A Facebook Discussion That Meandered From Cell Phones in Hell to Socrates, Aquinas, and the Possibility of Universal Salvation
One of my favorite definitions of philosophy is simply this: thinking seriously about anything. Sometimes "anything" turns out to be quite surprising.
The following exchange began with a single-panel cartoon about cell phones in hell. Within a few comments, however, the conversation had wandered into questions about free will, divine simplicity, universal salvation, Socrates, Aquinas, and the nature of evil.
I reproduce portions of the discussion below, both for archival purposes and in the hope that it may spark further reflexion.
The key, orienting question to bear in mind is: Is "freedom" the ability to choose anything whatsoever, or the ability to become what we were meant to be?
A Cartoon About Hell
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| A new soul in hell exclaims: "Wow! You allow cell phones here?" A devil-like figure answers: "Actually, they're REQUIRED." (Dan Pirado, KingFeatures.com, Feb. 11, 2003.)' |
[R.R.'s] Initial Reaction:
For many ... true Hell means no cell phone ... or anything or anyone else for that matter ... for all eternity.
The real Hell is being given exactly what the souls there wanted ... to be all alone with only himself/herself only for all eternity ... including today. No God, no Angels, no other people, and no posetions/amusements. Nothing else...just the souls selfishness. Can you imagine the eternal loneliness and boredom? Can you imagine the grief and sadness?
Both Jesus and Paul teach to love Jesus is to keep and obey His commandments ... those commandments are "to love your neighbor as yourself and to love God with all your heart". To keep them means love of self and having a heart are both needed. It also means understanding what love is ... the intentional act of willing the good of the other.
Make the choices to learn to love yourself and to develope a heart ... and ask Jesus to help you do both in your prayers ... and you will be just fine in life today and forever.
Jesus won't help me, you, or anyone go to Hell ... but He will respect your decision to do so. He will help each of us get to Heaven if that is one's choice.
Saint John Paul II boiled life down to the constant struggle between selflessness and selfishness. If one is willfully engaged in that struggle, that's a good indication that one is trying to keep Jesus's commandments ... and the good news/blessings of the Gospel will flow forth ... today [and] forever ...
Can Anyone Freely Reject the Good?
Matthew Bell's First Reply
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Richard. I think there's a great deal of truth in what you're saying about selfishness. You're right to point, here, to JPII who often emphasized that the drama of the spiritual life really is a struggle between self-less, giving love and selfish, stingy enclosure.
One thought, though...
Socrates famously argued that no one knowingly chooses evil as evil. Rather, we choose what appears good to us, even when we're mistaken.
In that sense, I wonder whether anyone can, in a robust sense, truly desire separation from God, who is Goodness itself.
Without a doubt, many people seem to reject God as they presently (mis-)understand Him. But that is not quite the same thing as knowingly rejecting the Good as such.
Which raises an interesting question...
If a soul remains trapped in a mistaken pursuit of what merely seems good, would a perfectly loving God leave it there forever?
Or would a perfectly Good God continue, however painfully and purgatorially, to heal that soul's mistaken vision until it could finally recognize and freely embrace the Good it had been seeking all along?
Food for thought!
[R.R.'s] Rejoinder:
I think your last question hits it on the head. The answer I truely believe is "yes."
Protestant theology teaches at various levels/ways (depending on Denomination ... forgive me ... I am neither a theologin or familiar with all the traditions) God would do this at death in a way known only to Him. Catholic theology teaches the same thing ... and calls that event a state of being "Purgatory".
I like that you're use the term "mistaken" as Jesus, being both fully human and divine, recognizes the difference between a mistake (including results of being tricked by Satan) and the true willfull choice of complet selfishness.
I think that is called "relying on God's mercy" realizing this battle is [too] big to win alone. Jesus will use every power at His command, short of violating a person's free will, to assist each of us in [coming] home to our Father in Heaven.
Loving Parents, and big brothers and sisters, both forgive mistakes of their children/younger siblings and help them learn from it. Jesus is our brother, and the Father is our parent.
Viewed in this light, God's commands are not something to do [out] of fear of Him, but rather, to be done and continually strived for out of love ... even as we stumble and sin. Get back up, say "I'm sorry", and try again. This mindset has really allowed me to better excercise my faith/keep God foremost in my thoughts, prayers, and actions.
Something to ponder ... I wonder how Socrates would look at Adolf Hitler / the Nazis and the Holocaust or the Japanese atrocities against the Chineese, not to mention the treatment and Genocide of native American peoples by the United States government?
The Hitler Question (Godwin's Law Validated!)
Matthew Bell's Surrejoinder:
Thanks again, [R.R.], for your stimulating remarks. I think we agree on quite a lot, especially regarding God's mercy and His desire to bring every soul home.
Where I continue to hesitate is over the idea that a creature's private will could forever stand as the ultimate fact of reality (a perspective called "voluntarism" in the theology literature).
It seems to me, on the contrary, that God's Goodness is a more fundamental reality than any created act of willing.
If God is not merely a good among others, but Goodness itself, then every finite will already depends upon Him and is ordered toward Him, however confusedly.
This is why I find the Socratic point still doing real work, here. Even in extreme cases like Hitler (and thanks, btw, for your validation of Godwin's Law!), I personally doubt that it's correct to say he pursued evil as evil. Rather, I take it that even Adolf Hitler pursued perceived goods — destiny, national "purification" / restoration, power, revenge, etc. — albeit in a catastrophically disordered way. The horror, however, was not a naked “will to evil” (in a quasi-Nietzschean sense), but the collapse or distortion of the vision of the true, objective good.
At this point, I also can’t help recalling 1 Timothy 2:3–4, which says that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” [Emphasis added.]
That raises a fairly direct (and even more pointed) question — which I bring up not as a proof-text, but as a metaphysical analysis — about what it would mean if such a divine desire were ultimately frustrated. If God desires something, can a finite creature's puny decisions thwart divine hopes?
If God is Goodness itself — as it seems to me that He is — then, is His will something that can be permanently blocked by finite confusion; or is it, in some deeper sense, the very ground of Being that heals and re-orders created wills over time?
And perhaps that raises a broader question behind this whole discussion.
We often picture eternal separation in terms of notorious villains like some of the ones that you gesture toward — Jeffrey Dahmer, Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and on and on.
Yet I suspect that the more unsettling possibility is not that God finally excludes some people from His mercy (which is something that we often cheer lead for), but that His mercy extends much further than our moral imagination wants to go. This is to say that I'd argue we are more distressed by the possibility that even those people whom we most despise or resist may ultimately be reconciled — not because God "ignores" the evil, but because God's work as the Great Physician knows no limits.
You can't underestimate the resources of omnipotence! [This line is actually owed to philosopher Paul Robert Draper.]
I sometimes wonder whether that possibility is actually the more demanding vision of divine justice; almost certainly, in my opinion, it's the more humbling one. We can't be "rid of" anyone so easily. We'll have to deal with everyone again, in the end. [This sentiment was articulated by theologian John Milbank.]
Feel free to come back at me. I enjoy the back and forth. However, as a practical matter, I'm now under a bit of time pressure and can't guarantee when or if I'll be able to pick things up again. So... if you'd like to have it, please give us the final word!
Peace and in Christ,
Matthew
[R.R.'s] Rebutter:
Matthew Bell ... thanks for the thought/discussion.
Please never think I'm "[coming] at you" ... I would never do that. I think you're perspective is a healthy one ...
I think what you are trying to say is that God's mercy trumps just about everything ... I 100% agree with that. The only thing it does not trump ... is God Himself.
God's only limitations as an all loving, all powerful, optitant being that exist outside of time and space, is that He can't not be God. God creates perfectly and plans perfectly. He makes no mistakes ... something we creatures really don't understand this as it's beyond the realm of rational thought. God gave us free will for a reason ... and that reason is so we can make choices. Without the choice to love ... love does not exist. God will not trump His own works ... He won't trump human free will.
I think what your pondering is do people really choose to do evil? It's a fantastic question ... and a healthy one. My honest answer ... I don't know. But, does that possibility exist? Yes, it does. Only Jesus can judge the human heart ...He knows our hearts and true choice better than we know ourselves.
Back to Hitler, people ask me all the time ... "Does God love Adolf Hitler"? Yes He does. Follow up question "Is Hitler in Heaven"? My answer ... "I truely don't know, as it is certainly possible, but I truely believe it is not very probable ... but I hope he is ... as I really don't want any soul to go to Hell".
Guys like Socrates we have to be careful applying theological or moral constructs to ... as he is a philosopher and did not know Judao-Christian theology ... just as we have to be careful with judging Philosteens, Sagasees, and Levits. They knew theology, but not philosophy. Christianity marries both together to best understand both God and humanity.
I tend to believe it is very very hard with Jesus advocating for us to actually go to Hell. I think you share that. But it is certainly possible. My hope is no souls are in Hell.
A good question, however, is what is the point of going to Heaven, if you truely don't want to? Heaven is no longer Heaven if that happens.
The purpose of this life, and subsequently Purgatory, is to learn how to love perfectly ... which is what makes Heaven ... Heaven.
Can God's Purposes Be Frustrated?
Matthew Bell's Surrebutter:
Thanks again, Richard, for your thoughts.
I think the main place where we continue to differ concerns the nature of freedom itself.
When you say that God would never override human free will, I certainly understand the intuition. But I think that assumes a particular understanding of freedom — namely, that free will consists in the ability to neutrally choose either God or not-God.
I disagree with this. But, before getting there, I think there's one prior point worth making.
I don't actually think the question is whether God's mercy "trumps" His justice.
Classical Christian theology generally held that God is "simple" (a doctrine call "divine simplicity"). In this picture, God's justice, mercy, goodness, and love are not separate in Him; nor are they competing tendencies within Him. Rather, they are different ways finite creatures experience one, unified divine reality. The same divine love that heals the repentant sinner is experienced as judgment by whatever remains in us opposed to that love.
The question, then, is not whether mercy defeats or trumps justice. It is whether God's purposes can ultimately fail.
Scripture repeatedly speaks of God's purposes as unfailing.
Job declares, "No purpose of Yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2). Proverbs tells us that while many are the plans in a person's heart, "it is the Lord's purpose that prevails" (Prov. 19:21).
So I find myself wondering: if God truly desires the salvation of all (this was 1 Timothy 2:3-4, which I cited previously); and, if no purpose of His can ultimately be thwarted; then what becomes of God's desire? Is it thwarted or ...not?
This is where the discussion inevitably turns to freedom and the nature of free will, as you rightly noted.
What Is Freedom?
The interesting thing is that Christians have never agreed on a single definition of free will.
For example, Calvinists typically adopt what philosophers call a compatibilist account. On that view, a person acts freely whenever he acts according to his strongest desire, even if those desires ultimately arise from God's providential ordering of events.
By contrast, many modern Christians assume a libertarian account of freedom. (This has nothing to do with the American political party, of course!) Here, freedom consists in the ability to choose either A or not-A. Thus, to freely love God, one must always possess the contrary power not to love God.
Although these views differ sharply, both belong to what theologians often call a voluntarist framework (which I also noted, parenthetically, before). In different ways, both compatibilism and libertarianism treat freedom primarily as a matter of the will's power to choose.
But some of the most influential figures in Christian history — particularly St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas — took a rather different approach.
For them, freedom is not primarily the power to choose between opposites (technically, logical complements).
Instead, freedom is the capacity to realize and embrace the Good.
The will is not a "neutral chooser" suspended between alternatives; it is naturally ordered toward the Good, as understood by reason.
In other words, freedom has a telos — an end or purpose. Its fulfillment is not found in endless indifference between God and not-God, but only in achieving the very Good for which it was created.
On the Anselmian-Thomistic accounts, to put it bluntly: Not choosing God (or the Good) is not an execrise of free will at all; it's a failure of the will to be free. This is to say that choosing against God is not freedom's highest expression. It is a defect in freedom, much as blindness is a defect in sight rather than an alternative form of seeing.
That, at least, is (one reason) why I find the universalist hope intellectually compelling. If every rational creature is ultimately ordered toward God as its final end, then the question becomes not whether God can or does overpower freedom, but whether freedom itself reaches perfection only in union with the Good.
In any event, I suspect we've now reached the point where the real disagreement is not over hell, mercy, or even universalism. It is over the nature of freedom itself. And Christians have been debating that question for centuries.
Philosophy and Theology
As a final footnote, regarding Socrates: St. Justin Martyr famously referred to Socrates as a kind of "Christian before Christ" (see First Apology, chapter 46 and Second Apology, chapter 10) arguing that those who followed the Logos (i.e., the Second Person of the Trinity) wherever it led were, in a sense, already participating in the truth later revealed in Christ. Whether Justin was right or wrong about this, it is at least a reminder that the early Church often saw philosophy and theology as coming into a much closer approach than you seem to be assuming.
Peace,
Matthew
Closing Reflections
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From [R.R.]
Matthew Bell ... it's good that you are asking the questions. It has been debated and evolved over history. And I don't know that I'm going to change your mind ... as I'm not trying to. But your words indicate you do have questions and perhaps some discomfort ... I am simply feebly attempting to elliviate some of that discomfort.
The question to ask yourself, in my tradition this action is called "examination of conscious", "am I acting perfectly in accordance with Jesus's commands and example? Do I truely try to act lovingly always in every situation? Is there anytime I act selfishly by choice"? Do you ask yourself these questions? Doing so reveals just how far from Jesus's example and commands I am ... and just how much I must rely on Jesus. This is what surrendering to Christ is all about. This is what putting on Christ is all about. This is what dying to self is all about. I don't know how well the early Christians understood the inter-relationship between theology and philosophy compared to mine ... and I honestly don't care. I trust in Jesus, and try to be worthy of that trust. I pray you do as well. I pray all do. I neither worry about those that refuse to ... there is nothing I can do to change their minds or hearts. That's between them and Christ ... just as it is between me and Christ. Work on your relationship's with Jesus and the people in your life and you will be just fine ... you will find Heaven now ... and not need to wait for it. The gift of your faith tradition will help you in this. Study it, learn it, and live it. In so doing you will find answers to your question, comfort your sole, and set a attractive model for others. You will be an Evangelist.
From Matthew Bell
Richard, thanks. I've genuinely enjoyed the exchange.
For what it's worth, I don't think we disagree nearly as much on the practical side as we do on some of the underlying philosophical questions. We both seem to agree that faith, repentance, love of neighbor, and conformity to Christ matter enormously.
I appreciate your prayers and good wishes, and you may be assured of mine in return.
Cheers!
Postscript
Looking back over the exchange, it seems to me that the real disagreement was not ultimately about hell at all. Rather, it concerned the nature of freedom.
Is freedom primarily the power to choose between alternatives, as the libertarian has it? Or is it the capacity to realize and participate in the Good, on a more Thomistic wavelength?
Depending on how one answers that question, one's understanding of judgment, salvation, and even the meaning of eternal separation may look quite different.
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