Demolishing Triablogue: Why do people believe in hell?

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Why do people believe in hell?

Posted by steve at 8:31 PM

I'm going to comment on an article by David Bentley Hart:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/christianity-religion-hell-bible.htmlHe's an essayist and Eastern Orthodox theologian. One of those chic fashionable theologians like Miroslav Volf or Eugene Peterson with a following among those who view themselves as progressive Christian cognoscenti. This is their idea of intellectually respectable Christianity. The Protestant counterpart to Catholic Thomists.

It raises a troubling question of social psychology. It's comforting to imagine that Christians generally accept the notion of a hell of eternal misery not because they're emotionally attached to it but because they see it as a small, inevitable zone of darkness peripheral to the larger spiritual landscape that–viewed in its totality–they find ravishingly lovely. And this is true of many.

i) I don't have a precise idea regarding the scale of damnation, but I hardly think it's small.

If a smart spiritually alive Christian guy like Steve the Staunch Five Point Calvinist doesn't have any precise idea regarding the "scale", he can hardly balk at spiritually dead skeptics who laugh at the bible's apparently intentional ambiguity about the scale.

ii) And I regard eternal retributive justice as a necessary background for a moral universe. That's not peripheral.

Then you apparently don't understand your own god's sense of justice.  God commanded the death penalty for crimes considered the most heinous, such as adultery and murder, yet in 2nd Samuel 12:13, after David has committed those two sins, the prophet Nathan says God has "taken away" David's sins therefore the otherwise mandatory penalty of death will not be required.  Gee, god can just "take away" sin in such unqualified manner?  Yet if you try to save this by saying David's baby was killed by God (v. 15, 18), then we are looking at God approving of child sacrifice for sin.  If the baby wasn't killed to "atone" for David's sin, then there is nothing left in the context to provide that atonement.  If you assume Yom Kippur would fix that, you are wrong, intentional sins could not be atoned for by the yearly sacrifice, see Numbers 15:28-31.  Exactly what sense does it make to say David's sins of adultery and premeditated murder were "accidental" or "unintentional"?  None.  So there you go, nothing in the religious context or literary context indicates that David's capital offenses were "atoned" for in any way, yet God was somehow still able to wave his magic wand and get rid of those sins regardless.  

And since getting rid of those sins did not require eternal suffering, it is not true that "god requires eternal suffering" for sin.  That's just NT horseshit, or, the inevitable evolution of Judaic theology.  Hart::

      But not of all. For a good number of Christians, hell isn't just a tragic shadow cast across one of an otherwise ravishing vista's remoter corners; rather, it's one of the the landscape's most conspicuous and delectable details.

Steve: "Delectable"?  After all, the idea comes to us in such a ghastly gallery of images: late Augustinianism's unbaptized babes descending in their thrashing billions to perpetual and condign combustion; Dante's exquisitely psychotic dream of twisted, mutilated, broiling souls. St. Francis Xavier morosely informing his weeping Japanese converts that their deceased parents must suffer an eternity of agony.

All of which worries today's mature adult skeptic who knows that for centuries religious authorities have been exploiting the ignorance of the masses to scare them into conformity.

Hart's tactic is to discredit hell by amalgamating an image of hell based on disparate literary and ecclesiastical traditions. But that's an exercise in misdirection. We can strip away the traditional accretions. The core doctrine goes back to the witness of Scripture.

The God of the OT is always FULLY forgiving sin with decidedly temporal measures like animal blood (in Leviticus 19:22, the raptist is atoned for and forgiven by simply giving up one of his rams to be sacrificed, the raptist's repentance is nowhere expressed or implied).   So I'm pretty sure the eternal conscious torment taught by Jesus (Matthew 25:46) contradicts the sense of God's justice in the OT, and you can hardly blame a skeptic for using the earliest revelation as the gold standard by which to judge the later revelation.  Hart:

Surely it would be welcome news if it turned out that, on the matter of hell, something got garbled in transmission. And there really is room for doubt.

Steve:  Welcome for whom? Welcome for the wicked? No doubt it would be welcome to the wicked to elude justice in the afterlife as well as this life.

And since "afterlife" makes about as much sense as do the lyrics to "Smells like Teen Spirit"....Hart:

No truly accomplished NT scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity's opulent mythology of God's eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts.

Steve: The principle of hell isn't "torture" but retributive justice.

yeah, rolling around roasting in flames can't be torture because it can also be something else.  Like water cannot be water if it is also being used as a 'weight'.

In some cases that may involve torture. It would be poetic justice for someone who tortured (or ordered the torture of) the innocent in this life to be on the receiving end of the process. But that's not the essence of eschatological punishment.

Of course torture isn't part of the biblical portrayal of eschatological punishing.  That's why Luke 16:25 characterizes hell as "agony" and Revelation 14:11 says this agony is ongoing 24 hours per day.

Hart:  It's entirely absent from St. Paul's writings. The only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Cor 3:15). 

Steve:  How did Hart miss this passage?
4 Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. 5 All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. 6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed (2 Thes 1:5-10).

Hart missed nothing:  that's a fire that causes destruction, not endless agony to a body incapable of destruction.  Your translation isn't accurate; the Greek word underlying "destruction" is  ἐκδίκησις ekdikesis and means retribution or vindication.  But either way, since your god is allegedly omnipresent, the only logically possible way the people in hell can be shut out from the presence of the lord is for this retribution to cause them to go out of existence, otherwise known as Annihilationism.

He goes on to say:
There are a few terrible, surreal, allegorical images of judgment in the Book of Revelation, but nothing that, properly read, yields a clear doctrine of eternal torment.

So he asserts. But that brushes aside exegetical arguments to the contrary

No, it's a statement of his beliefs about those passages in Revelation.  he would only be 'brushing aside' if somebody presented exegetical arguments to the contrary and he simply turned away from them.  Hart is a real biblical scholar, so it's not likely he's unaware of how the fundies respond.  But it's not up to Steve Hays of Triablogue to decide exactly when and where some liberal scholar decides to turn his OP ED into a scholarly rebuttal.

Hart:  Even the frightening language used by Jesus in the Gospels, when read in the original Greek, fails to deliver the infernal dogmas we casually assume to be there.

He acts like he's the only person who can read the Gospels in the original Greek.

On the other hand, many NT passages seem–and not metaphorically–to promise the eventual salvation of everyone.

i) Arminians and universalists help themselves to the same prooftexts. As a Calvinist, the universalist prooftexts present no new or special challenge for me because I interpret them the same way I interpret Arminian prooftexts. 

And the Arminians/Universalists don't find the fundie prooftexts as any new or special challenge because they interpret those the same way they interpret the Calvinist prooftexts.

I don't have to make any adjustments. I already have a counter-interpretation.

Then there is no reason to characterize the Arminian or Universalist interpretation of biblical "hell" or "lake of fire" as constituting any type of "adjustment".

ii) But over above that, there's also the problem of arranging passages into a particular chronological sequence. Consider two eschatological sequences:

a) The dead pass into the intermediate state. On the day of judgment there's the general resurrection. They saints experience everlasting bliss while the wicked experience everlasting misery.

b) Some of the dead experience postmortem remedial punishment, after which they go to heaven. They pass through a purgatorial hell on the way to heaven.

Biblical eschatology as a consistent (a) sequence. But the universalist sequence is nowhere found in Scripture. Indeed, it requires splicing and rearranging the standard sequence.

Not a problem for atheists like me who stand solid on the obvious fact that the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment diametrically contradicts god's sense of justice in the OT.  See above.

Hart:  Still, none of that accounts for the deep emotional need many modern Christians seem to have for an eternal hell. And I don't mean those who ruefully accept the idea out of religious allegiance, or whose sense of justice demands that Hitler and Pol Pot get their proper comeuppance, or who think they need the prospect of hell to keep themselves on the straight and narrow. Those aren't the ones who scream and foam in rage at the thought that hell might be only a stage along the way to a final universal reconciliation.

Steve: 
i) Being the demagogue that he is, Hart has engineered a rhetorical dilemma. He imputes an untoward motive to many Christians who uphold hell. In one sense it's hard to defend yourself against the charge. If you really do harbor untoward motives, you'd deny it. So it's a maliciously circular allegation.

None of which affects the atheist argument against biblical "hell".

ii) Then there's the false dichotomy of insinuating that if you believe something because you're supposed to believe it, you can only do so ruefully or grudgingly. If, however, something is true, it may also be morally, emotionally, and/or intellectually satisfying. We can believe something out of duty but also believe it to be good or admirable. In that event we don't even have to reach for duty.

Same for atheists.

iii) I suspect that like many Christians, I have mixed feelings about hell. On the one hand I hope all my loved ones are saved. And natural human compassion extends that impulse to many (but not all) strangers.

But if God has predestined one of your loved ones as "reprobate", then your desire that they be saved constitutes sin on your part, because you desire something that God forbids.  But again, your mixed feelings about hell just make atheists more reasonable to say that biblical "hell" is little more than an ancient convoluted scare-tactic, and accordingly dismissed with prejudice.

On the other hand, injustice is galling. A world without ultimate justice mocks the good.

That doesn't mean the world's morality arises from transcendent causes.  Mockery exists.

Erases the difference between virtue and vice, good and evil.

The basis for such differences is entirely subjective.  The "wrongness" of torturing babies to death solely for the sake of entertainment disappears as soon as the people who give a shit about that crime stop thinking about it.

Ironically, universalism is casting the same shadow as atheism in that regard. Nothing you do ultimately makes any difference.

Which only bothers immature people who never really recognized how temporal their own significance was.

Universalism has a nihilistic underbelly in that respect. Like Hinduism and Buddhism, where enlightened reality is beyond good and evil. Nihilism and fatalism go together.

iv) While universalism has an undoubted element of appeal, there's a coercive quality to the universalist bargain. The offer is that God will save your murdered daughter for a price: only if God also saves the man who murdered her. Save both or damn both. Sophie's Choice transposed to the key of universalism.

Which is about as complex as "you can't have bad without good".

v) Compassion is the ability to care about the plight of those whose misfortunate you haven't personally experienced.

Then we cannot properly calculate whether you are compassionate about all those children who have suffereed horribly in human history, since you apparently are capable of mopping up the floods from your tears sufficiently to turn on your computer and post defenses of Calvinism.

Despite that, you imaginatively project yourself into their situation. What if that was me? Paradoxically, while it may be wrong to harbor vengeful feelings toward your personal enemies, if you have any, it can be commendable to wish the worst for someone else's enemies. That's a disinterested kind of vengeance. A longing that justice be done on behalf of others.

Now you are contradicting Proverbs and other passages which forbid one to desire harm to come to one's enemies:

 17 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;
 18 Or the LORD will see it and be displeased, And turn His anger away from him. (Prov. 24:17-18 NAU)

Oba 1:12 "Do not gloat over your brother's day, The day of his misfortune. And do not rejoice over the sons of Judah In the day of their destruction; Yes, do not boast In the day of their distress.
Job 31:29 "Have I rejoiced at the extinction of my enemy, Or exulted when evil befell him?

Hart:  Theological history can boast few ideas more chilling than the claim (of, among others, Thomas Aquinas) that the beatitude of the saved in heaven will be increased by their direct vision of the torments of the damned.

Steve:  That's another trope that opponents of hell constantly trot out. Again, it's just an ecclesiastical tradition.

So is the apostolic authorship of the gospels.

But as long as he brings it up: while it would be wrong for the saints to derive glee from watching the damned suffer forever, there's nothing intrinsically wrong–indeed, there's something intrinsically right–about victims seeing assailants punished.

But what else could be going on in the victim's mind when watching the assailant get punished, except rejoicing that the assailing is now suffering?   Merely characterizing this as "joy that justice was done" is nothing but a politically correct label to whitewash the absolute reality of the victim's natural desire for vengeance.  Nothing is more ignorant and uninformed than the Christian victim who insists on forgiving their attacker.  Jesus was a pussy, you need to grow the fuck up.

That's not the same thing as hell mounted with cameras so that saints can voyeuristically tune into the miseries of the damned. But when victims see their assailants punished, that's a way to put the ordeal behind them and move on to better things.

Because their sense of vengeance is fulfilled, contrary to the above-cited bible verses.

Hart:  But as awful as that sounds, it may be more honest in its sheer cold impersonality than is the secret pleasure that many of us, at one time or another, hope to derive not from seeing but from being seen by those we leave behind.

Steve: Well that depends. Suppose a Muslim woman converts to Christianity. As punishment she is gang-raped and beheaded. On the day of judgment, is there something wrong with her waving goodbye to her assailants?

If she isn't pouring out her heart and desiring their salvation, then yes, Romans 10:1.

They watch her turn around and enter the everlasting light of paradise while they are left behind. It sinks in that they were blindly following a false prophet.

Something God could have given them an infallible foretaste of with a vision sprinkled liberally with his magic Ezra 1:1 fairy dust.  Then they surely would have recognized the error of their way no less clearly than Christians do the day they "get saved".

They never once paused to ask whether there was any decent evidence for Muhammad's prophet pretensions?

God could have put such questions into their heart, had he gave a fuck about them, Revelation 17:17

They used Islam as a pretext for sadism.  They were the winners in this life but the losers in the next life. Their victim was the loser in this life but the winner in the next life.

Only because your god infallibly predestined them to be that sadistic.  So it's still God's fault, not theirs, lest you stupidly argue that there can be a way in which a puppet can become culpable?

Hart:  How can we be winners, after all, if there are no losers? Where's the joy in getting into the gated community and the private academy if it turns out the gates are merely decorative and the academic has an inexhaustible scholarship program for the underprivileged? What success can there be that isn't validated by another's failure? What heaven can there be for us without an eternity in which to relish the impotent envy of those outside its walls. 

Steve:  i) To begin with, the Bible does have a doctrine regarding the reversal of fortunes.

The hope of the hopeless.

ii) That said, Hart's imputed motive is twisted. Christian missionaries are like escapees who got out of the war zone but keep going back to rescue others. They don't say, "I made it! To hell with the rest of you!" No, having found the way out, they go back into the hellhole to lead as many of the lost as they can into the light.

Which is stupid for them if they are Calvinists, since by becoming Calvinist, they can then become as relaxed as Steve Hays is about evangelism, so that if they decide to use grace as a license to sin or engage in neglect, well, God must have predestined such apathy on their part too.  There is no greater possible justification for any action, than that God has infallibly predestined it and the human agent never had any genuine possibility of deviating from it.  Now what?  Does your god get angry with people for doing exactly what he wanted them to do in the precise way he wanted them to do it? 

Sort of the like the fuckhead father who punishes his son for doing his chores exactly the way dad wanted?  Oh, I forgot, "god's ways are mysterious", and excuse Steve doesn't find very convicning when Christians use to to help justify Arminian soteriology.

iii) Speaking for myself, when I look forward to the afterlife, it has nothing to do with keeping a tally of the losers. It has nothing to do with thinking about the damned at all.

Then read your bible, desiring for God to kick ass on the unbelievers is precisely what the disembodied souls in heaven do:

 9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:9-10 NAU)