On Free Will

Part 3, A House Made of Cards

In modern debates about hell, one of the most common defenses of traditional visions of hell is what is called "the free will defense." This defense tends to be leveled at universalist accounts of salvation, that all of humanity will, eventually, be reconciled to God. 

Much of this debate about hell, between traditionalists and universalists, is waged over Biblical texts concerning which view best accords with Scripture. But a lot of this debate is waged over speculative theology. The "free will" defense is a part of that speculative conversation.

A popular example of the free will defense of hell is C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce along with Rob Bell's more recent Love Wins. In these visions, hell is a self-imposed exile. In Lewis' evocative phrase, "The door of hell is locked on the inside." 

To be sure, there's a lot of variation in the visions here. Lewis' The Great Divorce envisions (via a bus ride) post-mortem movement between hell and heaven. Post-mortem movement is not a commonly held idea among Protestants, so calling the vision in The Great Divorce "traditional" is a bit of a stretch. Most Protestants don't believe in post-mortem movement, assuming that your eschatological fate is fixed at the moment of your death. What's "traditional" in these views is that separation from God is eternal. The point to focus on for this conversation, to put post-mortem movement to the side, is how eternal separation from God is self-imposed rather than decreed by God. 

Free will accounts of eternal separation from God are often used to rebut universalist accounts of salvation arguing that, if all humanity were eventually saved, this would undermine human freedom of choice. Freedom demands a real choice, it is argued, which requires the possibility of separation from God, even eternal separation for the most hardened of hearts. Conversely, if everyone is saved in the end it is assumed that some coercion on God's part has to be involved. In short, if we're truly free hell has to be a real and live possibility.

In the next post I want to turn to consider the psychological plausibly that a person could and would choose to remain separated for God for all eternity. Today, I simply want to reflect upon how much theological weight free will is carrying in this debate.

Specifically, notice how the free will defense of hell focuses upon a speculative aspect of human psychology. Following from the last post, the view of "freedom" being posited in these arguments tends to be liberationist rather than Augustinian. That is to say, freedom here is freedom of choice, where our choices are indeterminate and "free" of causal influence, even the gentle, gracious, post-mortem influence of God posited in universalist visions of salvation. 

Relatedly, the view of the will in these accounts tends to assume that the will can never become "broken" or suffer "bondage." Think about addiction. In the early stages of addiction, sure, choices are made. But as the addiction deepens, the will becomes compromised, and the behavior of the addict couldn't be characterized as "free." This is why we describe addiction as a disease, a disease of the will specifically. The point here is that liberationist accounts of the will tend to ignore the fact that, once separated from God, the will will descend into unfreedom, slavery, and quite frankly, madness. Consequently, to describe these insane, broken, jabbering, and formerly human souls as "choosing" to keep the door to heaven locked, well, that's foolish. You might insist that the damned deserve their fate, but do not call them free. Freedom of choice goes to die in hell.

But back to my main point. Speaking as a psychologist, I don't find the view of "free will" behind these free will accounts of eternal separation very plausible. And I'm not alone. As I described in the last post, liberationist visions of free will are contested and controversial. To be sure, defenses can be mounted, but notice what is happening in these debates about hell: We are no longer talking about God. We're debating human psychology. Which is a strange thing for theologians to be doing. 

Also, as I said above, it seems very strange to make a theological arguments dependent upon anthropological premises, especially speculative and controversial anthropological premises. The free will defense of eternal separation from God builds a huge theological edifice on a shaky and murky psychological foundation. Theology becomes dependent upon psychology. Worse, dogmatic theology becomes dependent upon speculative psychology.

Sure, you've made argument for eternal separation from God based upon free will. Congratulations, but I think the argument you've built just might be a house of cards.