344. Repentance in Hell?
344. REPENTANCE IN HELL?
Why can’t there be any more chance to repent in Hell? Why did Dante’s horrible sign over Hell’s entrance read “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”? Won’t the damned in Hell regret their present state, and the life that led them to it?
A person may repent of sin in two ways: in one way directly, in another way indirectly. He repents of sin directly who hates sin as such; and he repents indirectly who hates it on account of something connected with it, for instance punishment. . . . Accordingly, the wicked will not repent of their sins directly, because consent in the malice of sin will remain in them; but they will repent indirectly, inasmuch as they will suffer from the punishment inflicted on them for sin.
The damned will will wickedness but shun punishment; and thus indirectly they repent of the wickedness committed (98,2).
The damned will not repent of sin at all. If they did, God would accept it, and take them gladly to Heaven. They will repent only of the pain of their punishment. In a similar way, a jailed criminal may repent only of being caught and of being in jail, without repenting of being the criminal he is or of committing the crime, except for the circumstances that caused him to be caught.
In fact, Hell is not merely punishment for sin; it is sin itself in its consummation in eternity. It is not an external punishment that is added to sin by God’s choice; it is the necessary effect of sin. “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezek 18:4). “You shall not eat of the (forbidden) fruit . . . neither shall you touch it lest you die” (Gen 3:3). It was the lying devil who said “Ye will not die” (Gen 3:4). The punishment is unavoidable, inevitable, natural. It is not like the spanking a child might get for jumping off the roof, but the broken bones he will necessarily get from it. It is like the hangover from intemperate drinking, not like a judgmental sermon from a teetotaler.
Similarly, Heaven is not an external, arbitrary, or artificial reward for goodness, like fame or prize money given to a public hero who saved a life. That is not what he worked for. He worked for the life he saved, and that is his natural reward, plus his own well-deserved satisfaction of being the person who did it. “Virtue is its own reward” and vice is its own punishment.
In this world, punishment is given both out of justice and out of charity, out of the hope that the guilty party who is punished will be improved, rehabilitated, and moved to repentance. But this end of charity is not always attained. In fact, it more often fails to do this than it succeeds, even in this life, where there is still a future and plenty of time to change.
In the next life, time as we know it is no more. You can’t change your fundamental character any more. The book is finished and goes home to the printer. As the blessed are safe and fixed in Heaven, with no chance of falling out of it (how un-Heavenly would Heaven be if they could fall out of it?), so the damned, for the very same reason, are fixed in Hell with no chance of changing their character. The time to change is now. After death, the dimension of eternity is added to what we have become in time. Imagine triangles in time becoming pyramids in eternity, and squares in time becoming cubes in eternity. The shape of the foundation is set here, the fullness of the building is added there.