reward in Heaven?” , (accessed 28 September, 2018).

34 One could infer a similar strong warning concerning an unforgiving spirit in the subsequent parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt 18:21-35), whose punishment involves torture and nor merely imprisonment. We might also consider the directive Jesus gave his disciples in a context of human animosity and persecution. He steels them for the task by telling them, “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matt 10:28). It’s probably not what you or I might say to any brave souls about to do some evangelistic door-knocking. But interestingly, this is exactly how Jesus sought to address their natural fear of man—by focusing attention on a healthy fear of God.

35 E.g. Rom 8:13; 1 Cor 6:9-11, 9:24-10:13; Gal 6:7-10; Eph 5:3-6; Phil 3:17-4:1; 1 Thess 4:3-8; 2 Pet 2:17-22, 3:17-18; Jude 5-7; cf. also Rev 16:15, 14:9-12, 18:4-8, 21:7-8.

36 Cf. Heb 6:4-5, 9, 10:19, 23, 32-36, 39.

37 For more on this interpretation, see Christopher W Cowan, “The Warning Passages of Hebrews and the New Covenant Community”, in Stephen J Wellum and Brent E Parker (eds), Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenant Theologies , B&H Academic, Nashville, 2016, pp. 189-213.

38 E.g. the sanctity of human life; the breaking of a divine commandment; the somewhat subjective or arbitrary decision on what constitutes intolerable suffering or a life worth living; the related question of involuntary euthanasia, which could be justified along similar lines—especially in the case of comatose or mentally impaired individuals.

39 Mostly using “Gehenna” (Matt 5:22, 29, 30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 23:33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5), but occasionally using “Hades” (e.g. Matt 11:23, 16:18; Luke 10:15, 16:23).

40 Matthew 16:18 is arguably the only exception, “the gates of Hades” referring metaphorically to “the imprisoning power of death” (RT France, The Gospel of Matthew , NICNT, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2007, p. 624). See Isaiah 38:10 (LXX); Wisdom 16:13; cf. Job 38:17; Pss 9:13, 107:18.

41 E.g. see Matt 10:15, 11:21-24, 13:30, 40-43, 49-50; 23:15, 33, 24:51, 25:30, 41-42; Mark 9:42-48; Luke 9:23-26, 12:46, 13:24-28, 16:27-31; John 5:24-29; cf. Matt 10:28, 12:36-37; Mark 3:29; Luke 20:47; John 8:21, 24, 12:48, 15:6, 17:12.

42 Cf. Acts 3:23, 10:42, 13:40, 17:31, 24:25.

43 I.e. Paul never uses the words “Hades” or “Gehenna”.

44 Moo claims that “death” here refers in context to eternal death, by which he means ECT ( The Epistle to the Romans NICNT, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1996, pp. 399, 408). While the latter is obviously debatable (it would obviously challenge annihilationists and universalists), most evangelicals would agree that Paul is alluding here to eschatological punishment (however this is understood). As Kruse observes, while “death most often means physical death … the fact that sometimes its opposite is eternal life (6:22, 23) suggests that eternal death is also involved” (Colin G Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans , PNTC, Eerdmans/Apollos, Grand Rapids/Nottingham, 2012, p. 285).

45 While “perishing” may refer primarily to a present condition, the state it describes has clearly eschatological implications as well.

46 The Greek preposition (ἀπὸ) here seems to convey the sense of “away from”—especially in light of the possible allusion to Isa 2 (cf. LXX vv. 10, 19, 21)—hence the English translation “excluded/separated/shut out from …” in some English versions, despite the absence of any such verb in the original.

47 Douglas J Moo, “Paul on Hell” in Christopher W Morgan and Robert A Peterson (eds), Hell Under Fire , Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2004, pp. 91-109 (96).

48 Cf. Heb 2:1-3, 3:7-4:11, 6:4-12, 10:26-39, 12:14-17, 25-29.

49 Cf. James 2:12-13, 4:11-12, 5:1, 9, 20.

50 1 Pet 2:11-12, 4:1-6, 16-19.

51 2 Pet 2:1, 3, 4, 9, 12, 17, 3:7, 9, 16.

52 Cf. Jude 4-7, 13-14, 23; Rev 2:11, 3:5, 6:15-17, 11:17-18, 14:6-20, 18:4-8, 19:1-3, 17-21, 20:7-15, 21:8, 22:14-15, 19.

1 King Street Newtown

NSW Australia 2042

+61 (0)2 9577 9999

CRICOS provider code:00682B

Visit our centres:.

• Moore Theological College
• Centre for Global Mission
• Centre for Ministry Development
• Priscilla and Aquila Centre

You need a username to create bookmarks - please register below

Oops! We could not locate your form.

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought

Behind the various Christian ideas about heaven and hell lies the more basic belief that our lives extend beyond the grave (see the entry on afterlife ). For suppose that our lives do not extend beyond the grave. In addition to excluding a variety of ideas about reincarnation and karma, this would also preclude the very possibility of future compensation of any kind for those who experience horrendous evil during their earthly lives. Indeed, despite their profound differences, many Christians (though perhaps not all) and many atheists can presumably agree on one thing at least. If a young girl should be brutally raped and murdered and this should be the end of the story for the child, then a supremely powerful, benevolent, and just God would not exist. An atheist may seriously doubt whether any future compensation would suffice to justify a supreme being’s decision to permit such an evil in the first place. But the point is that even many Christians would concede that, apart from an afterlife, such an evil would constitute overwhelming evidence against the existence of God; some might even concede that such an evil would be logically (or metaphysically) inconsistent with God’s existence as well.

It is hardly surprising, then, that a belief in an afterlife should be an important part of the Christian tradition. Even if our lives do extend beyond the grave, however, the question remains concerning the nature of the future in store for us on the other side, and the various Christian views about heaven and hell are proposed answers to this question. According to a relatively common view in the wider Christian culture, heaven and hell are essentially deserved compensations for the kind of earthly lives we live. Good people go to heaven as a deserved reward for a virtuous life, and bad people go to hell as a just punishment for an immoral life; in that way, the scales of justice are sometimes thought to balance. But virtually all Christian theologians regard such a view, however common it may be in the popular culture, as overly simplistic and unsophisticated; the biblical perspective, as they see it, is far more subtly nuanced than that.

When we turn to the theological and philosophical literature in the Christian tradition, we encounter, as we would in any of the other great religious traditions as well, a bewildering variety of different (and often inconsistent) theological views. The views about hell in particular include very different conceptions of divine love, divine justice, and divine grace, very different ideas about free will and its role (if any) in determining a person’s ultimate destiny, very different understandings of moral evil and the purpose of punishment, and very different views about the nature of moral responsibility and the possibility of inherited guilt. There is also this further complication: in the Abrahamic family of monotheistic religions to which Christianity belongs (along with Judaism and Islam), theological reflection often includes an interpretation of various texts thought to be both sacred and authoritative. But the meaning of these texts, particularly when read in their original languages, is rarely transparent to all reasonable interpreters; that is, not even all who regard a relevant text as authoritative seem able to agree on its correct interpretation. Still, despite this bewildering diversity of theological opinion, there may be a relatively easy way to identify three primary eschatological views within the Christian religion and thus to organize the various ideas about heaven and hell around these three primary views.

1.1 Postulating a Final and Irreversible Division within the Human Race

1.2 restricting the scope of god’s love, 2.1 retributivist objections, 2.2 challenging the retributive theory itself, 3.1 moral freedom and rationality, 3.2 moral freedom and irreparable harm, 4.1 divine grace and the inclusive nature of love, 4.2 universalism and human freedom, 4.3 the limits of god’s power to preserve human freedom, 5.1 freedom in heaven, 5.2 concerning the misery of loved ones in hell, 5.3 concerning the supposed tedium of immortality, other internet resources, related entries, 1. three primary eschatological views.

Let theism in general be the belief that a supremely powerful, supremely wise, and supremely good (loving, just, merciful) personal being exists as the Creator of the universe. Christian theism is, of course, more specific than that, and Christian theists typically make the following two-fold assumption: first, that the highest possible good for created persons (true blessedness, if you will) requires that they enter into a proper relationship (or even a kind of union) with their Creator, and second, that a complete severance from the divine nature, without even an implicit experience of God (see note 11 ) would be a terrifying evil. As C. S. Lewis once put it, union with the divine “Nature is bliss and separation from it [an objective] horror” (1955, 232). Although most Christians would probably agree with this, some may want additional clarity on the nature of the union and the separation in question here. But in any case, whereas heaven is in general thought of as a realm in which people experience the bliss of perfect fellowship and harmony with God and with each other, hell is in general thought of as a realm in which people experience the greatest possible estrangement from God, the greatest possible sense of alienation, and perhaps also an intense hatred of everyone including themselves.

The ideas of heaven and hell are also closely associated with the religious idea of salvation , which in turn rests upon a theological interpretation of the human condition. Even the non-religious can perhaps agree that, for whatever reason, we humans begin our earthly lives with many imperfections and with no (conscious) awareness of God. We also emerge and begin making choices in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misperception, and behind our earliest choices lie a host of genetically determined inclinations and environmental (including social and cultural) influences. As young children, moreover, we initially pursue our own needs and interests as we perceive (or misperceive) them. So the context in which we humans emerge with a first person perspective and then begin developing into minimally rational agents virtually guarantees, it seems, that we would repeatedly misconstrue our own interests and pursue them in misguided ways; it also includes many sources of misery, at least some of which—the horror of war, horrifying examples of inhumanity to children, people striving to benefit themselves at the expense of others, etc.—are the product of misguided human choices. But other sources include such non-moral evils as natural disasters, sickness, and especially physical death itself.

Clearly, then, we all encounter in our natural environment many threats to our immediate welfare and many obstacles, some of our own making and some not, to enduring happiness. The Christian interpretation of this human condition thus postulates an initial estrangement from God, and the Christian religion then offers a prescription for how we can be saved from such estrangement; it teaches in particular that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5:19a—KJV). But Christians also disagree among themselves concerning the extent and ultimate success of God’s saving activity among human beings. Some believe that God will positively reject unrepentant sinners after a given deadline, typically thought of as the moment of physical death, and actively punish them forever after; others believe that God would never reject any of God’s own loved ones even though some of them may freely reject God forever, thereby placing themselves in a kind of self-created hell; and still others believe that God’s redemptive love will triumph in the end and will successfully bring reconciliation to all of those whom God has loved into existence in the first place. So one way to organize our thinking here is against the backdrop of the following inconsistent set of three propositions:

• All human sinners are equal objects of God’s redemptive love in the sense that God wills or aims to win over each one of them over time and thereby to prepare each one of them for the bliss of union with the divine nature.
• God’s redemptive love will triumph in the end and successfully win over each and every object of that love, thereby preparing each one of them for the bliss of union with the divine nature.
• Some human sinners will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from the divine nature forever.

If this set of propositions is logically inconsistent, as it surely is, then at least one proposition in the set is false. In no way does it follow, of course, that only one proposition in the set is false, and neither does it follow that at least two of them are true. But if someone does accept any two of these propositions, as virtually every mainline Christian theologian does, then such a person has no choice but to reject the third. [ 1 ] It is typically rather easy, moreover, to determine which proposition a given theologian ultimately rejects, and we can therefore classify theologians according to which of these propositions they do reject. So that leaves exactly three primary eschatological views. Because the Augustinians, named after St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), believe both that God’s redemptive (or electing) love will triumph in the end (proposition (2)) and that some human sinners will never be reconciled to God (proposition (3)), they finally reject the idea that God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally (proposition (1)); because the Arminians, named after Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) for his opposition to the Augustinian understanding of limited election, believe both that God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally (proposition (1)) and that some of these sinners will never be reconciled to God (proposition (3)), they finally reject the idea that God’s redemptive love will triumph in the end (proposition (2)); and finally, because the Christian universalists believe both that God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally (proposition (1)) and that this love will triumph in the end (proposition (2)), they finally reject altogether the idea that some human sinners will never be reconciled to God (proposition (3)).

So here, then, are three quite different systems of theology. According to Augustinian theology, God’s redemptive love cannot be thwarted forever, but the scope of that love is restricted to a limited elect. According to Arminian theology, God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally, but that love can be thwarted by factors, such as certain human choices, over which God has no direct causal control. And according to the theology of Christian universalism, God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally and God’s will to save each one of them cannot be thwarted forever. Accordingly, a question that may now arise is, “Which system of theology best preserves the praiseworthy character and the glory of God?”

Some may already have observed that the third proposition in our inconsistent triad, namely

• Some humans will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from the divine nature forever,

is fairly unspecific concerning the fate of the wicked and the import of separation from God. For if we think of such separation as a state of being estranged or alienated from God, or if we think of it as simply the absence of a loving union with God, then (3) is equally consistent with many different conceptions of hell, some arguably milder than others. It is equally consistent, for example, with the idea that hell is a realm where the wicked receive retribution in the form of everlasting torment, with the idea that they will simply be annihilated in the end, with the idea that they create their own hell by rejecting God, and with the idea that God will simply make them as comfortable as possible in hell even as God graciously limits the harm they can do to each other (see Stump 1986). This lack of specificity is by design. For however one understands the fate of those who supposedly remain separated from God forever , such a fate will entail something like (3). Alternatively, anyone who rejects (3) will likewise reject the idea of everlasting torment as well as any of the supposedly milder conceptions of an everlasting separation from God.

Now when the Fifth General Council of the Christian church condemned the doctrine of universal reconciliation in 553 CE, it did not, strictly speaking, commit the institutional church of that day to a doctrine of everlasting conscious torment in hell. But it did commit the church to a final and irreversible division within the human race between those who will be saved, on the one hand, and those who will be hopelessly lost forever, on the other. So anyone who accepted the Council’s decision on this point, as most major theologians over the subsequent thousand years did, inevitably confronted an obvious question. If there is to be such a final and irreversible division within the human race, just what accounts for it? According to the Augustinians, the explanation lies in the mystery of God’s freedom to extend the divine love and mercy to a limited elect and to withhold it from the rest of humanity; but according to the Arminians, the explanation lies in our human free choices. Thanks to God’s grace, we ultimately determine our own destiny in heaven or hell.

These two very different explanations for a final and irrevocable division within the human race, where some end up in heaven and others in hell, also reflect profound disagreements over the nature of divine grace. Because the Augustinians hold that, in our present condition at least, God owes us nothing, they also believe that the grace God confers upon a limited elect is utterly gratuitous and supererogatory. As John Calvin put it, “For as Jacob, deserving nothing by good works, is taken into grace, Esau, as yet undefiled by any crime, is hated” (Calvin 1960, Bk. III, Ch. XXIII, sec. 12). But the Arminians reject such a doctrine as inherently unjust; it is simply unjust, they insist, for God to do for some, namely the elect, what God refuses to do for others, particularly since the elect have done nothing to deserve their special treatment. The Arminians therefore hold that God offers his grace to all human beings, though many are those who freely reject it and eventually seal their fate in hell forever. But for their part, the Augustinians counter that this Arminian explanation in terms of human free will contradicts St. Paul’s clear teaching that salvation is wholly a matter of grace: “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul declared, “and this [the faith] is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). The Augustinians also challenge the Arminians with the following question: if the ultimate difference between the saved and the lost lies in the superior free choices that the saved have made during their earthly lives, then why shouldn’t they take credit for this difference or even boast about it? Why shouldn’t they say, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as those miserable people in hell who were so stupid as to have freely rejected the grace that God offers to all.”

A Christian universalist, of course, might insist that the Augustinians and the Arminians are both right in their respective criticisms of each other.

We have seen so far that the Augustinians in effect reason as follows: God’s saving grace is irresistible in the end, and yet everlasting torment in hell will nonetheless be the terrible fate for some; therefore, God does not love all created persons equally and his (electing) love is thus limited in its scope. Augustine’s own interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 provides a nice illustration. He wrote: “the word concerning God, ‘who will have all men to be saved,’ does not mean that there is no one whose salvation he [God] doth not will … but by ‘all men’ we are to understand the whole of mankind, in every single group into which it can be divided … For from which of these groups doth not God will that some men from every nation should be saved through his only-begotten Son our Lord?” ( Enchiridion , 103—italics added).

So it is not God’s will, Augustine claimed, to save every individual from every group and every nation; it is merely God’s will to save all kinds of people, that is, some individuals from every group and every nation. Augustine’s exegetical arguments for such an interpretation, however fantastic they may appear to non-Augustinians, need not concern us here. More important for our purposes is his pattern of argument, as illustrated in the following comment: “We could interpret it [1 Tim. 2:4] in any other fashion, as long as we are not compelled to believe that the Omnipotent hath willed something to be done which was not done”—and as long as we are not compelled to believe, he no doubt took for granted, that no one will be eternally damned. For if propositions (2) and (3) are both true, then proposition (1) is false and the scope of God’s love is restricted to a limited elect. It is as simple as that.

Nor should one suppose that this Augustinian understanding of limited election is totally bereft of contemporary defenders. One such contemporary defender, the Christian philosopher Paul Helm, has argued that God’s loving nature no more necessitates that God extend a redemptive love equally to all humans than it necessitates that God create them all with the same human characteristics. For why is it, Helm asks, “that some are strong, some weak, some male, some female, some healthy, some diseased, and so forth?” He then makes the following claim: “if it is possible for there to be differentiations in the created universe that are consistent with the attributes of God then it is presumably possible for there to be differentiations with regard to God’s redemptive purposes which are entirely consistent with the divine attributes” (Helm 1985, 53). How one evaluates such a claim will no doubt depend, at least in part, upon how one answers such questions as these: Would God’s willing that one person have black hair and another brown hair be compatible with loving both of them equally and with acting justly toward both of them? Would God’s willing that one person should come to a glorious end and another to a horrific end be compatible with loving both of them equally and with acting justly toward both of them?

In response to similar questions, Jeff Jordan has challenged the whole idea, which he acknowledges to be widely accepted among theistic philosophers, that “God’s love must be maximally extended and equally intense” (Jordan 2012, 53). According to Jordan, such maximally extended love would be a deficiency in any human who manifested it; hence, it should not be numbered among God’s perfections or great-making properties. Neither is it possible, he appears to argue, that God should love equally each and every created person. For “if God has deep attachments [with some of them], it follows that he does not love all [of them] equally. And being a perfect being, God would have loves of the deepest kind” (Jordan 2012, 67). Jordan thus asks in a later article, “What if ... it is not possible in-principle [even for God] to love every person uniformly to the same degree?” And in support of his contention that this is indeed impossible, Jordan argues, first, that people in fact have incompatible interests, second, that two “interests are incompatible just in case attempts to bring about one of them require that the other be impeded,” and third, that love of the deepest kind “has as a necessary constituent identifying with the interests of one’s beloved” (Jordan 2015, 184).

Two critical problems arise at this point. First, why suppose that the deepest love for others (in the sense of willing the very best for them) always requires identifying with their own interests? According to Jordan, a person’s interest is merely “a desire or goal had by that person—something that a person cares about” (Jordan 2012, 62, n. 26; see also Jordan 2020, 83). But in that sense of “interest,” God’s deepest love for a person surely requires that God actually oppose or impede some of that person’s interests. Why else would Christians believe, as the author of Hebrews put it, that God often “disciplines those whom he loves and chastises every child whom he accepts”? (Heb. 12:6). And second, why suppose that God cannot identify with incompatible interests anyway? Indeed, why cannot a single individual identify with incompatible interests (or conflicting desires) of his or her own? Jordan himself offers the following explanation of what it means to identify with an interest: “Identifying with an interest we might understand as, roughly, caring about what one’s beloved cares about because one’s beloved cares about it” (Jordan 2015, 184). But why, then, cannot a loving mother, for example, care deeply about the incompatible interests (or immediate desires) of her two small children as they squabble over a toy and care about these incompatible interests, however trivial they might otherwise have seemed to her, precisely because her beloved children care about them? The impossibility of her satisfying such incompatible interests hardly entails the impossibility of her identifying with them in the sense of caring deeply about them. [ 2 ] Accordingly, what a proponent of limited election needs at this point is to specify a clear sense of “to identify with” such that (a) it is impossible for God to identify with incompatible interests and (b) an equally deep love for all created persons would nonetheless require that God be able to identify with at least some of their incompatible interests.

In any case, the vast majority of Christian philosophers who have addressed the topic of hell in recent decades and have published at least some of their work in the standard philosophical journals do accept proposition (1) and also reject, therefore, any hint of Augustinian limited election. However ephemeral and changeable such a consensus may be, the contemporary consensus does seem to be that God’s redemptive love extends to all humans equally (see, for example, Buckareff and Plug 2005, Knight 1997, Kronen and Reitan 2011, Kvanvig 1993, Murray 1998, Seymour 2000b, Stump 1983, Swinburne 1983, and Walls 1998). For a more thorough examination and critique of Jordan’s specific arguments, see Parker 2013, and Talbott 2020; and for Jordan’s reply to some of this criticism, see Jordan 2015 and Jordan 2020, Ch. 5.

2. The Augustinian Understanding of Hell

Behind the Augustinian understanding of hell lies a commitment to a retributive theory of punishment, according to which the primary purpose of punishment is to satisfy the demands of justice or, as some might say, to balance the scales of justice. And the Augustinian commitment to such a theory is hardly surprising. For based upon his interpretation of various New Testament texts, Augustine insisted that hell is a literal lake of fire in which the damned will experience the horror of everlasting torment; they will experience, that is, the unbearable physical pain of literally being burned forever. The primary purpose of such unending torment, according to Augustine, is not correction, or deterrence, or even the protection of the innocent; nor did he make any claim for it except that it is fully deserved and therefore just. As for how such torment could be even physically possible, Augustine insisted further that “by a miracle of their most omnipotent Creator, they [living creatures who are damned] can burn without being consumed, and suffer without dying” ( City of God , Bk. 21, Ch. 9). Such is the metaphysics of hell, as Augustine understood it.

It would be unfair, however, to imply that all Augustinians, as classified above, accept Augustine’s own understanding of an eternal torture chamber. For many Augustinians view the agony of hell as essentially psychological and spiritual in nature, consisting of the knowledge that every possibility for joy and happiness has been lost forever. Hell, as they see it, is thus a condition in which self-loathing, hatred of others, hopelessness, and infinite despair consumes the soul like a metaphorical fire. Still, virtually all Augustinians agree with Jonathan Edwards concerning this: whatever the precise nature of the suffering, “In hell God manifests his being and perfections only in hatred and wrath, and hatred without love” (Edwards 1738, 390). In fact, according to Edwards, the damned never were an object of God’s electing love in the first place: “The saints in glory will know concerning the damned in hell, that God never loved them, but that he hates them, and [that they] will be for ever hated of God” (Edwards 1834, sec. III). So why are Christians required to love even those whom God has always hated? Because, says Edwards, we have no way of knowing in this life who is, and who is not, an object of God’s eternal hatred. “We ought now to love all, and even wicked men” because “we know not but that God loves them” (sec. III). In the next life, however, “the heavenly inhabitants will know that [the damned] … are the objects of God’s eternal hatred” (sec. II). Edwards and other Augustinians thus hold that the damned differ from the saved in one respect only: even before the damned were born, God had already freely chosen to exclude them from the grace and the redemptive love that God lavishes upon on the elect.

So why, one may wonder at this point, do the Augustinians believe that anyone—whether it be Judas Iscariot, Saul of Tarsus, or Adolph Hitler—actually deserves unending torment as a just recompense for their sins? The typical Augustinian answer appeals to the seriousness or the heinous character of even the most minor offense against God. In Cur Deus Homo (or Why God Became Man ), a classic statement of the substitution theory of atonement, St. Anselm illustrated such an appeal with the following example. Suppose that God were to forbid you to look in a certain direction, even though it seemed to you that by doing so you could preserve the entire creation from destruction. If you were to disobey God and to look in that forbidden direction, you would sin so gravely, Anselm declared, that you could never do anything to pay for that sin adequately. As a proponent of the retributive theory, Anselm first insisted that “God demands satisfaction in proportion to the extent of the sin.” He then went on to insist that “you do not make satisfaction [for any sin] unless you pay something greater than is that for whose sake [namely God’s] you ought not to have sinned” ( Cur Deus Homo I, Ch. 21). Anselm’s argument, then, appears to run as follows: Because God is infinitely great, the slightest offense against God is also infinitely serious; and if an offense is infinitely serious, then no suffering the sinner might endure over a finite period of time could possibly pay for it. So either the sinner does not pay for the sin at all, or the sinner must pay for it by enduring everlasting suffering (or at least a permanent loss of happiness).

But what about those who never commit any offense against God at all, such as those who die in infancy or those who, because of severe brain damage or some other factor, never develop into minimally rational agents? These too, according to Augustine, deserve to be condemned along with the human race as a whole. “For … the whole human race,” he insisted, “was condemned in its apostate head by a divine judgment so just that even if not a single member of the race [including, therefore, those who die in infancy] were ever saved from it, no one could rail against God’s justice” ( Enchiridion , 99). [ 3 ] Registering his agreement with Augustine, Calvin likewise wrote: “Hence, as Augustine says, whether a man is a guilty unbeliever or an innocent believer, he begets not innocent but guilty children, for he begets them from a corrupted nature” (Calvin 1536, Bk. II, Ch. I, sec. 7 —italics added). Augustine and Calvin both believed, then, that God justly condemns some who die in infancy; indeed, if their innocence required that God unite with them, then the ground of their salvation would lie in themselves rather than, as Augustine saw it, in God’s own free decision to save them from their inherited guilt. [ 4 ] With respect to the unborn twins Jacob and Esau, Augustine thus wrote: “both the twins were ‘by nature children of wrath,’ not because of any works of their own, but because they were both bound in the fetters of damnation originally forged by Adam” ( Enchiridion , 98).

As these remarks illustrate, the Augustinian understanding of original sin implies that we are all born guilty of a heinous sin against God, and this inherited guilt relieves God of any responsibility for our spiritual welfare. In Augustine’s own words, “Now it is clear that the one sin originally inherited, even if it were the only one involved , makes men liable to condemnation” ( Enchiridion , 50—italics added). Augustine thus concluded that God can freely decide whom to save and whom to damn without committing any injustice at all. “Now, who but a fool,” he declared, “would think God unfair either when he imposes penal judgment on the deserving or when he shows mercy to the undeserving” (Enchiridion, 98). For the Augustinians, then, the bottom line is that, even as our Creator, God owes us nothing in our present condition because, thanks to original sin, we come into this earthly life already deserving nothing but everlasting punishment in hell as a just recompense for original sin.

Although this Augustinian rationale for the justice of hell has had a profound influence on the Western theological tradition, particularly in the past, critics of Augustinian theology, both ancient and contemporary, have raised a number of powerful objections to it.

One set of objections arises from within the retributive theory itself, and here are three such objections that critics have raised. First, why should the greatness of the one against whom an offense occurs determine the degree of one’s personal guilt anyway? According to most proponents of the retributive theory, the personal guilt of those who act wrongly must depend, at least in part, upon certain facts about them . A schizophrenic young man who tragically kills his loving mother, believing her to be a sinister space alien who has devoured his real mother, may need treatment, they would say, but a just punishment seems out of the question. Similarly, the personal guilt of those who disobey God or violate the divine commands must likewise depend upon the answer to such questions as these: Have they knowingly violated a divine command?—and if so, to what extent are they responsible for their own rebellious impulses? To what extent do they possess not only an implicit knowledge of God and the divine commands, but a clear vision of the nature of God? To what extent do they see clearly the choice of roads, the consequences of their actions, or the true nature of evil? Even many Augustinians admit the relevance of such questions when they insist that Adam’s sin was especially heinous because he supposedly had special advantages, such as great happiness and the beatific vision, that his descendants do not enjoy. If Adam’s sin was especially heinous because he had special advantages, then the sins of those who lack his special advantages must be less heinous; and if that is true, if some sins against God are less heinous than others, then the greatness of God cannot be the only, or even the decisive, factor in determining the degree of one’s personal guilt or the seriousness of a given sin (see Adams 1975, 442 and Kvanvig 1993, 40–50).

Second, virtually all retributivists, with the notable exception of the Augustinian theologians, reject as absurd the whole idea of inherited guilt. So why, one may ask, do so many Augustinians, despite their commitment to a retributive theory of punishment, insist that God could justly condemn even infants on account of their supposedly inherited guilt? Part of the explanation, according to Philip Quinn, may lie “in a homuncular view of human nature itself” (Quinn 1988, 99) or in what some philosophers might label as a simple category mistake. A good illustration of the homuncular view, as Quinn calls it, might be the following chapter heading in Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo : “What it was that man, when he sinned, removed from God and cannot repay” (I, Ch. 23). The implication of such language, which we also find in Augustine, Calvin, and a host of others, is that humankind or human nature or the human race as a whole is itself a person (or homunculus) who can act and sin against God. Perhaps that explains how Augustine could write: “Man … produced depraved and condemned children. For we were all in that one man, since we were all that one man who fell into sin” ( City of God , Bk. XIII, Ch. 14). And perhaps it also explains how Calvin could write: “even infants themselves, while they carry their condemnation with them from the mother’s womb, are guilty not of another’s fault but of their own” fault (Calvin 1536, Bk. II, Ch. I, sec. 8). The reasoning here appears to run as follows: Humankind is guilty of a grievous offense against God; infants are instances of humankind; therefore, infants are likewise guilty of a grievous offense against God. But most retributivists would reject this way of speaking as simply incoherent. Whether one agrees with it or not, one can at least understand the claim that Adam’s sin had disastrous consequences for all his progeny in that they inherited many defects, deficiencies, and degenerate dispositions. One can also understand Calvin’s claim that, as a result of original sin, “our own insight … is utterly blind and stupid in divine matters” and that “man’s keenness of mind is mere blindness as far as the knowledge of God is concerned” (Calvin 1536, Bk. II, Ch. II, sec. 19). One can even understand the claim that we are morally responsible for doing something about our inherited defects, provided that we have the power and the opportunity to do so. But the claim that we are born guilty is another matter, as is the claim that we are all deserving of everlasting punishment on account of having inherited certain defects or deficiencies. Most retributivists would regard such inherited defects as excusing conditions that decrease , rather than increase , the degree of one’s personal guilt. So even though the Augustinians accept the idea of divine retribution, they appear at the same time to reject important parts of the retributive theory of punishment.

Third, if, as Anselm insisted, even the slightest offense against God is infinitely serious and thus deserves a permanent loss of happiness as a just recompense, then the idea, so essential to the retributive theory, that we can grade offenses and fit lesser punishments to lesser crimes appears to be in danger of collapsing. Many Christians do, it is true, speculate that gradations of punishment exist in hell; some sinners, they suggest, may experience greater pain than others, and some places in hell may be hotter than others. Augustine even tried to ameliorate his views concerning the fate of unbaptized infants by suggesting that “such infants as quit the body without being baptized will be involved in the mildest condemnation of all” ( On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants , Bk. I, Ch. 21 [ available online ]). But many retributivists would nonetheless respond as follows. If all of those in hell, including the condemned infants, are dead in the theological sense of being separated from God forever, and if this implies a permanent loss of both the beatific vision and every other conceivable source of worthwhile happiness, then they have all received a punishment so severe that the further grading of offenses seems pointless. We would hardly regard a king who executes every law-breaker, the jaywalker no less than the murderer, as just; nor would we feel much better if, in an effort to fit the punishment to the crime, the king should reserve the more “humane” forms of execution for the jaywalker. Once you make a permanent and irreversible loss of happiness the supposedly just penalty for the most minor offense, the only option left for more serious offenses is to pile on additional suffering. But at some point piling on additional suffering for more serious offenses seems utterly demonic, or at least so many retributivists would insist; and it does nothing to ameliorate a permanent loss of happiness for a minor offense or, as in the case of non-elect babies who die in infancy, for no real offense at all.

All of which brings one to what Marilyn McCord Adams and many others see as the most crucial question of all. How could any sin that a finite being commits in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion deserve an infinite penalty as a just recompense? (See Adams 1993, 313).

Another set of objections to the Augustinian understanding of hell arises from the perspective of those who reject a retributive theory of punishment. According to Anselm and the Augustinians generally, no punishment that a sinner might endure over a finite period of time can justly compensate for the slightest offense against God. Anselm thus speculated that if no suffering of finite duration will fully satisfy the demands of justice, perhaps suffering of infinite duration will do the trick. But the truth, according to many critics, is that no suffering and no punishment of any duration could in and of itself compensate for someone’s wrongdoing. In the right circumstances punishment might be a means to something that satisfies the demands of justice, but it has no power to do so in and of itself. The Victorian visionary George MacDonald thus put it this way: “Punishment, or deserved suffering, is no equipoise to sin. It is no use laying it on the other scale. It will not move it a hair’s breadth. Suffering weighs nothing at all against sin” (MacDonald 1889, 510). Why not? Because punishment, whether it consists of additional suffering or a painless annihilation, does nothing in and of itself, MacDonald insisted, to cancel out a sin, to compensate or to make up for it, to repair the harm that it brings into our lives, or to heal the estrangement that makes it possible in the first place. [ 5 ] Neither does it justify God’s decision to permit the wrongdoing in the first place.

So what, theoretically, would make things right or fully satisfy justice in the event that someone should commit murder or otherwise act wrongly? Whereas the Augustinians insist that justice requires punishment, other religious writers insist that justice requires something very different, namely reconciliation and restoration (see, for example, Marshall, 2001). Only God, however, has the power to achieve true restoration in the case of murder, because divine omnipotence can resurrect the victims of murder just as easily as it can the victims of old age. According to George MacDonald, whose religious vision was almost the polar opposite of the Augustinian vision, perfect justice therefore requires, first, that sinners repent of their sin and turn away from everything that would separate them from God and from others; it requires, second, that God forgive repentant sinners and that they forgive each other; and it requires, third, that God overcome, perhaps with their own cooperation, any harm that sinners do either to others or to themselves. Augustinians typically object to the idea that divine justice, no less than divine love, requires that God forgive sinners and undertake the divine toil of restoring a just order. But MacDonald insisted that, even as human parents have an obligation to care for their children, so God has a freely accepted responsibility, as our Creator, to meet our moral and spiritual needs. God therefore owes us forgiveness for the same reason that human parents owe it to their children to forgive them in the event that they misbehave. Of course, precisely because they do forgive their children, loving parents may sometimes punish their children and even hold the feet of a child to the proverbial fire when this seems necessary for the child’s own welfare. And if the time should come when loving parents are required to respect the misguided choices of a rebellious teenager or an adult child, they will always stand ready to restore fellowship with a prodigal son or daughter in the event of a ruptured relationship.

We thus encounter two radically different religious visions of divine justice, both of which deserve a full and careful examination. According to the Augustinian vision, those condemned to hell are recipients of divine justice but are not recipients of divine mercy; hence justice and mercy are, according to this vision, radically different (perhaps even inconsistent) attributes of God. [ 6 ] But according to an alternative religious vision, as exemplified in the work of George MacDonald 1889 and J.A.T. Robinson 1968, God’s justice and mercy are the very same attribute in this sense: divine justice is altogether merciful even as divine mercy is altogether just.

3. Free-will Theodicies of Hell

Unlike the Augustinians, Arminian theologians emphasize the role that free will plays in determining one’s eternal destiny in heaven or hell; they also accept the so-called libertarian understanding of free will, according to which freedom and determinism are incompatible (see the entry on free will) ). Because not even an omnipotent being can causally determine a genuinely free choice, the reality of free will, they say, introduces into the universe an element that, from God’s perspective, is utterly random in that it lies outside of God’s direct causal control. Accordingly, if some person should freely act wrongly—or worse yet, freely reject God’s grace—in a given set of circumstances, then it was not within God’s power to induce this person to have freely acted otherwise, at least not in the exact same circumstances in which the person was left free to act wrongly. So in that sense, our human free choices, particularly the bad ones, are genuine obstacles that God must work around in order to bring a set of loving purposes to fruition. And this may suggest the further possibility that, with respect to some free persons, God cannot both preserve their their libertarian freedom in the matter and prevent them from freely continuing to reject God forever. As C. S. Lewis, an early 20th Century proponent of such a theodicy, once put it, “In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of … defeat. … I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside” (Lewis 1944, 115).

The basic idea here is that hell, along with the self imposed misery it entails, is essentially a freely embraced condition rather than a forcibly imposed punishment ; [ 7 ] and because freedom and determinism are incompatible, the creation of free moral agents carries an inherent risk of ultimate tragedy. Whether essential to our personhood or not, free will is a precious gift, an expression of God’s love for us; and because the very love that seeks our salvation also respects our freedom, God will not prevent us from separating ourselves from him, even forever, if that is what we freely choose to do. So even though the perfectly loving God would never reject anyone, sinners can reject God and thus freely separate themselves from the divine nature; they not only have the power as free agents to reject God for a season, during the time when they are mired in ambiguity and subject to illusion, but they are also able to cling forever to the illusions that make such rejection possible in the first place.

But why suppose it even possible that a free creature should freely reject forever the redemptive will of a perfectly loving and infinitely resourceful God? In the relevant literature over the past several decades, advocates of a free-will theodicy of hell have offered at least three quite different answers to this question:

• Perhaps the most commonly expressed answer concerns the possibility of an irrevocable decision to reject God forever. Jerry Walls thus describes the damned as those who have made a decisive choice of evil (see Walls 1992, Ch. 5), Richard Swinburne suggests that “once our will is fixed for bad, we shall never [again] desire or seek what we have missed” because we have made an “irrevocable choice of character” (Swinburne 1989, 199), and R. Zachary Manis interprets Kierkegaard, whose view he defends, as suggesting that the “damned are so filled with hatred … so motivated by malice and spite … that they will to remain in their state of torment, all for the sake of demonstrating that they are in the right, and that God is in the wrong” (Manis 2016, 290).
• Another proposed answer rejects altogether the traditional idea that those in hell are lost without any further hope of restoration. Buckareff and Plug (2005) have thus argued from the very nature of the divine perfections (including perfect love) that God will always have “an open-door policy towards those in hell—making it [always] possible for those in hell to escape” (39); and similarly, Raymond VanArragon has argued that those in hell continue to reject God freely only if they retain the power to act otherwise and hence also the power to repent and be saved (see VanArragon 2010). Because the damned never lose forever their libertarian freedom in relation to God’s offer of salvation, in other words, and never lose forever the psychological possibility of genuine repentance, there is no irreversible finality in the so-called final judgment. [ 8 ] Still, the possibility remains, according to this view, that some will never avail themselves of the opportunity to escape from hell.
• A third proposed answer rests upon a Molinist perspective, according to which God’s omniscience includes what philosophers now call middle knowledge, which in turn includes far more than a simple foreknowledge of a person’s future free actions. It also includes a perfect knowledge uf what a person would have done freely in circumstances that will never even obtain. So with respect to the decision whether or not to create a given person and to place that person in a given set of circumstances, God can base this decision in part on a knowledge of what the person would do freely if created and placed in these precise circumstances—or if, for that matter, the person were placed in any other possible set of circumstances as well. From this Molinist perspective, William Lane Craig has defended the possibility that some free persons are utterly irredeemable in this sense: short of overriding their libertarian freedom, nothing God might do for them—whether it be to impart a special revelation. to administer an appropriate punishment, or to help them in some other way—will ever win them over or persuade them to repent as a means of becoming reconciled to God (Craig 1989). Craig himself calls this dreadful property of being irredeemable transworld damnation (184).

In part because it rests upon the idea of middle knowledge, which is itself controversial, Craig’s idea of transworld damnation may be the most controversial idea that any proponent of a free will theodicy of hell has put forward. It also raises the question of why a morally perfect God would create someone (or instantiate the individual essence of someone) whom God already knew in advance would be irredeemable. By way of an answer, Craig insists on the possibility that some persons would submit to God freely only in a world in which others should damn themselves forever; it is even possible, he insists, that God must permit a large number of people to damn themselves in order to fill heaven with a larger number of redeemed. Craig himself has put it this way:

It is possible that the terrible price of filling heaven is also filling hell and that in any other possible world which was feasible for God the balance between saved and lost was worse. It is possible that had God actualized a world in which there are less persons in hell, there would also have been less persons in heaven. It is possible that in order to achieve this much blessedness, God was forced to accept this much loss (1989, 183).

As this passage illustrates, Craig accepts at least the possibility that, because of free will, history includes an element of irreducible tragedy; he even accepts the possibility that if fewer people were damned to hell, then fewer people would have been saved as well. So perhaps God knows from the outset that a complete triumph over evil is unfeasible no matter what divine actions might be taken; as a result, God merely tries to minimize the defeat, to cut the losses, and in the process to fill heaven with more saints than otherwise would have been feasible. (For a critique of this reply, see Talbott 1992; for Craig’s rejoinder, see Craig 1993; and for a critique of Craig’s rejoinder, see Seymour 2000a.)

In any case, how one assesses each of the three answers above will depend upon how one understands the idea of moral freedom and the role it plays, if any, in someone landing in either heaven or hell. The first two answers also represent a fundamental disagreement concerning the existence of free will in hell and perhaps even the nature of free will itself. According to the first answer, the inhabitants of hell are those who have freely acquired a consistently evil will and an irreversibly bad moral character. So for the rest of eternity, these inhabitants of hell do not even continue rejecting God freely in any sense that requires the psychological possibility of choosing otherwise. But is such an irreversibly bad moral character even coherent or metaphysically possible? Not according to the second answer, which implies that a morally perfect God would never cease providing those in hell with opportunities for repentance and providing these opportunities in contexts where such repentance remains a genuine psychological possibility. All of which points once again to the need for a clearer understanding of the nature and purpose of moral freedom. (See section 5.1 below for some additional issues that arise in connection with freedom in heaven and hell.)

Given the New Testament imagery associated with Gehenna, the Lake of Fire, and the outer darkness—where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth”—the question is not how someone in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misperception could freely choose separation from the divine nature over union with it; the question is instead how someone could both experience such separation (or the unbearable misery of hell, for example) and freely choose to remain in such a state forever. This is not a problem for the Augustinians because, according to them, the damned have no further choice in the matter once their everlasting punishment commences. But it is a problem for those free-will theists who believe that the damned freely embrace an eternal destiny apart from God, and the latter view requires, at the very least, a plausible account of the relevant freedom.

Now, as already indicated, those who embrace a free-will theodicy of hell typically appeal, in the words of Jonathan Kvanvig, to “a libertarian account of human freedom in order to provide a complete response to” the problem of hell (Kvanvig 2011, 54). But of course such a “complete response” would also require a relatively complete account of libertarian freedom. According to Kvanvig, “some formulation of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) correctly describes this notion of [libertarian] freedom”; and, as he also points out, this “principle claims that in order to act freely one must be able to do otherwise” (48). But at most PAP merely sets forth a necessary condition of someone acting freely in the libertarian sense, and it includes no requirement that a free choice be even minimally rational. So consider again the example, introduced in section 2.1 above, of a schizophrenic young man who kills his loving mother, believing her to be a sinister space alien who has devoured his real mother; and this time suppose further that he does so in a context in which PAP obtains and he categorically could have chosen otherwise (perhaps because he worries about possible retaliation from other sinister space aliens). Why suppose that such an irrational choice and action, even if not causally determined, would qualify as an instance of acting freely? Either our seriously deluded beliefs, particularly those with destructive consequences in our own lives, are in principle correctable by some degree of powerful evidence against them, or the choices that rest upon them are simply too irrational to qualify as free moral choices.

If that is true, then not just any causally undetermined choice, or just any agent caused choice, or just any randomly generated selection between alternatives will qualify as a free choice for which the choosing agent is morally responsible. Moral freedom also requires a minimal degree of rationality on the part of the choosing agent, including an ability to learn from experience, an ability to discern normal reasons for acting, and a capacity for moral improvement. With good reason, therefore, do we exclude lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even paranoid schizophrenics from the class of free moral agents. For, however causally undetermined some of their behaviors might be, they all lack some part of the rationality required to qualify as free moral agents. [ 9 ]

Now consider again the view of C. S. Lewis and many other Christians concerning the bliss that union with the divine nature entails, so they believe. and the objective horror that separation from it entails, and suppose that the outer darkness—that is, a soul suspended alone in nothingness, without even a physical order to experience and without any human relationships at all—should be the logical limit (short of annihilation) of possible separation from the divine nature. These ideas seem to lead naturally to a dilemma argument for the conclusion that a freely chosen eternal destiny apart from God is metaphysically impossible. For either a person S is fully informed about who God is and what both union with the divine nature and separation from it would entail, or S is not so informed. If S is fully informed and should choose a life apart from God anyway, then S’s choice would be utterly and almost inconceivably irrational; such a choice would fall well below the threshold required for moral freedom. And if S is not fully informed, then God can of course continue to work with S, subjecting S to new experiences, shattering S’s illusions, and correcting S’s misjudgments in perfectly natural ways that do not interfere with S’s freedom. Beyond that, for as long as S remains less than fully informed, S is simply in no position to reject the true God; S may reject a caricature of God, perhaps even a caricature of S’s own devising, but S is in no position to reject the true God. Therefore, in either case, whether S is fully informed or less than fully informed, it is simply not possible that S should reject the true God freely .

By way of a reply to this argument and in defense of his own free–will approach to hell—which, by the way, in no way excludes the possibility that some inhabitants of hell may eventually escape from it—Jerry Walls concedes that “the choice of evil is impossible for anyone who has a fully formed awareness that God is the source of happiness and sin the cause of misery” (Walls 1992, 133). But Walls also contends that, even if those in hell have rejected a caricature of God rather than the true God, it remains possible that some of them will finally make a decisive choice of evil and will thus remain in hell forever. He then makes a three-fold claim: first, that the damned have in some sense deluded themselves, second, that they have the power to cling to their delusions forever, and third, that God cannot forcibly remove their self-imposed deceptions without interfering with their freedom in relation to God (Walls 1992, Ch. 5).

For more detailed discussions of these and related issues, see Swinburne 1989 (Ch. 12), Craig 1989 and 1993, Talbott 2007, Walls 1992 (Ch. 5), 2004a, and 2004b, Kronen and Reitan 2011 (142–146), and Manis 2016 and 2019. See also sections 4.2 and 5.1 below.

Consider now the two conditions under which we humans typically feel justified in interfering with the freedom of others (see Talbott 1990a, 38). We feel justified, on the one hand, in preventing one person from doing irreparable harm—or more accurately, harm that no human being can repair—to another; a loving father may thus report his own son to the police in an effort to prevent the son from committing murder. We also feel justified, on the other hand, in preventing our loved ones from doing irreparable harm to themselves; a loving father may thus physically overpower his daughter in an effort to prevent her from committing suicide.

Now one might, it is true, draw a number of faulty inferences from such examples as these, in part because we humans tend to think of irreparable harm within the context of a very limited timeframe, a person’s life on earth. Harm that no human being can repair may nonetheless be harm that God can repair. It does not follow, therefore, that a loving and omnipotent God, whose goal is the reconciliation of the world, would prevent every suicide and every murder; it follows only that such a God would prevent every harm that not even omnipotence could repair at some future time, and neither suicide nor murder is necessarily an instance of that kind of harm. So even though a loving God might sometimes permit murder, such a God would never permit one person to annihilate the soul of another or to destroy the very possibility of future happiness in another; and even though a loving God might sometimes permit suicide, such a God would never permit genuine loved ones to destroy the very possibility of future happiness in themselves either. The latter conclusion concerning suicide is no doubt the more controversial, and Jonathan Kvanvig in particular has challenged it (see Kvanvig 1993, 83–88). But whatever the resolution of this particular debate, perhaps both parties can agree that God, as Creator, would deal with a much larger picture and a much longer timeframe than that with which we humans are immediately concerned.

So the idea of irreparable harm—that is, of harm that not even omnipotence could ever repair—is critical at this point. It is most relevant, perhaps, in cases where someone imagines sinners freely choosing annihilation (Kvanvig), or imagines them freely making a decisive and irreversible choice of evil (Walls), or imagines them freely locking the gates of hell from the inside (C. S. Lewis). But proponents of the so-called escapism understanding of hell can plausibly counter that hell is not necessarily an instance of such irreparable harm, and Raymond VanArragon in particular raises the possibility that God might permit some loved ones to continue forever rejecting God in a non-decisive way that would not, at any given time, harm them irreparably (see VanArragon 2010, 37ff; see also Kvanvig 2011, 52). Here it is perhaps worth noting how broadly VanArragon defines the term “rejecting God” (see 2010, 30–31)—so broadly, in fact, that any sin for which one is morally responsible would count as an instance of someone rejecting God. He thus explicitly states that rejecting God in his broad sense requires neither an awareness of God nor a conscious decision, however confused it may be, to embrace a life apart from God. Accordingly, persistent sinning without end would never result, given such an account, in anything like the traditional hell, whether the latter be understood as a lake of fire, the outer darkness, or any other condition that would reveal the full horror of separation from God (given the traditional Christian understanding of such separation). Neither would such a sinner ever achieve a state of full clarity. For given VanArragon’s understanding of libertarian freedom, continuing to sin forever would require a perpetual context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misperception.

4. The Universalist Rejection of Everlasting Separation

A theist of any religion who accepts the traditional idea of everlasting punishment, or even the idea of an everlasting separation from God, must either reject the idea that that all human sinners are equal objects of God’s redemptive love (see proposition (1) in section 1 above) or reject the idea that God’s redemptive love will triumph in the end and bring reconciliation to each and every object of such divine love (see proposition (2)). But a theist who accepts proposition (1), as the Arminians do, and also accepts proposition (2), as the Augustinians do, can then reason deductively that almighty God will indeed triumph in the end and successfully win over each and every human sinner. From the perspective of an interpretation of the Christian Bible, moreover, Christian universalists need only accept the exegetical arguments of the Arminian theologians in support of (1) and the exegetical arguments of the Augustinian theologians in support of (2); that alone would enable them to build an exegetical case for a universalist interpretation of the Bible as a whole.

One argument in support of proposition (1) contends that love (especially in the form of willing the very best for another) is inclusive in this sense: even where it is logically possible for a loving relationship to come to an end, two persons are bound together in love only when their purposes and interests, even the conditions of their happiness, are so logically intertwined as to be inseparable. If a mother should love her child even as she loves herself, for example, then any evil that befalls the child is likewise an evil that befalls the mother and any good that befalls the child is likewise a good that befalls the mother; hence, it is simply not possible, according to this argument, for God to will the best for the mother without also willing the best for the child as well.

For similar reasons, Kenneth Einar Himma has argued that some widespread moral intuitions, “together with Christian exclusivism and the traditional doctrine of hell, entail that it is morally wrong for anyone to have children” (Himma 2011, 198). That argument seems especially forceful in the context of Augustinian theology, which implies that, for all any set of potential parents know, any child they might produce could be one of the reprobate whom God has hated from the beginning and has destined from the beginning for eternal torment in hell. The title of Himma’s article, “Birth as a Grave Misfortune,” would seem to describe such cases perfectly. (See Bawulski 2013 for a reply to Himma and Himma 2016 for Himma’s rejoinder.)

In any event, Arminians and universalists both regard an acceptance of proposition (1) as essential to a proper understanding of divine grace. Could God truly extend grace to an elect mother, they might ask, by making the baby she loves with all her heart the object of a divine hatred and do this, as the Augustinians say was done in the case of Esau, even before the child was born or had done anything good or bad? As the Arminians and the universalists both view the matter, the Augustinians have embraced a logical impossibility: the idea that God could extend a genuine love and compassion to one person even as God withholds it from some of that person’s own loved ones. They therefore reject the doctrine of limited election on the ground that it undermines the concept of grace altogether. Where they disagree, of course, is over the issue of whether the objects of God’s love can resist his grace forever. Whereas Arminians hold that, given the reality of free will, we humans can, if we so choose, resist God’s grace forever, universalists tend to believe that, even though we can resist God’s grace for a while, perhaps even for a substantial period of time (while mired in ignorance and ambiguity), we cannot resist it forever. So the issue between these two camps, the Arminians and the universalists, finally comes down to the question of which position has the resources for a better account of human freedom and of God’s respect for it (see, for example, the exchange between Walls 2004 and Talbott 2004). Or, to put the question in a slightly different way, which position, if either, requires that God interfere with human freedom (or human autonomy) in morally inappropriate ways? As the following section should illustrate, the answer to this question may be far more complicated than some might at first imagine.

A widely held assumption among free–will theists is that no guarantee of universal reconciliation is even possible apart from God’s willingness to interfere with human freedom in those cases where someone persists in rejecting God and his grace. Indeed, Jonathan Kvanvig goes so far as to describe universalism as a “view, according to which God finally decides that if one has not freely chosen Heaven, there will come a time when one will be brought to Heaven against one’s will. One will experience, in this sense, coercive redemption at some point” (Kvanvig 2011, 14). But in fact, no universalist—not even a theological determinist—holds that God sometimes coerces people into heaven against their will . For although many Christian universalists believe that God provided Saul of Tarsus with certain revelatory experiences that changed his mind in the end and therefore changed his will as well, this is a far cry from claiming that he was coerced against his will. Kvanvig’s own understanding of libertarian freedom, moreover, already establishes the logical possibility that God can bring about a universal reconciliation without in any way interfering with human freedom.

But in addition to defending the bare logical possibility of such a universal reconciliation on libertarian grounds, Eric Reitan has set forth an intriguing argument, which he calls “the Argument from Infinite Opportunity,” for the conclusion that God can effectively guarantee the salvation of all sinners without ever interfering with anyone’s libertarian freedom (see Kronen and Reitan 2011, Ch. 8). The basic idea here is that a sinner could have, if necessary, infinitely many opportunities over an unending stretch of time to repent and to submit to God freely. So consider this. Although it is logically possible, given the normal philosophical view of the matter, that a fair coin would never land heads up, not even once in a trillion tosses, such an eventuality is so incredibly improbable and so close to an impossibility that no one need fear it actually happening. Similarly, in working with some sinner S (shattering S’s illusions and correcting S’s ignorance), God could presumably bring S to a point, just short of actually determining S’s choice, where S would see the choice between horror and bliss with such clarity that the probability of S repenting and submitting to God would be extremely high. Or, if you prefer, drop the probability to .5. Over an indefinitely long period of time, S would still have an indefinitely large number of opportunities to repent; and so, according to Reitan, the assumption that sinners retain their libertarian freedom together with the Christian doctrine of the preservation of the saints yields the following result. We can be just as confident that God will eventually win over all sinners (and do so without causally determining their choices), as we can be that a fair coin will land heads up at least once in a trillion tosses.

A possible reply to Reitan’s argument, as just briefly summarized, is that our free choices can sometimes create a hardened character, which in turn places constraints on future free choices. But either the hardened character of those in hell removes forever the psychological possibility of their choosing to repent, or it does not. If it does remove that psychological possibility, then they do not continue rejecting God freely in the sense that the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) requires; and if it does not remove that psychological possibility, then Reitan’s argument remains pertinent. Beyond that, the most critical issue at this point concerns the relationship between free choice, on the one hand, and character formation, on the other. Our moral experience does seem to provide evidence that a pattern of bad choices can sometimes produce bad habits and a bad moral character, but it also seems to provide evidence that a pattern of bad choices can sometimes bring one closer to a dramatic conversion of some kind. So why not suppose that a pattern of bad choices might be even more useful to God than a pattern of good choices would be in teaching the hard lessons we sometimes need to learn and in thus rendering a dramatic conversion increasingly more probable over the long run? Are not the destructive consequences that alcoholism can have in the lives of some people the very thing that sometimes motivates them to seek help and even to give up alcohol altogether? [ 10 ] For more on the issue of free will and character formation, see Swinburne 1989 (Ch. 12), Sennett 1999, Murray 1999, the rejoinder to Murray in Kronen and Reitan 2011 (170–177), the discussion of character formation in Talbott 2010 (9–13), and section 5.1 below.

Suppose that a man is standing atop the Empire State Building with the intent of committing suicide by jumping off and plunging to his death below. One obvious way in which God could interfere with the man’s freedom in this matter would be simply to cause him to change his mind; that would effectively prevent the suicide from occurring. But there is another, less obvious, way in which God could interfere with the man’s freedom to commit suicide; God could permit him to leap from the building and then cause him to float gently to the ground like a feather; that too would effectively prevent the suicide from occurring. So one is not free to accomplish some action or to achieve some end, unless God permits one to experience the chosen end, however confusedly one may have chosen it; and neither is one free to separate oneself from God, or from the ultimate source of human happiness as Christians understand it, unless God permits one to experience the very life one has chosen and the full measure of misery that it entails.

Given the almost universal Christian assumption that a complete separation from the divine nature (in the outer darkness, for example) would be an objective horror, it seems to follow that even God would face a dilemma with respect to human freedom. For either God could permit sinners to follow a path that ultimately leads, according to Christian theology, to an objective horror and permit them to continue following it for as long as they freely choose to do so, or God could at some point prevent them from continuing along their freely chosen path. If God should permit sinners to continue along their freely chosen path—the one that unbeknownst to them will inevitably lead them to an objective horror—then their own experience, provided they are rational enough to qualify as free moral agents, would eventually shatter their illusions and remove their libertarian freedom to continue along that path. Alternatively, if God should prevent sinners from achieving their freely chosen goal of separating themselves from the divine nature, then they would have no real freedom to do so. In neither case, therefore, would sinners be able to retain forever their libertarian freedom to continue separating themselves from the divine nature and from the ultimate source of human happiness.

If this argument should be sound, it also seems to follow that, no matter how tenaciously some sinners might pursue a life apart from God and resist the divine purpose for their lives, God would have, as a sort of last resort, a sure-fire way to shatter the illusions that make their rebellion possible in the first place. To do so, God need only honor their own free choices and permit them to experience the very life they have confusedly chosen for themselves. Why interfere with someone’s freedom, after all, at the very point where honoring that freedom would in fact teach a hard lesson and therefore do the most good? Would that not be utterly incompatible with God’s moral character, as most Christians understand it?

However one might answer such a question, the Christian universalist’s understanding of the nature and scope of God’s irresistible grace is very different from the Augustinian understanding of it. For Christian universalists not only reject the Augustinian idea that God’s irresistible grace extends to a limited elect only; they also hold that God’s judgment of sin is essentially a matter of permitting sinners to experience the very condition of separation they have confusedly chosen for themselves. Many Christian universalists are thus fond of quoting St. Paul’s remark that “God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (Rom. 11:32—NIV), and they interpret this as a declaration that divine judgment, however harsh it may seem, is itself an expression of divine mercy and is therefore part of what makes God’s grace irresistible in the end. If, as a last resort, God should allow a sinner to live for a while without even an implicit experience of the divine nature, [ 11 ] the resulting horror, they believe, will at last shatter any illusion that some good is achievable apart from God; and such a discovery will finally elicit a cry for help of a kind that, however faint it may be, is just what God needs in order to begin and eventually to complete the process of reconciliation.

In sum, opponents of universalism must either restrict God’s redemptive love to a limited elect or admit that God’s love will suffer an ultimate defeat in this sense: God’s own desire for the human race as a whole, as expressed in a place like 1 Timothy 2:4, will never be satisfied. Because the Arminians and the universalists agree that God could never love an elect mother even as, at the same time, God rejects her beloved baby, they both agree that the first alternative is utterly impossible. But because the issues surrounding the idea of free will are so complex and remain the source of so much philosophical controversy, perhaps they can also agree that a free–will theodicy of hell is the best philosophical account currently available for a doctrine of everlasting separation from God.

5. Heaven: Three Critical Issues

Rarely, if ever, are Christian theologians very specific about what heaven will supposedly be like, and there are no doubt good reasons for this. For most of them would deny that the primary sources of the Christian faith, such as the Bible, provide much information on this particular matter. But three issues have typically arisen in the relevant philosophical literature: first, because so many of the recent Christian philosophers have focused upon free will theodicies of hell, it is hardly surprising that the issue of freedom in heaven should likewise have arisen; a second issue is whether the misery of loved ones in hell would undermine the blessedness of those in heaven; and a third issue is whether immortality of any kind would ultimately lead to tedium, boredom, and an insipid life.

Like the arguments over universalism and human freedom, as briefly summarized in section 4.2 above, the issue of freedom in heaven once again illustrates the need for a reasonably clear and complete account of free will. It also illustrates how easily a purely verbal dispute, which is an apparent dispute that arises from different uses of the same term, can sometimes disguise itself as a genuine disagreement over some matter of substance. With respect to the issue of freedom in heaven, here are a couple of additional examples to consider: (a) the honest banker whose deeply-rooted moral and religious convictions make it psychologically impossible for him to accept a bribe in a given situation, and (b) the mother whose great love for her newborn baby makes it psychologically impossible for her knowingly to harm her beloved child physically. The question of whether there is freedom in heaven seems relevantly similar to the question of whether our honest banker freely refuses the bribe and whether our loving mother freely refuses to do anything she knows would harm her baby physically.

Consider now three different non-compatibilist accounts of what it means to act freely and the implications that each of these accounts has for the possibility of freedom in heaven. According to the first account, briefly introduced in section 3.1 above, freedom always requires that PAP obtain; that is, one is free with respect to some action A in a given set of circumstances only if it is within one’s power to do A in that set of circumstances and also within one’s power to refrain from doing A. So if no one in heaven, as Christians typically understand it, will ever have the slightest inclination to disobey God—if, that is, it would be as psychologically impossible for the saints in heaven to disobey God as it would be for our loving mother to torture her beloved baby to death, then there can be no freedom of that kind in heaven. This is not a matter for dispute; it is instead merely a matter of being clear about a specified use of the term “freedom.” Either the saints in heaven retain a robust power to disobey God and to sin, or they do not have the kind of freedom that PAP specifies. Or, to put it another way: if the saints in heaven do have this kind of freedom even as Lucifer, according to one traditional interpretation of his supposed fall from perfection, was able to commit the primal sin in heaven, then they also retain the power to sin in heaven (see Matheson 2018, 66).

A second account carries no implication that having the relevant freedom in the present always requires an ability to do otherwise in the present , though it does require an ability to do otherwise at various times in one’s life history. For according to Robert Kane, “Agents with free will . . . must be such that they could have done otherwise on some occasions of their life histories with respect to some character- or motive-forming acts by which they make themselves into the kinds of persons they are” (Kane 1998, 72). In a similar vein, James F. Sennett defends the free will of the saints in heaven by in effect arguing that they have freely chosen their own moral character. “A character that is libertarian freely chosen,” he therefore suggests, “is the only kind of character that can determine compatibilist free choices” (Sennett 1999, 74; and for a similar view, albeit tweaked a bit, see Pawl and Timpe 2008). The basic idea here seems to be that one’s own motives and character can determine a free action in the present only when one is fully responsible for the motives and character traits that determine this action.

A possible difficulty here is to provide a coherent account, not to mention an empirically verifiable account, of how certain undetermined choices buried in a life history might render one responsible for one’s present motives and character traits. This is a problem in part because, as Manuel Vargas points out, “even freely chosen features of our lives and ourselves can, because of our epistemic limitations, yield unanticipated consequences” (Vargas 2005, 282)—as, for instance, when someone sincerely cultivates moral integrity and inadvertently produces some of the worst character traits: moral rigidity, self-righteousness, and a lack of compassion. Similarly, someone’s worst choices and the lessons learned from them may be the very thing that has the most profound effect on the development of a good character. So given our epistemic limitations and the unanticipated consequences of our free choices, is it any wonder that many Christian theologians view a good character as a gift from God rather than as something for which we can credit ourselves?

A third account of freedom, sometimes neglected by those who emphasize the importance of human freedom, is Susan Wolf’s Reason View, according to which “the freedom necessary for responsibility consists in the ability (or freedom) to do the right thing for the right reasons” (Wolf 1990, 94). But unlike the autonomy view, as she calls it, such freedom does not require the ability to refrain from doing the right thing for the right reasons. Wolf thus commits herself to the following asymmetry: whereas committing a wrong (or immoral) act freely requires an ability to do otherwise and therefore to refrain from acting wrongly, doing the right thing for the right reasons freely does not require an ability to act otherwise. Such a view takes full advantage of the idea, expressed in section 3.1 above, that the relevant freedom requires a minimal degree of rationality, and it might be modified slightly as follows. If a relevant threshold of rationality requires only an ability to make reasonable judgments, rather than infallible ones, concerning the best course of action, then perhaps we can say that freedom consists in the ability to follow one’s own reasonable judgment concerning the best course of action in a given situation (see Talbott 2009, 388). Whether one accepts such a modification or not, something like Wolf’s Reason View seems to accord perfectly with the religious view that those in heaven are the freest of all created persons, even as those in hell remain in bondage to sin (a bondage similar to an alcoholic’s bondage to alcohol). Such a view also seems to accord perfectly with St. Paul’s view that salvation is a means by which the will is released from its bondage to sin.

Assuming that love ties people’s interests together in the way described in section 4.1 above, one might then wonder how God could preserve the happiness of those in heaven who know that some of their own loved ones are suffering forever in hell. For the question inevitably arises, “How could anyone remain happy knowing that a genuine loved one, however corrupted, is destined to be miserable forever ”. When a reporter asked the mother of Ted Bundy, a serial murderer of young women, whether she could still support a son who had become a monster, her answer provided a poignant illustration of the problem. “Of course I support him,” she declared, as her eyes filled with tears and her body literally began shaking. “He is my son. I love him. I have to support him.” She obviously did not support his monstrous crimes, and neither did she even object to the severity of his punishment. But still, one wonders how this suffering woman—a committed Christian, by the way—could ever achieve supreme happiness knowing that the son she continued to love was destined to be lost forever without any future hope of redemption.

Such considerations have led some, including the 19 th Century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, to argue that the misery of those in hell would undermine altogether the blessedness of the redeemed in heaven (see Schleiermacher 1830, 721–722; Kronen and Reitan 2011, 80–89; and Talbott 1990b, 237–241). But others have argued that God could always shield forever the redeemed in heaven from painful memories of the lost in hell. William Lane Craig thus raises the possibility that God could simply “obliterate” from the minds of the redeemed “any knowledge of lost persons so that they experience no pangs of remorse for them” (Craig, 1991, 306). Given the widespread theological view, which Craig seems to accept, that billions of people will eventually be lost forever, one issue here concerns how much of some people’s minds, particularly those whose entire family is lost forever, God would have to wipe out in order to accomplish such a strategy. Another concerns how God, as an infinitely loving being, might expunge the infinitely more painful memories from his own mind. But the main issue to be resolved here is whether blissful ignorance qualifies as a worthwhile form of happiness at all.

As a matter of historical fact, in any case, some of the most influential theologians in the Western tradition, including some who are widely admired as heroes of faith, have not only made an eternal torture chamber an important part of their teaching about hell; they seem also to have gloried in the idea that the torments of those writhing in hell forever will increase the joy of those in heaven. Jonathan Edwards thus wrote: “When the saints in glory … shall see how miserable others of their fellow-creatures are, who were naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they [the saints] in the mean time are in the most blissful state and shall surely be in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!” (Edwards 1834, sec. II [ available online ]). Remarkably, Edwards was also a theological determinist who held that God determined from the beginning to bring a huge number of people to a horrific end and did so for the precise purpose of increasing the joy of the elect in heaven. He even insisted, contra Craig, that the inhabitants of heaven and hell will be acutely aware of each other’s condition; so even as the torments of former loved ones in hell will contribute to the joy of those in heaven, so the joy of former loved ones in heaven will contribute to the psychological torment of those in hell. He thus made the following kind of warning an important part of his preaching: “How will you bear to see your parents, who in this life had so dear an affection for you, now without any love to you … How will you bear to see and hear them praising the Judge, for his justice exercised in pronouncing this sentence, and hearing it with holy joy in their countenances, and shouting forth the praises and hallelujahs of God and Christ on that account?” (sec. IV).

As horrifying as such descriptions are apt to appear to someone such as Ted Bundy’s mother, perhaps all parties can agree on one thing at least. If justice were to require that one suffer eternally for sins that God himself causally determined, then such suffering would have to be a source of satisfaction, if not outright bliss, on the part of any fair-minded person witnessing it. But since, as they say, one person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens, [ 12 ] a critic of Edwards will simply reply in the following way. No fair-minded person would find satisfaction in someone’s experiencing eternal torment as punishment for even the worst of sins, particularly in the case of sins that God himself has causally determined; therefore, such torment is not what justice requires. According to Edwards’s own theology, moreover, he was no less deserving of eternal torment himself than are those who suffer in hell. Schleiermacher and many others therefore find it hard to understand how those who receive special favor in this regard could be so deliriously happy in the knowledge that some of their own loved ones do not receive a similar special favor. [ 13 ]

A third issue concerning heaven that sometimes arises is whether everlasting bliss is even a possible state of affairs. Bernard Williams has thus suggested “that immortality would be, where conceivable at all, intolerable” (in Fischer 1993, 73). Commenting on a play by Karel Capek about a women who at age 42 receives immortality and by age 342 no longer wants to live, Williams wrote: “Her trouble was, it seems, boredom: a boredom connected with the fact that everything that could happen and make sense to one human being of 42 had already happened to her” by age 342 (82).

Such a statement is reminiscent of a quotation often attributed to Charles H. Duell, who became commissioner of the U.S. patent office in 1898. According to legend, Duell declared that everything that can be invented has already been invented; and even though this wonderful story is probably apocryphal, it nonetheless illustrates in a humorous way the possible consequences of an impoverished imagination. It would hardly take even 30 years, depending upon the circumstances, for a given life to become dull and insipid. But the idea that a healthy person could exhaust all the possibilities for adventure and meaningful experience in a mere 300 years will strike many as simply preposterous. A mere 300 years is virtually nothing, it is true, when compared to a life without end. So the real issue is whether it is logically possible that an unending life (in which one retains one’s identity as the same person) should be filled with unending joy and ever increasing opportunities for novel and meaningful experiences.

Addressing this very issue, John Martin Fischer writes: “Remember [the possibility] that certain … of one’s family and friends also have the relevant sort of immortality. It seems to me that under such circumstances one could live an attractive life characterized by a desirable mix of fulfilling activities” (Fischer 1993, 10—his italics). Might not an unending life even increase the possibilities for such a desirable mix? A favorite symphony not heard for a hundred years or so might be experienced as utterly fresh and exciting. And even if we set aside anything that might raise a controversy about personal identity, the mere discovery of an unexpected means of traversing our extravagant universe, with its billions of galaxies and billions of star systems within each of them, might open up—for adventurous spirits anyway—incredible possibilities for new and exciting experiences. Nor should we ignore the further possibility of experiencing infinitely many other realms and universes that are not spatially contiguous with our own. Pursuing Fischer’s idea of a desirable mix even further, a longer life could also increase the chances for the experience of boredom itself to fit into a larger context of meaningful experience. In caring for her baby, for example, a mother typically performs many mundane tasks that might seem utterly tedious were it not for the joy of interacting with her baby and of watching it grow and flourish. Similarly, St. Paul found even the tedium of prison to be tolerable, so he claimed, because he saw it as part of a larger story that he believed to be both true and glorious. So why allow, many religious people would ask, an impoverished imagination to exclude the very possibility of an over-arching story arc perpetually giving fresh meaning to our individual lives?

Still, all of that having been said, Williams’s view concerning the inevitably tedious nature of an unending life is not that far removed from the religious view that in our present unperfected condition we are not yet fit for eternity and not yet capable of experiencing the most worthwhile forms of happiness; indeed, given our present condition, some would claim, we might even turn heaven itself into a hellish experience. And if that be true, then the task of rendering someone fit for eternal joy may be far more complicated, even for an omnipotent being, than one might have imagined. As many religions including Christianity teach, we must first learn to love properly before we can experience enduring happiness, and this requires that we also be purged of all selfish tendencies, all lust for power over others, every temptation to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and anything else that might separate one person from another. Right here, of course, is where Williams would question whether a suitably transformed person would be the same individual as the unperfected person that existed previously. But none of our moral imperfections, a religious person might retort, can coherently be numbered among our essential properties—as if we could never progress morally and never learn to become more loving persons. So here, perhaps, is the sum of the matter from a religious perspective: the more self-absorbed we become, the more tedious and dreary our lives inevitably become over time. But the more outwardly focused we become in loving relationships, the more joyful and meaningful our lives also become over time.

In any case, the controversies associated with Williams’s understanding of immortality are also relevant to the problem of evil. For the same considerations that lead some to wonder whether immortality would eventually become dreadfully boring may also lead some of the religious to consider favorably the following hypothesis. For all we know, an environment such as the one we live in—an environment in which one encounters real threats and dangers of a temporary kind, where one person’s temporary welfare may depend upon the choices of others and upon natural forces over which one has limited or no control, where a quest for truth and genuine discoveries about the glories of God’s creation are possible, and where moral failure would likely provide ample opportunities for repentance, forgiveness, and atonement—for all we know, such an environment is an important part of the process whereby God renders us fit for eternal joy. Although the problem of evil is the subject of another entry (see the entry on The Problem of Evil ), the relevant point for the topic of heaven is just this: one need not think of heaven (or the coming age, as the Gospel writers sometimes refer to it) as a static ethereal realm in which there is nothing to do. One might instead suppose that God will never stop creating additional persons to love and additional realms for us to experience and that we will always have important roles to play, as Paul hinted in Ephesians 2:7, in this ongoing process of creation and revelation.

• Adams, Marilyn, 1975, “Hell and the God of Justice,” Religious Studies , 11: 433–447.
• –––, 1976–1977, “Divine Justice, Divine Love, and the Life to Come,” Crux , 13: 12–28.
• –––, 1993, “The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians,” in E. Stump (ed.), A Reasoned Faith , Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 301–327.
• Almeida, M., 2008, “On Vague Eschatology,” Faith and Philosophy , 25: 359–375.
• Anselm, 1099, Cur Deus Homo , in Anselm of Canterbury (Volume 3), J. Hopkins and H. Richardson (eds. and trs.), New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1976.
• Augustine, City of God against the Pagans , in R. W. Dyson (ed. and trans.), City of God against the Pagans , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• –––, Enchiridion , in A. C. Outler (ed. and trans.), Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion (Library of Christian Classics, Volume VII), Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955.
• Bawulski, S., 2013, “Do Hell and Exclusivism make Procreation Impermissible? A Reply to Kenneth Himma,” Faith and Philosophy , 30: 330–344.
• Buckareff, A. and A. Plug, 2005, “Escaping Hell: Divine Motivation and the Problem of Hell,” Religious Studies , 41: 39–54.
• Buenting, J. (ed.), 2010, The Problem of Hell: A Philosophical Anthology , Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.
• Byerly, T. Ryan and Eric J. Silverman (eds.), 2017, Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays about Heaven , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Calvin, John, 1536, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Library of Christian Classics, Volume XXI), J. McNeill (ed.) and F. L. Battles (trans.), Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960.
• Craig, W. L., 1989, “‘No Other Name’: A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ,” Faith and Philosophy , 6: 172–188.
• –––, 1991, “Talbott’s Universalism,” Religious Studies , 27: 297–308.
• –––, 1993, “Talbott’s Universalism Once More,” Religious Studies 29: 497–518
• –––, 1995, “Middle Knowledge and Christian Exclusivism,” Sophia , 34: 120–139.
• Cullman, Oscar, 1958, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? London: Epworth.
• Dougherty, T. and T. Poston, 2008, “Hell, Vagueness and Justice: A Reply to Sider,” 25: 322–328.
• Edwards, Jonathan, 1738/1989, Charity and Its Fruits , reprinted in Ethical Writings ( Works of Jonathan Edwards : Volume 8), P. Ramsey (ed.), New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
• –––, 1834, “The End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Righteous: Or, the Torments of the Wicked in Hell, No Occasion of Grief to the Saints in Heaven,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards in Two Volumes (Volume II), E. Hickman (ed.), London: William Ball, 34, Paternoster-Row. [ available online in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library].
• Fischer, J. M., 1993, “Introduction: Death, Metaphysics, and morality,” in J. M. Fischer, The Metaphysics of Death , Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, 1–30.
• Hart, M., 2016, “Calvinism and the Problem of Hell,” in D. Alexander and D, Johnson (eds.), Calvinism and the Problem of Evil , Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 248–272.
• Helm, P., 1985, “The Logic of Limited Atonement,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology , 3: 47–54.
• Hick, John, 1976, Death and Eternal Life , London: Collins.
• Himma K., 2010, “Birth as a Grave Misfortune: The traditional Doctrine of Hell and Christian Salvific Exclusivism,” in Buenting 2010: 179–198
• –––, 2016, “The Ethics of Subjecting a Child to the Risk of Eternal Torment,” Faith and Philosophy , 33: 94–108.
• Jordan, J., 2012, “The Topography of Divine Love,” Faith and Philosophy , 29: 53–69.
• –––, 2015, “The Topography of Divine Love: Reply to Thomas Talbott,” Faith and Philosophy , 32: 182–187.
• –––, 2020, “The Limits of Divine Love,” in O. Crisp, J. Arcadi, and J. Wessling (eds.), Love: Human and Divine: Contemporary Essays in Systematic and Philosophical Theology , New York: T&T Clark: 81–95.
• Kane, Robert, 1998, The Significance of Free Will , Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kierkegaard, S., 1849, The Sickness unto Death , H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (eds. and trans.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• Knight, G., 1997, “Universalism and the Greater Good: A Response to Talbott,” Faith and Philosophy , 14: 98–103.
• Kronen, J. and E. Reitan, 2011, God’s Final Victory: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism , London and New York: The Continuum Publishing Group.
• Küng, H., 1984, Eternal Life? E. Quinn (trans.), Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
• Kvanvig, J., 1993, The Problem of Hell , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011, Destiny and Deliberation , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lewis, C. S., 1944, The Problem of Pain , New York: The MacMillan Company.
• –––, 1946, The Great Divorce , New York: The MacMillan Company.
• –––, 1955, Surprised by Joy , New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Luck, M., 2016, “Escaping Heaven and Hell,” Religious Studies , 52: 395–402.
• MacDonald, Goerge, 1889, “Justice,” in Unspoken Sermons , Series III, London: Longmans, Green & Company; reprinted as G. MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons , Series I, II, and III, Whitethorn, CA: Johannesen, 2004.
• Manis, R. Z., 2016, “Eternity will nail him to himself: the logic of damnation in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death ,” Religious Studies , 52: 287–314.
• –––, 2019, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: an Essay on the Problem of Hell , New York: Oxford University Press
• Marshall, C., 2001, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment , Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Matheson, B., 2014, “Escaping Heaven,” International Journal of Philosophy of Religion , 75: 197–206.
• –––, 2018, “Tracing and heavenly freedom,” International Journal of Philosophy of Religion , 84: 57–69.
• Murray, M., 1998, “Heaven and Hell”, in Reason for the Hope within Us , Michael Murray (ed.), Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
• –––, 1999, “Three Versions of Universalism,” Faith and Philosophy , 16 (January): 55–68.
• Nemes, S., 2016, “Christian apokatastasis : Two Paradigmatic Objections,” Journal of Analytic Theology , 4 (May): 66–86.
• Parker, R., 2013, “Deep and Wide: A Response to Jeff Jordan on Divine Love,” Faith and Philosophy , 30: 444–461.
• Pawl, T. and K. Timpe, 2008, “Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven,” Faith and Philosophy , 26 398–419.
• Perszyk, K. (ed.), 2011, Molinism: The Contemporary Debate , Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Quinn, P., 1988, “‘In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All,’” Philosophical Topics , 16(2): 89–118.
• Robinson, J.A.T., 1968, In the End, God , New York: Harper & Row.
• Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1830, The Christian Faith , H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (eds.), Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989.
• Sennett, J., 1999, “Is there Freedom in Heaven?” Faith and Philosophy , 16: 69–82.
• Seymour, C., 2000a, “A Craigian Theodicy of Hell,” Faith and Philosophy , 17: 103–115.
• –––, 2000b, A Theodicy of Hell , Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Sider, T., “Hell and Vagueness,” Faith and Philosophy , 19: 58–68.
• Stump, E., 1986, “Dante’s Hell, Aquinas’s Moral Theory, and the Love of God,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 16: 181–196.
• Swinburne, Richard, 1983, “A Theodicy of Heaven and Hell,” in The Existence & Nature of God , A. Freddoso (ed.), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 37–54.
• –––, 1989, Responsibility and Atonement , Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Talbott, T., 1990a, “The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment,” Faith and Philosophy , 7(1): 19–43.
• –––, 1990b, “Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny,” Religious Studies , 26: 227–245.
• –––, 1992, “Craig on the Possibility of Eternal Damnation,” Religious Studies , 28: 495–510.
• –––, 2004, “Misery and Freedom: Reply to Walls,” Religious Studies, 40: 217–224.
• –––, 2007, “Universalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology , J. Walls (ed.), New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press: 446–461.
• –––, 2009, “God, Freedom, and Human Destiny,” Faith and Philosophy , 26: 378–397.
• –––, 2010, “Grace, Character Formation, and Predestination unto Glory,” in Buenting 2010: 7–27.
• –––, 2020, “In Defense of the Loving Parent Analogy,” in O. Crisp, J. Arcadi, and J. Wessling (eds.), Love: Human and Divine: Contemporary Essays in Systematic and Philosophical Theology , New York: T&T Clark: 97–112.
• VanArragon, R., 2001, “Transworld Damnation and Craig’s Contentious Suggestion,” Faith and Philosophy , 18: 241–260.
• –––, 2010, “Is it Possible to Freely Reject God Forever?” in Buenting 2010: 29–43
• Vargas, M., 2005, “The Trouble with Tracing,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 29: 269–291.
• Walker, D. P., 1964, The Decline of Hell , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Walls, J., 1992, Hell: The Logic of Damnation , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• –––, 2002, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2003, “A Philosophical Critique of Talbott’s Universalism” in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate , R. Parry and C. Partridge (eds.), Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 105–124.
• –––, 2004a, “A Hell of a Choice: Reply to Talbott,” Religious Studies , 40: 203–216.
• –––, 2004b, “A Hell of a Dilemma: Rejoinder to Talbott,” Religious Studies , 40: 225–227.
• Williams, Bernard, 1973, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” reprinted in J. M. Fischer, The Metaphysics of Death, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, 73–93.
• Wolf, S., 1990, Freedom Within Reason , New York: Oxford University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Kvanvig, Jonathan, “Heaven and Hell”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/heaven-hell/ >. [This was the previous entry on heaven and hell in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy —see the version history .]
• Several texts in the bibliography are available online in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (host: Calvin College).
• Augustine, On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants . New Advent website: The Fathers of the Church.
• Keith DeRose, “ Universalism and the Bible ”.
• Prosblogion , a blog in the philosophy of religion.

afterlife | desert | Edwards, Jonathan | evil: problem of | punishment, legal

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Talbott < ttalbott @ willamette . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Religious Concepts — Hell

Essays on Hell

The representation of hell in the gates of hell and the last judgment, the concept and description of hell in the iliad, a poem by homer, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Highway to Hell

A comparison of the black cat by edgar allan poe and the cat from hell by stephen king, the concept of discovery in home burial and mending wall by robert frost and notes on a scandal by zoe heller, the problem of evil in religious philosophy, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Heaven and Hell: Culture, Tradition, and Personal Transformation

Is hell exothermic or endothermic, relevant topics.

• Reincarnation
• Existence of God
• Immortality

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free