{"id":20614,"date":"2011-04-01T23:19:30","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T05:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=20614"},"modified":"2011-04-03T15:55:56","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T21:55:56","slug":"no-hell-below-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/01\/no-hell-below-us.html","title":{"rendered":"No Hell Below Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

To preach long, loud, and Damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us.<\/p>\n

— John Selden<\/a> (1584-1654),\u00a0Table Talk<\/em>, \u201cDamnation\u201d (1686)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>I’ve been enjoying (and GSharing at least some of) Fred Clark’s blog posts on Rob Bell, Bell’s new book Love Wins<\/em>, and the apoplexy of what Clark calls “Team Hell,” which insists that Bell’s neo-Universalism is heresy of the highest order because it denies the ultimate punishment of eternal, conscious, torment of sinners.<\/p>\n

In his latest post, Clark discusses the “Missiological Argument” for Hell<\/a>. Rather than argue theology, or logic, or philosophy, this argument says that Hell is useful<\/em>, because, essentially, it scares people into sticking to the straight and narrow, going to church, seeking forgiveness, and thus being \u00a0saved. For example, he cites Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology at Southern Seminary, who was recently reported as saying<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Bell\u2019s view of salvation, Moore said, is wrong biblically but also flawed practically and will lead to empty church pews. If the pastor says there is no judgment and everyone will end up in heaven, then people have little motivation to follow Christ, Moore and the other panelists said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clark summarizes:<\/p>\n

Moore says the church will collapse without the threat of judgment. And, to be clear, \u201cjudgment\u201d must mean nothing less than the vast majority of humankind suffering consciously for eternity in the Hell that Moore, et. al.,<\/em> imagine (magical fire, merciless God, \u201choly\u201d as synonym for \u201csadistic,\u201d etc.). Without that threat, Moore says, there can be no revival, no evangelism, no missionary outreach, no church growth. Without Hell, the church will shrink and shrivel and fade away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Clark’s post is a great dismemberment of Moore’s argument, and well worth reading on its own, but it led me to my own Universalist considerations.<\/p>\n

To consider a triumph of God’s love over obstinate sin to be “no judgment” is telling — it’s a “you’re either for us or against us, now and forever” kind of nearsightedness. \u00a0Misdeeds and ignorance carry consequences, in this world and the next, I should think. \u00a0The question is whether those consequences are eternal, or are fitting to the circumstance. Is God’s grace a limited time offer? \u00a0Why would it be?<\/p>\n

The Missiological Argument is not unique to modern Christian orthodoxy. \u00a0Ironically, in some ways it’s one of the reasons why there’s often such confusion over whether this country’s Founders were good, religious Christians. \u00a0Many of them, privately, were not — or, rather, many of them believed in a variety of unorthox positions, heresies, or were Deists or atheists.<\/p>\n

But both publicly and privately they’d assert that they thought religion in general, and thus the majority’s Christianity in particular, were useful, because it provided a social regulation on the hoi polloi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I understand what they say there. And there are times when I recognize how my own good behavior is driven less by a desire to be nice and beneficent than to avoid shame or feared punishment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Still … I would say my own deeper belief is along the lines of Sir Thomas Brown<\/a>, in Religio Medici<\/em> (1643)<\/p>\n

I can hardly think there was ever any scared into Heaven; they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, more emotionally, by Rabi’ah of Basra<\/a> in the 8th Century:<\/p>\n

O God! If I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine Everlasting Beauty!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, put in more secular terms by Einstein<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A man\u2019s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Indeed, in that same 1930 article, Einstein wrote:<\/p>\n

The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples’ lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s a great way of putting it — religion of fear<\/em> vs a religion of morality<\/em>. \u00a0A religion that uses fear of the outside world, and fear of the anger of the gods, as its goad, vs. a religion that seeks to improve how we treat one another.<\/p>\n

I am a Universalist, by personal theology. \u00a0I believe that, ultimately, all will find their way to God. \u00a0I don’t say that with the arrogance that says, “You’ll all figure out how you were wrong and I was right.” \u00a0I figure I’m as far from God, relatively speaking, as anyone else.<\/p>\n

But I don’t believe that God, a loving God that went to the effort of creating us, is willing to discard any of that creation — especially because, as fallible humans, we’re bound to get something <\/em>wrong. \u00a0Most <\/em>things wrong, most likely.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Much less do I think that, like Team Hell does, God will send the humans crafted (if you believe the Bible) “in His image” to a eternal, conscious, inescapable torment. That would be hard enough to stomach for even the most vile of miscreants — your Hitlers and Stalins and Pol Pots and Idi Amins — let alone for some of the fine, upstanding, even saintly folks out there who had the misfortune to belong to the wrong (or no) church, or believe in a doctrine that happened to be incorrect.<\/p>\n

Universalism, in its various flavors, is not new. \u00a0It’s been considered a legitimate, if minority, branch of Christian belief for centuries. \u00a0Madeleine L’Engle<\/a> put it as follows:<\/p>\n

I know a number of highly sensitive and intelligent people in my own communion who consider as a heresy my faith that God\u2019s loving concern for his creation will outlast all our willfulness and pride. No matter how many eons it takes, he will not rest until all of creation, including Satan, is reconciled to him, until there is no creature who cannot return his look of love with a joyful response of love […] Some people feel it to be heresy because it appears to deny man his freedom to refuse to love God. But this, it seems to me, denies God his freedom to go on loving us beyond all our willfulness and pride. If the Word of God is the light of the world, and this light cannot be put out, ultimately it will brighten all the dark corners of our hearts and we will be able to see, and seeing, will be given the grace to respond with love — and of our own free will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unfortunately, it’s also considered heretical for too many, not because it denies the freedom of will, but because it denies the inevitability of deserved and ultimate judgment among a certain brand of Christian, the “pious sadists” as Isaac Asimov<\/a> called them. \u00a0As Steve Allen<\/a> observed:<\/p>\n

To those who wish to punish others \u2014 or at least to see them punished, if the avengers are too cowardly to take matters into their own hands \u2014 the belief in a fiery, hideous hell appears to be a great source of comfort.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, in Bertrand Russell<\/a>‘s words:<\/p>\n

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(By the way, I’m not quote-dropping to impress by authority. \u00a0These folks are just using the words to express my thoughts better than I can. And since I have their quotes collected, I might as well link back for folks to look up the sources.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This sort of perpetual punishment — a final judgment that can come at any time, before education, illumination, inspiration, or sheer chance can lead one to the “acceptable” path, that can strike with a car accident, a lightning bolt, an overdose, or just old age — makes no sense to me. It puts a time limit on both Man and God to be reconciled, and an arbitrary and capricious time limit at that. \u00a0Those who vigorously hold to it, ultimately, strike me as the older sibling in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, ticked off that his “lost” brother has been found and brought back into the fold. \u00a0The unfairness of it all seems to choke them.<\/p>\n

The doctrine of Hell was perhaps most soundly criticized by the 19th Century freethinker Robert Green Ingersoll. He reviled it not so much for it being a myth, but for the effect it had on the living, and for what it said about the God that Christians claimed to worship.<\/p>\n

While utterly discarding all creeds, and denying the truth of all religions, there is neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for the hopeful, loving and tender souls who believe that from all this discord will result a perfect harmony; that every evil will in some mysterious way become a good, and that above and over all there is a being who, in some way, will reclaim and glorify every one of the children of men; but for those who heartlessly try to prove that salvation is almost impossible; that damnation is almost certain; that the highway of the universe leads to hell; who fill life with fear and death with horror; who curse the cradle and mock the tomb, it is impossible to entertain other than feelings of pity, contempt and scorn. (1876<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of Hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly happy. … I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed and redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell \u2014 in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the lost only increase laughter and double bliss.\u00a0(18<\/a> 81<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I attack the doctrine of eternal pain. I hold it in infinite and utter abhorrence. And if there be a God in this universe who made a hell; if there be a God in this universe who denies to any human being the right of reformation, then that God is not good, that God is not just, and the future of man is infinitely dark. I despise that doctrine, and I have done what little I could to get that horror from the cradle, that horror from the hearts of mothers, that horror from the hearts of husbands and fathers, and sons, and brothers, and sisters. It is a doctrine that turns to ashes all the humanities of life and all the hopes of mankind. I despise it. (1882<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>For my money, Ingersoll expresses my beliefs here more fully than Russell Moore. \u00a0The Religion of Fear not only makes out God to be the “eternal gaoler,” but turns those who follow Him into trustees, trying to get in good with the screws in order to get some privileges, or in desperate hope of a kind word at the parole hearing. \u00a0It makes the world into Us vs Them, the Saved vs the Damned, and promotes either a smug self-righteousness in being part of the inner circle, or a perpetually wearying pain of seeing so many souls lost.<\/p>\n

To promulgate such doctrines theologically is dubious — to do so out of a desire to fill church pews is, honestly, despicable.<\/p>\n

If there is a Hell, then couching it in terms of Team Hell’s lake of fire and Dante-esque sadism parlor seems nonsensical to me. \u00a0I’d be closer to the ideas C.S. Lewis talked of in The Great Divorce<\/em> (1945) — not a rejecting punishment by God toward Man, but a rejection by Man of God.<\/p>\n

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, \u201cThy will be done,\u201d and those to whom God says, in the end, \u201cThy<\/em> will be done.\u201d All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Lewis’ Hell is a vast and spiritually empty realm, a “grey town” full of ghosts, “joyless, friendless, and uncomfortable.” \u00a0Those who are there are there by choice, unwilling to face the deeper reality of Heaven for a variety of reasons. “There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy.”\u00a0Any punishment is passive, self-inflicted — a turning from the frightening shock of transformative bliss to superficially more comfortable cul-de-sac of self-deception. It is, in its own way, as horrifying as a lake of fire and gibbering demons with pitchforks — but less personally cruel.<\/p>\n

Lewis’ allegory states that any in Hell can decide upon Heaven when they choose — but the implication is that some don’t, or won’t. \u00a0And, in the end, that’s where I have to part ways. If The Great Divorce<\/em> is willing to have any of those lost souls, dwindled to\u00a0infinitesimal\u00a0points, remain lost for eternity, irredeemable — even in a Hell where the doors are “locked on the inside<\/em>” — I am not. \u00a0Nor, I believe, is God.<\/p>\n

To quote Madeleine L’Engle<\/a> one more time:<\/p>\n

I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find that a greater comfort, and a sounder doctrine, than Team Hell. Amen.<\/p>\n

(The various illustrations in this post are by Gustave Dore, who in 1861 released a series of illustrations from Dante’s Inferno<\/em>. \u00a0They’ve become iconic representations of the tortures of Hell. \u00a0More info on Dore and \u00a0his various pictures from Dante’s 14th Century works here<\/a>.)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To preach long, loud, and Damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us. — John Selden (1584-1654),\u00a0Table Talk, \u201cDamnation\u201d (1686) I’ve been enjoying (and GSharing at least some of) Fred Clark’s blog posts on Rob Bell, Bell’s new book … Continue reading “No Hell Below Us”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/satan-dante-dore.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":26791,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/02\/its-not-a-principals-job-to-decree-eternal-damnation.html","url_meta":{"origin":20614,"position":0},"title":"It's Not a Principal's Job to Decree Eternal Damnation","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 2-Mar-12 10:55am","format":false,"excerpt":"I mean, principals have a lot of power in schools ... but arrogating Divine Judgment? Heck, that's the sort of thing that's arguably at least as offensive to the Almighty as any gay nookie.Leaving aside the whole issue that passing religious judgment in school is illegal ... and improper ...\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21278,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/15\/evangelism.html","url_meta":{"origin":20614,"position":1},"title":"Evangelism","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 15-Jun-11 7:48am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not much of an evangelist for my faith -- at least not an evangelist in the traditional sense of \"buttonhole a stranger, tell them your\u00a0testimony, knock down their arguments, get 'em to declare Christ as their personal savior, and move on\" kind of a thing. In fact, every single\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "This I Believe"","block_context":{"text":"This I Believe","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion\/religion-me"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/St-Francis-of-Assisi-stained-glass.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12293,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/07\/katherine_earns_eternal_d.html","url_meta":{"origin":20614,"position":2},"title":"Katherine earns eternal damnation","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 7-Jun-08 1:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 At the dunk-a-priest booth at the parish carnival....","rel":"","context":"In "My Parish"","block_context":{"text":"My Parish","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion\/religion-my-parish"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3082\/2559358398_0ace992ab3.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":49111,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/bae-i-got-you-bae.html","url_meta":{"origin":20614,"position":3},"title":"Bae … I got you, bae","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 1-Jan-15 8:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I suppose it is a sign of incipient decrepitude when I learned of new, hep slang amongst today's youth through a Buzzfeed article mocking big corporations who are trying to use new, hep slang to \"build [retail] relationships\" with today's youth.. This Is Why Brands Say \"Bae\" \"To borrow a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":136124,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/14\/rip-art-bell.html","url_meta":{"origin":20614,"position":4},"title":"RIP, Art Bell","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 14-Apr-18 7:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I had not heard of Mr. Bell's passing. Thank you, sir, for many entertaining late night drives home from the airport. Art Bell, mysterious narrator of the American nightscape, is dead at 72 - The Washington Post The talk radio host created a place to share tales of UFOs and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Art-Bell.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8393,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/11\/29\/limbo_in_limbo.html","url_meta":{"origin":20614,"position":5},"title":"Limbo in limbo?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 29-Nov-05 2:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Catholic Church may change its teaching (or at least its nomenclature) on the concept of Limbo -- a place where unbaptized souls go, particularly those of children. According to...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}