"The critical issue is this: Can the human will resist God forever, especially if God is actively pursuing that person? Can the human will resist God's active grace for all of eternity?"
For me, David Bentley Hart answers these questions with a resounding and compelling "No!" in his marvellous book That All Shall Be Saved.
Modern science is making it more clear that people make choices based on factors that range from genetics, their environment, childhood experiences, mental health, and other factors that individuals cannot control. To say that God will eternally punish people based on choice, and yet create humans that can be molded by that which is out of their control seems absurd. The discussion around heaven and hell should take these realities into consideration.
Allowing the premise, and understanding “hell” as Lucy describes above (a good and fitting description I believe), the problem with God winning people over from hell is, through whom would He work? God has always seemed to work through His people to change the misguided and lost. I guess it doesn’t have to be that way, but maybe it does. To me, it’s one of the reasons He sent Jesus rather than just a book.
Thanks for these articles on free will, Richard - enjoying the theme and thought provocation. I’d be keen to know where your thinking is on the matter given that your own vocation must raise these types of questions on a regular basis.
The first reaction that I had to this post was that we humans spend an awful lot of time wondering what happens to us when we die.
The second reaction was there is a lot of Enlightenment thought or philosophical takes going on here. With the lost of the Catholic idea of purgatory, we have created two very narrow ideological extremes that cannot take into consideration all of life's (and the afterlife's) complexities.
We mere mortals just cannot be satisfied to say that the afterlife is a mystery that only God knows for sure how this all turns out. Out of the accounts of people arising from the dead in the Bible, they don't share what being in the land of the dead is like. You have the story of the rich man and Lazarus and the rich man beginning for mercy from the flames, but it is a parable of Jesus, and the point (at least my take on it), is to show that people would not believe in his resurrection.
Instead of this intense focus of what hell is like, it would just be easier to say it is the land of no hope and ultimate despair, a place of the total absence of God and death fully reigns however that looks like. Even in our broken world, God is still present, yet veiled from our sight and He continues to work to preserve His creation. In Gehenna, there is nothing but destruction and chaos. What passes for destruction on earth is minor compared to that place. It should send chills down your back.
But for some people...it won't, especially in our world that is devoid of enchantment. You just return to dust. You are nothing. No one will remember you and eventually no one will care that you ever existed.
To me, it is totally wild that someone could be that pessimistic or in other cases, are so antagonistic towards God that they would willing defy His authority to the very end. However all we have to do is look to the King of Egypt and how unwilling he was at least acknowledge that there was an higher authority than him and how he brought suffering on his people because of it. There are people like that in our world who would rather be tortured or die than submit to God and repent.
So hell exists, not because God wills it, it exists because there are people who want absolutely nothing to do with God. They believe that there is no need for salvation or even liberation. They are their on authority and you will not be able to convince them otherwise. Even in their suffering in life and ultimately after death, they will continue to hold on to their "right" to be independent of God. People like this would find being back in paradise and friends with God again to be the ultimate hell.
"The critical issue is this: Can the human will resist God forever, especially if God is actively pursuing that person? Can the human will resist God's active grace for all of eternity?"
For me, David Bentley Hart answers these questions with a resounding and compelling "No!" in his marvellous book That All Shall Be Saved.
Modern science is making it more clear that people make choices based on factors that range from genetics, their environment, childhood experiences, mental health, and other factors that individuals cannot control. To say that God will eternally punish people based on choice, and yet create humans that can be molded by that which is out of their control seems absurd. The discussion around heaven and hell should take these realities into consideration.
Allowing the premise, and understanding “hell” as Lucy describes above (a good and fitting description I believe), the problem with God winning people over from hell is, through whom would He work? God has always seemed to work through His people to change the misguided and lost. I guess it doesn’t have to be that way, but maybe it does. To me, it’s one of the reasons He sent Jesus rather than just a book.
Thanks for these articles on free will, Richard - enjoying the theme and thought provocation. I’d be keen to know where your thinking is on the matter given that your own vocation must raise these types of questions on a regular basis.
The first reaction that I had to this post was that we humans spend an awful lot of time wondering what happens to us when we die.
The second reaction was there is a lot of Enlightenment thought or philosophical takes going on here. With the lost of the Catholic idea of purgatory, we have created two very narrow ideological extremes that cannot take into consideration all of life's (and the afterlife's) complexities.
We mere mortals just cannot be satisfied to say that the afterlife is a mystery that only God knows for sure how this all turns out. Out of the accounts of people arising from the dead in the Bible, they don't share what being in the land of the dead is like. You have the story of the rich man and Lazarus and the rich man beginning for mercy from the flames, but it is a parable of Jesus, and the point (at least my take on it), is to show that people would not believe in his resurrection.
Instead of this intense focus of what hell is like, it would just be easier to say it is the land of no hope and ultimate despair, a place of the total absence of God and death fully reigns however that looks like. Even in our broken world, God is still present, yet veiled from our sight and He continues to work to preserve His creation. In Gehenna, there is nothing but destruction and chaos. What passes for destruction on earth is minor compared to that place. It should send chills down your back.
But for some people...it won't, especially in our world that is devoid of enchantment. You just return to dust. You are nothing. No one will remember you and eventually no one will care that you ever existed.
To me, it is totally wild that someone could be that pessimistic or in other cases, are so antagonistic towards God that they would willing defy His authority to the very end. However all we have to do is look to the King of Egypt and how unwilling he was at least acknowledge that there was an higher authority than him and how he brought suffering on his people because of it. There are people like that in our world who would rather be tortured or die than submit to God and repent.
So hell exists, not because God wills it, it exists because there are people who want absolutely nothing to do with God. They believe that there is no need for salvation or even liberation. They are their on authority and you will not be able to convince them otherwise. Even in their suffering in life and ultimately after death, they will continue to hold on to their "right" to be independent of God. People like this would find being back in paradise and friends with God again to be the ultimate hell.