For Further Reading
10
How Could God Create Hell?
Jerry L. Walls
Perhaps there is no word tossed about more casually in the English language that is virtually guaranteed to bring casual conversation to a dead stop than the word hell. This is particularly true if anyone dares to take it seriously or use it as anything more than a highly versatile slang phrase. You can use it as an adjective: “That was a hell of a (sometimes rendered ‘helluva’) game”; as a sort of exclamation: “Hell yes, I’m angry”; as an expression of puzzlement: “Hell if I know”; and so on. However, you are most likely to draw looks of suspicion, if not gasps of dismay, if you use it as a noun: “Well, yes, I do believe those who persist in rejecting God will wind up in hell.”
The threat of hell has been disrupting polite conversation and eliciting passionate protests from atheists and other critics of Christianity for centuries. One such classic instance, as related by biographer Ernest Campbell Mossner, involves the famous Scottish philosopher David Hume, a real party animal who was noted for his cheerful disposition and good manners. During a social gathering one evening Hume was engaged in conversation with a minister, the Reverend John Warden, who apparently irritated Hume by mentioning a sermon by Jonathan Edwards titled “The Usefulness of Sin.”[1] Hume put aside his customary gracious demeanor and went on the attack. If Edwards considers sin useful, Hume remarked, then he must agree with the notorious claim of the philosopher Leibniz, who argued that our world is the best of all possible worlds. Mossner then reports that Hume burst out: “But what the devil does the fellow make of hell and damnation?”[2]
This is indeed a good question that believers can hardly duck, dive, dip or dodge. It is often noted that the problem of evil is the main weapon in the atheist’s arsenal. The question, simply put, is how the existence of evil and suffering can be compatible with the existence of a God of perfect love and power. Well, hell is the problem on steroids. As hard as it may be to make sense of evil in this life, the doctrine of hell seems to extend this suffering and misery into the next life that never ends.
This frightful possibility is also one that rational unbelievers cannot simply ignore. Here let us draw a distinction between issues that are existentially central and those which are existentially peripheral, an important distinction pointed out by my mentor at Notre Dame, Tom Morris.[3] As he observes, many academic, cultural and scientific controversies are such that we can safely and reasonably not care much about them; whatever is true in such cases does not impact our lives in any significant way. It is reasonable to be interested in such matters if one is naturally so inclined, but it may also be reasonable not to spend much time or effort worrying about them. One may rationally not care much about Helen of Troy and whether or not she really existed. One may understandably be indifferent about heliozoans or not even know what they are. One may sensibly yawn or shrug his shoulders about the legend of Helle and her ride on the ram with the golden fleece. But not to care about hell is another matter altogether. It represents par excellence an example of an existentially central issue which does affect our lives in profoundly significant ways. Not to care, and care deeply, about the truth of the matter where hell is concerned is nothing short of insane.
It is noteworthy that Richard Dawkins’s discussion of hell in his book The God Delusion is largely focused on irrational fears engendered by the doctrine. He cites stories of persons who have been so traumatized by frightful depictions of hell woven by preachers and priests that they remained psychologically disturbed by those fears even after giving up their faith in God. In saying that it is insane not to care about hell, I have no interest in defending sensational accounts of the doctrine or in using it to frighten anyone into embracing a faith that has no appeal for them. Given what is at stake in the doctrine, however, no rational person can be indifferent to whether it is true or not.
But Dawkins’s comments suggest that concern about hell can be dismissed by rational persons because it is clearly the creation of mean-spirited people who have devised the doctrine as a means of manipulation and intimidation. And let’s not forget self-righteous: those who believe in the existence of hell are always self-righteous hypocrites who take delight in the damnation of others. Dawkins writes:
Whatever they believe hell is actually like, all these hell-fire enthusiasts seem to share the gloating Schadenfreude and complacency of those who know they are among the saved, well conveyed by that foremost among theologians, St Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica: “That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.” Nice man.[4]
Dawkins has a footnote to this passage quoting the brimstone-flinging Ann Coulter: “I defy any of my co-religionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell.” No doubt there is a comic element in the idea of Dawkins in hell if for no other reason than because of the bemused look that would be on his face as he exclaimed, “Well I’ll be damned, it’s real after all.” But at a deeper level I must disagree with Coulter, for I am confident that most of my co-religionists share my hope that Dawkins will eventually end up in heaven, where, no doubt, he would have an even more amusing, albeit sheepish, grin on his face, exclaiming “I’ll be damned, it’s real after all!” with heavy irony.
At any rate, Dawkins’s take on hell is a variation on a theme that has been a popular one at least since Nietzsche, whose account of what he called “the genealogy of morals” has been highly influential in postmodern thought. As he saw it, Christian moral ideals such as kindness, forgiveness and mercy were actually a clever ploy on the part of weak people to gain an advantage over the strong. Everyone, whether self-consciously or not, is acting out of the “will to power.” Those who talk about compassion for the poor and service to the downtrodden are engaged in a devious form of manipulation and control over the elite of this world. In the same vein, Nietzsche thought the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell were a way for weak, dishonest people to get vengeance on their powerful enemies. Such doctrines allow the losers of the world to console themselves with the thought that in the end the tables will be turned and they will triumph while their enemies toast.
I have no doubt that at least some of the people who believe in hell have been motivated by such unsavory thoughts and desires. Belief in hell that is fueled by hatred or vindictiveness can rightly be dismissed as irrational and reprehensible. For that matter, there is something deeply incoherent about hatefully believing in hell, because hatred is one of the things that makes one a good candidate for ending up there. However, no one should make the mistake of concluding that the doctrine of hell is false because some, if not many, persons who have believed in it have done so for irrational or emotional reasons.[5] To so conclude would make one guilty of a basic logical error known as the genetic fallacy.
This famous fallacy slides from noting the dubious origin of a belief to the falsity of the belief itself. But alas, to do so can lead to some monumental mistakes. For instance, consider your neighborhood resident who has the irrational belief that everyone is out to get him. Well, can you be sure just because his belief has dubious origins that no one is out to get him? Obviously not, as we can see from the famous observation: “Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you!” Likewise, just because you are a hypochondriac does not mean you never get sick. And just because some people believe in hell for dubious reasons and motivations does not mean the doctrine is false.
When Was Hell Listed on the Real Estate Market?
If the doctrine of hell is true, who created it? If there really is a hell besides the hateful fantasy spun out of the vindictive emotions of spiteful people, where did it come from? Who or what accounts for its existence? The answer, I suggest, is that those primarily responsible for the existence of hell are mean-spirited, self-righteous people. However, I mean this in an entirely different sense than Nietzsche and Dawkins meant it.
The basic Christian doctrine of creation is summed up nicely in the first line of the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.” The important claim here is that God created everything that exists apart from himself. Moreover, everything he created was good. Now this claim, which is essential to Christianity, can easily heighten the perplexity about hell. For if God created everything that exists, then he must have created hell, but hell is obviously not a good thing.
The perplexity only increases when we step back and reflect on the nature of God himself, the One who created all things visible and invisible. Let me come at this matter from a bit of an ironic angle, by citing Nietzsche, famous for his soliloquies on the death of God as well as his diatribes against Christianity and Christian morality. One of the things that struck me recently in reading one of his most famous books were his numerous references to dancing and his desire to dance. In one rather poignant passage titled “The Tomb Song” that seems to describe his loss of adolescent faith and dreams, he wrote the following:
And once I wanted to dance as I had never danced before: over all the heavens I wanted to dance. Then you persuaded my dearest singer. And he struck up a horrible dismal tune. . . . My highest hope remained unspoken and unredeemed. And all of the visions and consolations of my youth died![6]
In view of his dancing aspirations, it is perhaps not surprising that earlier in the same book, he even admits an attraction to the idea of a dancing god. “I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall.”[7]
Nietzsche is my favorite atheist, so I do not mind agreeing with him at many points and this is one of them. Now let me pair this quote from Nietzsche with a couple of my favorite descriptions of God from Christian writers. First, consider this passage from John Wesley, the eighteenth-century theologian and evangelist who founded the Methodist Church. Wesley notes that God created us for happiness and we can hardly be blamed for chasing after it since he designed us for that very purpose, though we typically find ourselves looking for it in all the wrong places. In response to this, Wesley pointed us toward the true source of what we crave: “In this alone can you find the happiness you seek; in the union of your spirit with the Father of spirits; in the knowledge and love of Him who is the fountain of happiness, sufficient for all the souls he has made.”[8]
Next, let us consider some thoughts from C. S. Lewis as he explains the doctrine of the Trinity. As he points out, this doctrine is the ultimate explanation for the seemingly simple truth that God is love. Since God contains more than one person, love has existed among the three persons of the Trinity for all eternity. So God did not need to create us in order to express love. Nevertheless, he created us out of love, and his choice to create us is an overflow of who he is in his eternal nature. What this means is that God is not a static thing, but rather a “dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”[9] Lewis goes on to point out, like Wesley, that God is the only possible source of true happiness for us.
If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.[10]
Notice the images and pictures of God in these passages. God is a fountain of happiness, a pulsating activity, a drama, a dance, a fountain of energy and beauty at the heart of reality. No wonder Wesley, Lewis and countless other Christian thinkers and writers have made the point that our only true satisfaction will be found in God. It is because we are made in his image that nothing else will do the trick. He is perfect love, and joy, and truth, and beauty, and goodness. That is what we were made for, and that is what will bring us the true happiness and satisfaction we naturally and persistently crave. As Lewis remarked, there is nothing arbitrary about the fact that there is no other possible way to achieve happiness. God is the ultimate source of it, and if we seek it elsewhere we will inevitably come up short and be disappointed.
And yet, it is understandable, in a way, that we are inclined to seek it elsewhere. Everything God created is good and—if rightly used—can bring us joy. Moreover, everything he created is in some sense a reflection of him. But notice, they are only a reflection of God; they are not God. Our mistake is to seize onto these things as if they are the final reality, rather than to realize that they are only finite gifts of one who is himself the ultimate gift of infinite worth.
Now we are in a position to answer the question of where hell came from and in what sense God is responsible for it. The question as raised by skeptics is often put like this: if God is a God of love, how could he send anyone to hell? Well, I want to suggest that it is precisely because God is a God of love that people may wind up in hell.
Let us come back to the doctrine of the Trinity, the distinctive Christian claim that the one God exists in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Trinity have existed from all eternity in a mutual relationship of love, joy and delight. Now this God created us in his image precisely for the purpose of a relationship with himself. As Wesley and Lewis saw it, God wants us to enter the fountain of energy and beauty at the center of reality; he wants us to get wet! Or to use another image, he wants us to join the dance of joy that energizes the three persons of the Trinity. He wants us to take our place in the drama of life, vitality and pulsating energy that represents our truest and deepest satisfaction.
But here is how our creation in the image of a God of love has enormous implications for the question of hell. Love, by its very nature, is not the sort of thing that can be compelled, programmed or manipulated. Rather, it must be given freely as well as received. For us to enter into and maintain the sort of relationship that God desires, we must freely love, trust and obey him. Consider, in this light, the following words of Jesus: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching” (Jn 14:23-24). Now this is an exhilarating but staggering thought. God wants to enter our lives in such a way that we will be “at home” with him. By loving obedience to the teaching of Jesus, we can open our lives to the very source of life, the fountain of happiness, the eternal dance of love and joy. But the heartrending reality is that we may not choose to obey and thereby close ourselves off from this life-giving relationship.
This is the key to understanding how hell is created. God created all the raw material for it in a sense when he chose to create free beings in his image. As noted before, God created everything that exists apart from himself. So hell must be composed in some sense of things God created. When God created beings with free will, he created the possibility of hell. That is to say, implicit in the relational freedom God gave us is the possibility that we will choose not to love, trust and obey him. Rather than accepting the invitation to plunge into the fountain and relish its refreshing pleasure, it is possible that some might choose to hold back and remain dry. Rather than embrace the opportunity to dance, some might choose to reject the offer and attempt to construct their own substitute for joy. If these choices are made and persisted in, then the possibility of hell becomes reality.
So in short, hell is created when free beings use (more accurately, abuse) the freedom God has given them not to embrace him but to reject him. In so doing, they reject the only possible source of deep and lasting happiness, and thereby consign themselves to frustration, misery and suffering.
Let us pursue this point by reflecting further on the image of God as a dance. And let us think about this in terms of the fact that God requires us to love and obey him in order to have a relationship with him. As Wesley put the point, holiness and happiness are inseparably joined. “When he has taken full possession of our heart; when he reigns there without a rival, the Lord of every motion there; when we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us we are one with Christ, and Christ with us; then we are completely happy.”[11]
A few years ago I took some basic ballroom dancing lessons when one of my students, who had been a dance instructor, offered lessons at my school. I had never danced before but had watched on the sidelines with some degree of envy as others enjoyed themselves. So I decided to give it a shot to see if I might enjoy it too. Well, to be honest, it did not come naturally to me, but with the help of the instructor and some very patient and gracious dance partners, I finally started to learn the rhythm and steps. I am still not very good at it, but I have made reasonable progress, and now I can do a decent fox trot, swing and, my favorite, rhumba. (I still have trouble with the waltz, a dance that is particularly beautiful and graceful for those who have more skill than I.)
You really begin to enjoy dancing only when you have learned the steps well enough that you can get into the flow of the music and begin to feel at home in doing so. You have to submit to the pattern and structure of the dance in order to enjoy the freedom of dancing with some degree of naturalness and pleasure. So then learning the dance steps to the point that we internalize them is like becoming holy. Learning to love and trust and obey God is what we need to do to be at home with God in the divine dance of the Trinity. It is precisely in submission to his will that we discover our true freedom and experience the delight and pleasure and satisfaction for which we were created.
Grasping this also helps us get a better picture of hell. In light of our discussion we could say that hell is the long-term result of refusing to learn the dance steps. It is the experience of choosing to remain on the sidelines rather than submitting to the order necessary to participate in the joy. It is the outcome of convincing yourself that you really don’t want to dance and that you are better off without it. So who is mainly responsible for creating hell? Those who will not dance.
It is most important to underscore that hell is inhabited by those who simply refuse the invitation to participate in the dance. Hell has sometimes been pictured as a sort of masochistic torture chamber whose denizens are held against their will, who would do anything to escape hell, but alas they cannot. In contrast to this notion, C. S. Lewis has remarked that “the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”[12]
Given the biblical account of God’s overwhelming love for his estranged children, I think Lewis’s picture is far more accurate than the fiery torture chamber image of hell that has often been depicted. This is not to deny that hell is miserable, but the point is that the misery is self-inflicted. Indeed, the Bible makes clear that God has gone to extreme lengths to extend his love to us and persuade us to accept it. The death of Christ on the cross is God’s ultimate statement that he wants us to come home to him and learn to dance.
We noted earlier Nietzsche’s confession that he wanted to dance, and his admission that he would like a God who danced. Well, that God wants to dance with Nietzsche, and he will do everything he can to get Nietzsche—and Dawkins—in the dance. God has made it clear that he will go to any length to save us—short of overriding our freedom, which would be a violation of the very love he offers to us. He wants us freely to accept his love and freely to love him in return. It is the persistent choice to resist this offer of love that builds up the walls of hell, locks its doors shut and encloses its inhabitants in their self-created suffering.
The Curiosity of Cub Fans: Why Choose Hell?
Here we face a most perplexing question, or rather, a set of questions. Why would anyone make this sort of choice? Why would anyone persist in choosing isolation and estrangement from God at the cost of his or her own happiness? Why would anyone choose hell over heaven?
It is perhaps understandable why people choose evil in the short run. They may do so out of weakness or out of a misguided notion that so choosing will liberate them from narrow constraints, bringing them fulfillment and happiness. But if evil breaks its promises and inevitably ends up causing disappointment and misery to those who choose it, how can we make sense of anyone persisting in such choices to the point of damnation?
When I wrote my doctoral dissertation defending the doctrine of hell, these were the questions I struggled with the most, and they are still the ones I find most difficult in trying to make sense of the doctrine of eternal hell. The thinker whose work has perhaps challenged me the most in this regard is the philosopher Tom Talbott, who has argued that there simply is no intelligible motive for choosing hell. If the choice of evil does indeed lead to greater and greater misery for those who so choose, it is simply incoherent, he claims, to think any person could persist in such a choice.[13]
C. S. Lewis took up this challenge more than a half-century ago in The Great Divorce. He develops this provocative premise: a group of people from hell take a bus ride to heaven and are given the option of staying there if they wish. Indeed, they are encouraged in every conceivable way to stay. The inhabitants of heaven implore them to remain with powerfully persuasive and winsome speeches and other forms of enticement. Now the immediate reaction one may have who has not read the book is to think that of course they would stay. How could anyone prefer returning to hell rather than staying in heaven? But this is the stunning thing about the book: most of the characters opt for returning to hell. And what is chilling about the book is that Lewis manages to narrate their choices in a way that is psychologically and morally plausible.
At one point, the narrator of the story asks the question of just what motivates the choice to return to hell.
“Milton was right,” said my teacher. “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is to reality. You see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.”[14]
Unfortunately, it is not just spoiled children who make these sorts of misguided choices. Throughout the book Lewis depicts numerous adult versions of the same fundamental choice. For instance, early in the book he describes a character who arrives in heaven and is surprised to find that one of the people there is a man who had worked for him in this life and who he looked down upon as an inferior. To make matters worse, the man had been a murderer. Now the man has been forgiven and is urging his former boss to repent of his own sins so he, too, can be in heaven. The boss finds this insulting and intolerable. He had come to heaven to get his rights, not to be urged to repent by a bloody murderer.
“So that’s the trick, is it?” shouted the Ghost, outwardly bitter, and yet I thought there was a kind of triumph in its voice. It had been entreated: it could make a refusal: and this seemed to it a kind of advantage. “I thought there’d be some damned nonsense. . . . Tell them I’m not coming, see? I’d rather be damned than go along with you. . . .” It was almost happy now that it could, in a sense, threaten.[15]
Here we see a sort of twisted logic in the ultimately irrational choice of evil that leads to hell. There is a kind of perverse pleasure in holding to resentment and bitterness. There is no real happiness here, but there is a shadowy substitute that may almost pass for happiness for those in the grip of evil. There is no real righteousness, but there is the deceptive sense of satisfaction that comes from self-righteousness. So hell is a sort of mirror image of heaven. It is not the real thing, but it offers its own distorted imitations of true joy, pleasure, righteousness and satisfaction.
At the end of the day, as perplexing as it is to make sense of hell rationally and intellectually, perhaps it gains credibility when we look into our own hearts and realize how often we have been tempted by the shadowy substitutes for real joy, or have even found ourselves under their spell. True torment—in this life and the next—results less from sulfurous flames and more from the self-will and misguided desires that lead us to refuse the eternal dance. Perhaps Nietzsche unwittingly summed up the essence of hell when he penned these wrenching words: “And all of the visions and consolations of my youth died!”[16]
For Further Reading
Crockett, William, ed. Four Views of Hell. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.
Kvanvig, Jonathan. The Problem of Hell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
Seymour, Charles. A Theodicy of Hell. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000.
Walls, Jerry L. Hell: The Logic of Damnation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Press, 1992.