I remember the point in the second semester of my intro systematic theology class at Union Seminary when Christopher Morse -- then a graduate student who had taken over for the retiring Paul Lehmann, later Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology -- challenged those of us who were squeamish about some point of John Calvin's about heaven and hell with a question, "Is there a moral structure to the universe -- or not?"
It occurred to me then, though I did not yet have the courage of my convictions and so wasn't able to say it, that the answer is no. There is nothing "necessary" about hell unless, and this is a significant qualification -- unless it's a necessity that arises out of human nature. Hell is something we make, or else a fever-dream of being human. I don't actually like this conclusion. I'm not, by temperament, a constructionist. I prefer to grapple with the given world, but I can't deny this human-made hell is part of it. Let's talk about THAT and those logical chains that justify the horrific.
Where this leads to is a rejection of Shadi's assertion that discussion of the afterlife is simply "unfashionable." It's unfashionable for a reason, namely, that, whatever our fear or longing, we can't say anything about the afterlife beyond what our ancestors made up about it.
Even without the beyond-this life hell we dream of, the Archangel Michael, looking down on the human world, had reason enough for lamentation.
I too had some classes with Christopher Morse—and here he is adding a perfect question for my current ponderings. Speaking of NYC and archangels, if I could post a photo it would be the face of Andrea della Robia’s Michael that hangs in the Met.
The idea of hell (or at least of an all knowing, omniscient, moralistic god who can punish you) has been theorized to underlie morality. Research on these “big gods” has suggested that they emerge when societies are urbanizing and becoming complex (exactly when cheating in an anonymous way becomes easier). So I agree that the idea of hell/punishment can restrain “evil.” But, there’s another route that religions often use that doesn’t require a punitive stance. Spiritual practices often alter our emotions, with ones like gratitude, empathy, and compassion emerging from those practices. In my lab, we find that those emotions, however evoked, increase moral behavior. They don’t require a corrective response due to worry about what God(s) want; they simply alter moral calculus toward cooperation and prosociality. So, for some, this route can foster virtue from the bottom up, as a practice, rather than from the top down, as a fear or correction. I don’t think this is the reason why hell is falling out of fashion. But it is one way spiritual traditions can foster virtue without the idea of eternal damnation.
This is a great comment. I think this bottom-up, practice-oriented approach to religion is very attractive, and when I've "practiced" it, it certainly seemed true. But the world's injustices still creep in around the edges, in the sense that a spiritual practice (as opposed to religious attendance) requires leisure. In the medieval world, the gap between peasant and practitioner was enormous. I got a palpable sense of this, as a Zen-interest person, when I visited Japan, where next to near-somnolent Zen I learned there were all these other Buddhisms -- Pure Land, Nichren, etc -- that were devoted to people who couldn't practice, who were peasants, say, instead of nobles. The Great Buddha at Kamakura embodies this generous spirited Buddhism and the idea that, if you believe, you will, upon death, not be "saved" exactly, but promoted to a world where spiritual practice will be possible. It was an ennobling belief, and even though I couldn't literally believe it, the nembutsu, "I put my trust in Amida Buddha", became (paradoxically) part of my practice, and stuck around when my Zen days came to an end. So I think you are right; practice -- maybe even the hope of practice -- makes us better. But what we have to remember, and here is where Shadi's point comes in, is that there's no clincher to this story, no promise of an end to evil: just the bet that the (moral?) turn to the possibility of improvement will realize that possibility.
Good point. Yes, some practices do require luxuries of sorts. There are some that are easier “hacks” of sorts. Judaism’s wonders if the everyday offers opportunities for quick prayers of gratitude in response to everyday events. It’s a way of “microdosing” gratitude, IF, and it’s a big if, people do it with intention rather than without thought ( kevanah vs keva). But the effects will still be less than the deeper, time intensive practices.
Looks like we're in luck. WoC has an upcoming podcast with Alex Lefevbre, whose new book touts liberalism as a spiritual practice. This will be interesting!
The initial “Stages of Faith” in James Fowler’s book are based on external, convincing authority. The idea of hell gets your attention so that you start thinking seriously about good and bad actions. I got the theology of hell in parochial school, but by age 12 I was ready to simultaneously “dismiss” it and start taking it seriously with the idea that “hell is a state of mind” (the quote’s write there in the red-letter Bible my grandparents gave me.) That concept has been fruitful for my subsequent theologizing.
I think my mother, more seriously indoctrinated than I was, was fearful about hell on her deathbed: certainly a negative consequence. But hopefully for many throughout the ages, the scary idea has functioned as an initial motivation to develop the positive practices you mentioned here, which are also rooted in traditional religions and generally balance out the harsh and threatening aspects.
But yes, going back to the original essay, I suspect hell is mainly there as the ultimate guarantor of civil peace.
Coming from a semi-fundamentalist evangelical Christian background, hell has become a difficult topic for me as I've come to reject their version of hell as particular eternal conscious torment for specific people who do not make a specific sort of Christian confession. Hell was weaponized as a coercive tactic to exercise a certain form of control over people in the group, maintaining the boundaries of morality of my privileged white kid youth group Christian school experience. Leaving that bubble, hell fell through to nothingness. As my faith has taken new shape, I am finding more and more necessary to build a framework of divine moral judgment to maintain any sense of justice existing on a cosmic and ultimate scale (of which I maintain). Observing cruelty and injustice from my position in the world demands I know evil may be punished eventually...we know too much for it not to be. Or maybe, it's just a nice thought.
From a Baha'i perspective, Hell is as you mentioned, a metaphor for how far our soul is from God. Our actions in the physical world, allegedly prepare us for the spiritual worlds of God. Many days I wake up in my life and feel an atheist in me, but as a Baha'i the above would be my response to the question of hell. Also, if the worlds of God are multitude, a bad human soul would theoretically enter the afterlife in a state of hell but then could progress to a state of heaven after certain learnings or other actions. Either way, heaven and hell are likely not physical worlds, unlike earth, and the solar system. Also, why would an all merciful God create a hell of physical fire or heat temperatures. It's allegory. Also, atheists would argue, whoever needs an eternal incentive structure to do good things is not a good person
Shadi I'm glad I was hearing the frustration accurately on the pod with Dr. Nussbaum. I can't say enough how disappointed I was in her myopic views on so many things, while being sympathetic to her concerns on animal welfare. Given her religious background I think it's safe to say I wouldn't take her word for what goes for orthodoxy, in the big 3.
I think this really gets at our lack of grounding politics in notions of justice today. We rarely use that term despite it perhaps underpinning a lot of ideas many progressives promote. There is perhaps something in the lack of religiosity in many countries leading to a secular re-invention of what constitutes heaven and hell? But given the lack of commonality amongst this vision it leads heaven and hell not as an ideal to aspire too or a pitfall to avoid but as merely another method of political combat.
Yet, Shadi there is something in what you are saying about secularisation. Indeed, I've read a fair few books on utopianism and written an article or two about it and I totally agree with you about creating 'heaven on earth' leading to the all too dangerous potential of manifesting a hell for those who don't fit into the vision of heaven. There is a line in the film 'conspiracy' about the Wannsee conference which Kenneth Branagh delivers chillingly as Heydrich where he describes the ghetto's and concentration camps as the hell the Nazis have created for Jewish people. Thinking about this question made me immediately think of that line and gave me a bit of the chills on the dangers of such thoughts.
From a Christian point of view, what's the point of talking about hell? People who don't believe in Christianity aren't going to believe in it just because you emphasize that hell is very, very bad; people who do believe in Christianity are going to heaven regardless of what evil things they did in this life.
The only people whose minds might be changed are those confused "Christians" who think that good works will keep them out of hell and weird contrarians who genuinely believe Jesus did in fact die for our sins but reject Christ anyway. That's not a very big audience.
I would recommend on this topic Hans Urs von Balthasar's "Dare We Hope That All Men Will be Saved?" It affirms that the notion of Hell is necessary because of humans' freedom to reject God and His love, but also reminds us that, when we posit a "full hell" or imagine certain individuals or groups in it, we unconsciously place ourselves on the other side, seeing ourselves as unlikely or impossible candidates for Hell. In the Islamic context, I don't know of many writers in that tradition that envisage themselves falling into Jahannam.
I remember an old (probably late 1990s) TV commercial for the Weather Channel. A man who's just come into a bar from the rain complains about how wet he is, and says he hates the rain. A bar patron defends the rain, says he loves it, and asks "how can we appreciate the sun if we don't have the rain?" This was meant to be funny, and when I first saw the commercial I just found it weird. But I've since found it to be a pretty good case for why evil (or hell, if you like) exists - you don't appreciate goodness, virtue, etc., unless you have something to contrast it with.
The discussion of animal ethics and hell makes me think of this quote from Schopenhauer: "Men are the devils of the earth, and animals are the tormented souls."
The quote by Marsilius of Padua, “The function of the priest, in fact, is to supplement the action of the police and the judge by the fear of hell" is an observation by J. W. Allen about Marsilius of Padua and not a direct quote.
The mainstream liberal position is so weird. I mean, to violate Godwin's Law, does Hitler deserve hell? Yes. How about Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot? Also yes. Jeffrey Dahmer? Yes as well. How about members of the KKK who lynched, tortured and murdered Black people, or slave traders who drove slave ships across the Middle Passage? That's a yes.
I can understand a position that says "<0.0001 percent of humanity deserves to rot in hell," but the purist "anti-hell" position seems to derive from the same weird psychology that insists that prisons should be "abolished" and that if we just could "fix society" we wouldn't need police etc. etc. An unwillingness to grasp the reality of human evil because acknowledging that might threaten one's self-esteem that is dependent on a utopian idea of human nature. Solzhenitsyn should really be read in every school, and this explains why he isn't.
The connection between hell and our desire for justice is well noted. Yet there exist arguments against hell that take this into account. Here, for example, is a blog post from Fred Clark on the subject: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2009/03/05/still-in-hell/
He writes, ‘The first question is something like, "Do you believe that there will be some kind of ultimate accountability for evil?" My answer to that question is yes. I believe there will be. I can't prove this, mind you, but I believe it. And this assertion — that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice — can be defended and supported by that Bible we evangelical Christian types put so much emphasis on. The same defense and support cannot be found for the sordidly detailed idea of a sulfurous netherworld to which all non-[Real True Christians] will be consigned for eternity.’
The second, question, Fred Clark adds, is about what will actually happen to truly evil people (like Hitler) after they die. To this, Clark simply says that he doesn’t know, but that he believes both that there will be justice and that the usual Christian concept of hell does not answer the need for justice.
(I don’t know if the Muslim concept of hell differs much from this, but would welcome instruction on the subject!)
I find Fred’s views sympathetic, but I also have to ask, do we have to believe that justice will be done in order to believe in justice? Because I think this assumption is often built in to these conversations. We are told that we must believe in justice in the next life, otherwise we will inevitably commit injustice in the process of trying to find justice in this one — if we do not simply give up on justice entirely. Yet I think there is also merit in a tragic view of the world in which justice will never be done, and we should not expect to ever reach true justice, but justice is nevertheless worth seeking for all that.
I remember the point in the second semester of my intro systematic theology class at Union Seminary when Christopher Morse -- then a graduate student who had taken over for the retiring Paul Lehmann, later Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology -- challenged those of us who were squeamish about some point of John Calvin's about heaven and hell with a question, "Is there a moral structure to the universe -- or not?"
It occurred to me then, though I did not yet have the courage of my convictions and so wasn't able to say it, that the answer is no. There is nothing "necessary" about hell unless, and this is a significant qualification -- unless it's a necessity that arises out of human nature. Hell is something we make, or else a fever-dream of being human. I don't actually like this conclusion. I'm not, by temperament, a constructionist. I prefer to grapple with the given world, but I can't deny this human-made hell is part of it. Let's talk about THAT and those logical chains that justify the horrific.
Where this leads to is a rejection of Shadi's assertion that discussion of the afterlife is simply "unfashionable." It's unfashionable for a reason, namely, that, whatever our fear or longing, we can't say anything about the afterlife beyond what our ancestors made up about it.
Even without the beyond-this life hell we dream of, the Archangel Michael, looking down on the human world, had reason enough for lamentation.
Annihilation view of hell all the way. It always amazes me how many hoops away from Jesus you can get, while jumping along with reformed theology.
I too had some classes with Christopher Morse—and here he is adding a perfect question for my current ponderings. Speaking of NYC and archangels, if I could post a photo it would be the face of Andrea della Robia’s Michael that hangs in the Met.
The idea of hell (or at least of an all knowing, omniscient, moralistic god who can punish you) has been theorized to underlie morality. Research on these “big gods” has suggested that they emerge when societies are urbanizing and becoming complex (exactly when cheating in an anonymous way becomes easier). So I agree that the idea of hell/punishment can restrain “evil.” But, there’s another route that religions often use that doesn’t require a punitive stance. Spiritual practices often alter our emotions, with ones like gratitude, empathy, and compassion emerging from those practices. In my lab, we find that those emotions, however evoked, increase moral behavior. They don’t require a corrective response due to worry about what God(s) want; they simply alter moral calculus toward cooperation and prosociality. So, for some, this route can foster virtue from the bottom up, as a practice, rather than from the top down, as a fear or correction. I don’t think this is the reason why hell is falling out of fashion. But it is one way spiritual traditions can foster virtue without the idea of eternal damnation.
This is a great comment. I think this bottom-up, practice-oriented approach to religion is very attractive, and when I've "practiced" it, it certainly seemed true. But the world's injustices still creep in around the edges, in the sense that a spiritual practice (as opposed to religious attendance) requires leisure. In the medieval world, the gap between peasant and practitioner was enormous. I got a palpable sense of this, as a Zen-interest person, when I visited Japan, where next to near-somnolent Zen I learned there were all these other Buddhisms -- Pure Land, Nichren, etc -- that were devoted to people who couldn't practice, who were peasants, say, instead of nobles. The Great Buddha at Kamakura embodies this generous spirited Buddhism and the idea that, if you believe, you will, upon death, not be "saved" exactly, but promoted to a world where spiritual practice will be possible. It was an ennobling belief, and even though I couldn't literally believe it, the nembutsu, "I put my trust in Amida Buddha", became (paradoxically) part of my practice, and stuck around when my Zen days came to an end. So I think you are right; practice -- maybe even the hope of practice -- makes us better. But what we have to remember, and here is where Shadi's point comes in, is that there's no clincher to this story, no promise of an end to evil: just the bet that the (moral?) turn to the possibility of improvement will realize that possibility.
Good point. Yes, some practices do require luxuries of sorts. There are some that are easier “hacks” of sorts. Judaism’s wonders if the everyday offers opportunities for quick prayers of gratitude in response to everyday events. It’s a way of “microdosing” gratitude, IF, and it’s a big if, people do it with intention rather than without thought ( kevanah vs keva). But the effects will still be less than the deeper, time intensive practices.
Looks like we're in luck. WoC has an upcoming podcast with Alex Lefevbre, whose new book touts liberalism as a spiritual practice. This will be interesting!
The initial “Stages of Faith” in James Fowler’s book are based on external, convincing authority. The idea of hell gets your attention so that you start thinking seriously about good and bad actions. I got the theology of hell in parochial school, but by age 12 I was ready to simultaneously “dismiss” it and start taking it seriously with the idea that “hell is a state of mind” (the quote’s write there in the red-letter Bible my grandparents gave me.) That concept has been fruitful for my subsequent theologizing.
I think my mother, more seriously indoctrinated than I was, was fearful about hell on her deathbed: certainly a negative consequence. But hopefully for many throughout the ages, the scary idea has functioned as an initial motivation to develop the positive practices you mentioned here, which are also rooted in traditional religions and generally balance out the harsh and threatening aspects.
But yes, going back to the original essay, I suspect hell is mainly there as the ultimate guarantor of civil peace.
Coming from a semi-fundamentalist evangelical Christian background, hell has become a difficult topic for me as I've come to reject their version of hell as particular eternal conscious torment for specific people who do not make a specific sort of Christian confession. Hell was weaponized as a coercive tactic to exercise a certain form of control over people in the group, maintaining the boundaries of morality of my privileged white kid youth group Christian school experience. Leaving that bubble, hell fell through to nothingness. As my faith has taken new shape, I am finding more and more necessary to build a framework of divine moral judgment to maintain any sense of justice existing on a cosmic and ultimate scale (of which I maintain). Observing cruelty and injustice from my position in the world demands I know evil may be punished eventually...we know too much for it not to be. Or maybe, it's just a nice thought.
From a Baha'i perspective, Hell is as you mentioned, a metaphor for how far our soul is from God. Our actions in the physical world, allegedly prepare us for the spiritual worlds of God. Many days I wake up in my life and feel an atheist in me, but as a Baha'i the above would be my response to the question of hell. Also, if the worlds of God are multitude, a bad human soul would theoretically enter the afterlife in a state of hell but then could progress to a state of heaven after certain learnings or other actions. Either way, heaven and hell are likely not physical worlds, unlike earth, and the solar system. Also, why would an all merciful God create a hell of physical fire or heat temperatures. It's allegory. Also, atheists would argue, whoever needs an eternal incentive structure to do good things is not a good person
Shadi I'm glad I was hearing the frustration accurately on the pod with Dr. Nussbaum. I can't say enough how disappointed I was in her myopic views on so many things, while being sympathetic to her concerns on animal welfare. Given her religious background I think it's safe to say I wouldn't take her word for what goes for orthodoxy, in the big 3.
I think this really gets at our lack of grounding politics in notions of justice today. We rarely use that term despite it perhaps underpinning a lot of ideas many progressives promote. There is perhaps something in the lack of religiosity in many countries leading to a secular re-invention of what constitutes heaven and hell? But given the lack of commonality amongst this vision it leads heaven and hell not as an ideal to aspire too or a pitfall to avoid but as merely another method of political combat.
Yet, Shadi there is something in what you are saying about secularisation. Indeed, I've read a fair few books on utopianism and written an article or two about it and I totally agree with you about creating 'heaven on earth' leading to the all too dangerous potential of manifesting a hell for those who don't fit into the vision of heaven. There is a line in the film 'conspiracy' about the Wannsee conference which Kenneth Branagh delivers chillingly as Heydrich where he describes the ghetto's and concentration camps as the hell the Nazis have created for Jewish people. Thinking about this question made me immediately think of that line and gave me a bit of the chills on the dangers of such thoughts.
From a Christian point of view, what's the point of talking about hell? People who don't believe in Christianity aren't going to believe in it just because you emphasize that hell is very, very bad; people who do believe in Christianity are going to heaven regardless of what evil things they did in this life.
The only people whose minds might be changed are those confused "Christians" who think that good works will keep them out of hell and weird contrarians who genuinely believe Jesus did in fact die for our sins but reject Christ anyway. That's not a very big audience.
I would recommend on this topic Hans Urs von Balthasar's "Dare We Hope That All Men Will be Saved?" It affirms that the notion of Hell is necessary because of humans' freedom to reject God and His love, but also reminds us that, when we posit a "full hell" or imagine certain individuals or groups in it, we unconsciously place ourselves on the other side, seeing ourselves as unlikely or impossible candidates for Hell. In the Islamic context, I don't know of many writers in that tradition that envisage themselves falling into Jahannam.
I remember an old (probably late 1990s) TV commercial for the Weather Channel. A man who's just come into a bar from the rain complains about how wet he is, and says he hates the rain. A bar patron defends the rain, says he loves it, and asks "how can we appreciate the sun if we don't have the rain?" This was meant to be funny, and when I first saw the commercial I just found it weird. But I've since found it to be a pretty good case for why evil (or hell, if you like) exists - you don't appreciate goodness, virtue, etc., unless you have something to contrast it with.
The discussion of animal ethics and hell makes me think of this quote from Schopenhauer: "Men are the devils of the earth, and animals are the tormented souls."
The quote by Marsilius of Padua, “The function of the priest, in fact, is to supplement the action of the police and the judge by the fear of hell" is an observation by J. W. Allen about Marsilius of Padua and not a direct quote.
The mainstream liberal position is so weird. I mean, to violate Godwin's Law, does Hitler deserve hell? Yes. How about Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot? Also yes. Jeffrey Dahmer? Yes as well. How about members of the KKK who lynched, tortured and murdered Black people, or slave traders who drove slave ships across the Middle Passage? That's a yes.
I can understand a position that says "<0.0001 percent of humanity deserves to rot in hell," but the purist "anti-hell" position seems to derive from the same weird psychology that insists that prisons should be "abolished" and that if we just could "fix society" we wouldn't need police etc. etc. An unwillingness to grasp the reality of human evil because acknowledging that might threaten one's self-esteem that is dependent on a utopian idea of human nature. Solzhenitsyn should really be read in every school, and this explains why he isn't.
Is hell just?
The connection between hell and our desire for justice is well noted. Yet there exist arguments against hell that take this into account. Here, for example, is a blog post from Fred Clark on the subject: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2009/03/05/still-in-hell/
He writes, ‘The first question is something like, "Do you believe that there will be some kind of ultimate accountability for evil?" My answer to that question is yes. I believe there will be. I can't prove this, mind you, but I believe it. And this assertion — that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice — can be defended and supported by that Bible we evangelical Christian types put so much emphasis on. The same defense and support cannot be found for the sordidly detailed idea of a sulfurous netherworld to which all non-[Real True Christians] will be consigned for eternity.’
The second, question, Fred Clark adds, is about what will actually happen to truly evil people (like Hitler) after they die. To this, Clark simply says that he doesn’t know, but that he believes both that there will be justice and that the usual Christian concept of hell does not answer the need for justice.
(I don’t know if the Muslim concept of hell differs much from this, but would welcome instruction on the subject!)
I find Fred’s views sympathetic, but I also have to ask, do we have to believe that justice will be done in order to believe in justice? Because I think this assumption is often built in to these conversations. We are told that we must believe in justice in the next life, otherwise we will inevitably commit injustice in the process of trying to find justice in this one — if we do not simply give up on justice entirely. Yet I think there is also merit in a tragic view of the world in which justice will never be done, and we should not expect to ever reach true justice, but justice is nevertheless worth seeking for all that.