Hell and Free Will
Hell and Free Will
In the previous paragraph I mentioned the idea of choice. If one is to construct an adequate treatment of the idea of hell, one must address the issue of the freedom of the will. There is more than one concept of free will, but that which is most relevant to the topic of hell is what philosophers call “libertarian free will.” If a person has libertarian free will, then that individual has the power to choose. In order to exercise his power to choose, a person must have a reason or purpose to do so. For example, when I was considering going to graduate school, I had a reason to attend and made a choice (exercised my power to choose) to do so. What is sometimes not understood, however, is that when a person makes a choice for a reason, he must also have a reason to choose otherwise. Thus, when I was considering graduate school, I not only had a reason to attend but also had a reason not to do so and was free to choose not to attend for that reason. When an individual is in a situation where he has a reason to do something and no reason not to do that thing and no reason to do something else, he cannot choose for that reason to do what he does. Rather, he simply goes ahead and deterministically intends to do what he does because he had no reason to do otherwise.
To say that a person was free to choose otherwise means that he was not determined to choose as he did. In other words, libertarian free will entails the falsity of determinism as it relates to an individual's choice. Thus, when I chose to go to graduate school, nothing determined that choice. Philosophers sometimes say that the choice was indeterministically made. Thus, if someone goes to hell because of a choice he makes (again, this is not a choice to go to hell), he must not have been determined to make that choice.