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November 20 - November 28, 2022
the faith commands us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and our neighbors as ourselves while also enjoining us to believe in the reality of an eternal hell; we cannot possibly do both of these things at once. I say this not just because I think it emotionally impossible fully to love a God capable of consigning any creature to everlasting suffering (though in fact I do think this). I say it, rather, because absolute love of neighbor and a perfectly convinced belief in hell are antithetical to one another in principle, and because all our language of Christian love is rendered
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This is all true, unless you love someone so much you're willing to go to hell for them. Such exceptions have to be so rare -- if they're even possible -- that they practically prove the rule.
Mark Twain depicted such a thing in "Huckleberry Finn"; Huck says "I'll go to hell", but will nevertheless save his friend Jim from slavery.
Profound love of neighbor can coexist with a belief in eternal hell, per Twain, but only in such an exceptional case as he depicts there.
They even believed in hell, though not in its eternity; to them, hell was the fire of purification described by the Apostle Paul in the third chapter of 1 Corinthians, the healing assault of unyielding divine love upon obdurate souls, one that will save even those who in this life prove unworthy of heaven by burning away every last vestige of their wicked deeds.
1 Corinthians 3:
(11 For no one can lay another foundation beside the one laid down, which is Jesus the Anointed. 12 Now, if on this foundation one erects gold, silver, precious stones, woods, hay, straw, 13 Each one’s work will become manifest; for the Day will declare it, because it is revealed by fire, and the fire will prove what kind of work each person’s is. 14 If the work that someone has built endures, he will receive a reward; 15 If anyone’s work should be burned away, he will suffer loss, yet he shall be saved, though so as by fire.)
And so, perhaps, it makes perfect sense to imagine that a will sufficiently intransigent in its selfishness and resentment and violence might be so damaged that, even when fully exposed to the divine glory for which all things were made, it will absolutely hate the invasion of that transfiguring love, and will be able to discover nothing in it but terror and pain.
This is what happened to Javert in Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables"
For the earliest Christians, the story of salvation was entirely one of rescue, all the way through: the epic of God descending into the depths of human estrangement to release his creatures from bondage to death, penetrating even into the heart of hades to set the captives free and recall his prodigal children and restore a broken creation. The sacrifice of Christ was not a “ransom” paid to the Father, but rather the “manumission fee” (λύτρον, lytron) given to purchase the release of slaves held in bondage in death’s household.
Hart continues a little further down:
"it was simply the discharge of a debt we owed to death for our estrangement from God, yielded over on our behalf when we lacked the resources to do it for ourselves, so that God could reclaim us for himself without injustice. For the earliest and greatest of the church fathers in general, the story of salvation was really quite uncomplicated: We were born in bondage, in the house of a cruel master to whom we had been sold as slaves before we could choose for ourselves; we were born, moreover, not guilty or damnable in God’s eyes, but nonetheless corrupted and enchained by mortality, and so destined to sin through a congenital debility of will; we were ill, impaired, lost, dying; we were in hell already. But then Christ came to set us free, to buy us out of slavery, to heal us, to restore us to our true estate. In pursuit of those he loved, he invaded even the very depths of that hell we have made for ourselves and one another—in the cosmos, in history, in our own hearts—so as to drag us to himself (to use the actual language of John 12:32). Whatever variations were worked upon this grand, guiding theme in the early centuries of the faith, none of them ever incorporated the discordant claim that innocent blood had to be spilled to assuage God’s indignation."
Romans 5:18–19:
(So, then, just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came a rectification of life for all human beings; for, just as by the heedlessness of the one man the many were rendered sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be rendered righteous.)
1 Corinthians 15:22:
(For just as in Adam all die, so also in the Anointed [Christ] all will be given life.)
2 Corinthians 5:14:
(For the love of the Anointed constrains us, having reached this judgment: that one died on behalf of all; all then have died …)
Romans 11:32: συνέκλεισεν
(For God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone.)
1 Timothy 2:3–6:
(… our savior God, who intends all human beings to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of truth. For there is one God, and also one mediator of God and human beings: a human being, the Anointed One Jesus, who gave himself as a liberation fee for all …)
Titus 2:11: Ἐπεφάνη
(For the grace of God has appeared, giving salvation to all human beings …)
2 Corinthians 5:19:
(Thus God was in the Anointed reconciling the cosmos to himself, not accounting their trespasses to them, and placing in us the word of reconciliation.)
Ephesians 1:9–10:
(Making known to us the mystery of his will, which was his purpose in him, for a husbandry of the seasons’ fullness, to recapitulate all things in the Anointed, the things in the heavens and the things on earth …)
Colossians 1:27–28:
(By whom God wished to make known what the wealth of this mystery’s glory is among the gentiles, which is the Anointed within you, the hope of glory, whom we proclaim, warning every human being and teaching every human being in all wisdom, so that we may present every human being as perfected in the Anointed …)
John 12:32: κἀγὼ
(And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will drag everyone to me.)
Hebrews 2:9: τὸν
(But we see Jesus, who was made just a little less than angels, having been crowned with glory and honor on account of suffering death, so that by God’s grace he might taste of death on behalf of everyone.)
John 17:2: καθὼς
(Just as you gave him power over all flesh, so that you have given everything to him, that he might give them life in the Age.)
John 4:42: τῇ
(And they said to the woman: “We no longer have faith on account of your talk; for we ourselves have listened and we know that this man is truly the savior of the cosmos.”)
John 12:47: …
(… for I came not that I might judge the cosmos, but that I might save the cosmos.)
1 John 4:14:
(And we have seen and attest that the Father has sent the Son as savior of the cosmos.)
2 Peter 3:9:
(The Lord is not delaying what is promised, as some reckon delay, but is magnanimous toward you, intending for no one to perish, but rather for all to advance to a change of heart.)
Matthew 18:14: οὕτως
(So it is not a desire that occurs to your Father in the heavens that one of these little ones should perish.)
Philippians 2:9–11:
(For which reason God also exalted him on high and graced him with the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend—of beings heavenly and earthly and subterranean—and every tongue gladly confess that Jesus the Anointed is Lord, for the glory of God the Father.)
Colossians 1:19–20:
(For in him all the Fullness was pleased to take up a dwelling, and through him to reconcile all things to him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.)
1 John 2:2: καὶ
(And he is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole cosmos.)
John 3:17: οὐ
(For God sent the Son into the cosmos not that he might condemn the cosmos, but that the cosmos might be saved through him.)
Luke 16:16: Ὁ
(Until John, there were the Law and the prophets; since then the good tidings of God’s Kingdom are being proclaimed, and everyone is being forced into it.)
1 Timothy 4:10: …
(… we have hoped in a living God who is the savior of all human beings, especially those who have faith.)
1 Corinthians 15. At least, Paul certainly appears to speak there, especially in verses 23–24, of three distinct moments, distributed across two eschatological frames, in the process of the final restoration of the created order in God:
(And each in the proper order: the Anointed as the firstfruits, thereafter those who are in the Anointed at his arrival, then the full completion, when he delivers the Kingdom to him who is God and Father, when he renders every Principality and every Authority and Power ineffectual.)
the promise of verse 28:
(And, when all things have been subordinated to him, then will the Son himself also be subordinated to the one who has subordinated all things to him, so that God may be all in all.)
1 Corinthians 3:11–15, the last two verses of which identify only two classes of the judged: those saved in and through their works, and those saved by way of the fiery destruction of their works.
(If the work that someone has built endures, that one will receive a reward; if anyone’s work should be burned away, that one will suffer loss, yet shall be saved, even though as by fire.)
the complete absence of any such notion in the Pauline corpus (or, for that matter, in John’s gospel, or in the other New Testament epistles, or in the earliest Christian documents of the post-apostolic church, such as the Didache and the writings of the “Apostolic Fathers,” and so forth)
Paul did earn a lot of opposition from other early Christians but their debates are not anywhere about whether the Gentiles will ultimately be saved; their debates are mostly about food, ie, about whether the Gentiles should be invited to the covenant and table right now.
they tell themselves, say, that an eternity of torment is an entirely condign penalty for even the smallest imaginable sin, the most trivial peccadillo, the pettiest lapse of plain morality, because the gravity of any transgression must be measured by the dignity of the one whom it has wronged, and God necessarily possesses infinite dignity;
In Greek mythology, nothing set off a god's wrath more quickly or fully than offending the god's honor. A Greek god will set aside even moral standards that he himself has championed, if the honor of the gods is at stake.
In the "Odyssey", Zeus is often declared to be the protector of travelers, strangers, and beggars; people everywhere host strangers in the belief that this honors Zeus' own designs. The Phaeacians in particular are outstanding examples of this ethic of hospitality -- but by helping Odysseus, they offend the pride of Poseidon, who promptly goes to Zeus and demands satisfaction. Zeus allows Poseidon to destroy the Phaeacian island and to warn them never again to host strangers.
In his introduction to Robert Fagles' translation of the "Odyssey," Bernard Knox writes:
"the Phaeacians will never again give sea passage to men who come to their city. This is the end of the great Phaeacian tradition of hospitality and help for the stranger and wayfarer. This action of Zeus casts a disturbing light on the relation between human ideals and divine conduct. If there is one stable moral criterion in the world of the Odyssey, it is the care taken by the powerful and well-to-do of strangers, wanderers and beggars. This code of hospitality is the one universally recognized morality. And its divine enforcer, so all mortals believe, is Zeus himself, Zeus xeinios, protector of stranger and suppliant.
"Of all the many hosts measured by this moral standard, the Phaeacians stand out as the most generous, not only in their regal entertainment of Odysseus but also in their speedy conveyance of the hero to his own home, a service they provide for all wayfarers who reach their shore. And now they are punished by the gods for precisely this reason, since their magnanimity has made Poseidon feel that his honor —the touchy sensitivity to public opinion that in Achilles brought ten thousand woes on the Achaeans, and drove Ajax to suicide and fueled his sullenness in the underworld —has been dealt an intolerable blow. The offenders must be punished, even if their punishment displays utter indifference to the only code of moral conduct that obtains in the insecure world of the Odyssey. Faced with Poseidon’s rage against the Phaeacians, Zeus the protector of strangers enthusiastically joins his powerful brother in his denunciation."
No soul is who or what it is in isolation;
Modern Protestant Christianity is highly individualistic
we are those others who make us. Spiritual personality is not mere individuality, nor is personal love one of its merely accidental conditions or extrinsic circumstances.
It is God's command!
the idea of eternal perdition for the wickedest of souls, in a place of unending suffering, appears to have been a Greek notion—mythological, religious, and philosophical—before it ever took (shallow) root in Jewish thought;
Homer's Hades, for example, housed shadows that are being endlessly punished for some transgression or other, though of course Hades was occupied by all dead persons (with a few exceptions) regardless of wickedness
To believe it even in part is to have all the reason one could ever need for refusing to procreate, and for regarding the world with a hatred that even the starkest “gnostic” dualism could not rival.
And Christianity has often exhibited this hate
If a rational creature formed in the divine image required such a contrast fully to know God’s goodness, then God’s self-revelation as the Good in creatures could never be complete in itself. It would of its nature always require the “negative probation” of what is contrary to the Good.
Our finite selves do need a contrast with evil, and we fill our art with it
God is not an “entity.” Neither, for that reason, is he some sort of particular object that one could choose or reject in the same way that one might elect either to drink a glass of wine or to pour it out in the dust. He is, rather, the fullness of Being and the transcendental horizon of reality that animates every single stirring of reason and desire,
Hart continues a little further down:
"he is already intrinsic to the very structure of reason and desire within the soul. He is not merely some external agency who would have to exercise coercion or external compulsion of a creature’s intentions to bring them to the end he decrees."
And further down:
"He remains forever the encompassing final object that motivates and makes actual every choice, the Good that makes the will free in the first place. Even an act of apostasy, then, traced back to its most primordial impulse, is motivated by the desire for God."
And finally:
"you cannot reject God except defectively, by having failed to recognize him as the primordial object of all your deepest longings, the very source of their activity."
He is freedom as such, the fiery energy that liberates the flame from the wood.
Or bush
guiding every soul to the only final end it can ever truly freely desire, this would be no trespass upon the sanctity of the autonomous will.
Hart adds:
"Only the Truth can make you free (John 8:32)."
Any rational will that does not surrender to God as the true end of desire and knowledge is a whole world from which God is absent, and so is God’s defeat.
Hart continues further down:
"There would exist eternally the residual reality of souls that never surrendered to him, and within which consequently he never appeared as the sole and consuming end of knowledge and desire, recognized by the intellect and affirmed by the rational will—souls in which he was never the all."
Can we imagine—logically, I mean, not merely intuitively—that someone still in torment after a trillion ages, or then a trillion trillion, or then a trillion vigintillion, is in any meaningful sense the same agent who contracted some measurable quantity of personal guilt in that tiny, ever more vanishingly insubstantial gleam of an instant that constituted his or her terrestrial life?
Infernalists are indifferent mathematicians
Every civilization requires a mythic frame. But, that said, that picture of the universe has for the most part passed away already.
Perhaps the death of Christianity as our acknowledged formal cultural framework is a good thing, if it means the passing away of infernalism (which has been our main acknowledged framework). Modern science has had a good effect here, in overthrowing the former picture of a literal hell below and a literal heaven above.
