HELL FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF APOLOGETIC
I. The wrong sort of apologetic: Hell made bearable.
II. True Catholic apologetic:
(1) The twofold pain of Hell justifiable;
(2) Objections answered:
(a) Hell and God’s goodness;
(b) Hell and divine justice;
(c) Hell and God’s mercy.
III. St. Thomas’s axiom.
Catholic theologians in general, faced with an unorthodox defence of Hell wherein are to be found traces of the ancient heresies of the Origenists and the “merciful,” found it not difficult to reconcile God’s goodness, justice and mercy with Hell’s eternity.
But the apologetic propounded by the Thomist theologians seems to rest upon the best and strongest foundation.
I. A FALSE APOLOGETIC
The theories of Universalism and Conditionalism, held by some Protestants, will not detain us.
Universalists believe that God’s mercy and Christ’s redemptive blood will go on working their effects even in Hell, and that, sooner or later, the damned will thereby be converted and set free.
Conditionalists admit the impossibility of the ultimate conversion of the damned, but still deny eternal punishment. This is the consequence of their teaching, a kind ofcompromise between materialism and pantheism, concerning man’s nature, which they hold, is composed of three elements, body, soul and spirit. At death the soul perishes with the body; the spirit, a higher principle, survives but, since it is impersonal, true personality and the individual consciousness are annihilated.
We pass now to the consideration of some examples of a false apologetic for which Catholic writers have been responsible.
Some, under the influence of eighteenth century sentimentalism, carried the mitigation of the torments of Hell so far as to make the life of the damned quitetolerable. The terrifying expressions of the Sacred Scriptures are, for these writers, simple hyperbole the real meaning of which we must try to discover. Moreover the damned do not become radically evil—their actions are not devoid of all moral goodness, and finally their reprobation is not so absolute as is commonly supposed, and their condition in Hell is still preferable to annihilation.
Fr. Tournebize thus sums up Mivart’s teaching, who in his Happiness in Hell, was perhaps the most extreme in his views:
“Hell, as depicted by Mivart, differs but little from that described by some recent Protestant writers. According to him the time will come when the torments of the damned will cease and they will no longer hate God; their moral condition undergoes a great and gradual improvement; at last they reach a state of happiness, though, of course, immeasurably inferior to that of the saved. But their banishment far from God no longer oppresses them, either because they are not conscious of what they have lost, or because their abode and its society form an environment suited to their condition. For it is quite possible, he says, that a common and mutual sympathy relieves the weight of their chains, and that they prefer the vulgar circle of actions and desires in which they have freely enclosed themselves, to any higher ideal. In the detested dwelling-place of the damned the sufferings, symbolized by fire, are but slight, and even the most perverse of its inhabitants are not wholly deprived of pleasure. The most unhappy suffer less than some unfortunates in this world, and definitely prefer their state of reprobation to annihilation” (Opinions. . .p. 8-9).
We shall not consider in detail the arguments with which the modern “apostles of mercy” try to bolster up their opinions. It is enough to recall that according to the unanimous teaching of theologians, based upon revelation itself, the sufferings of Hell are terrible.
We know that the pain of loss will be indescribable torture to the soul, and we know that the pain of sense will not be simply the imprisonment, but the innermost binding of body and soul with chains of fire. Any substantial mitigation of these torments is inconceivable.
Equally inconceivable is any moral goodness in the lost, for the root of all moral action is substantially perverted by the unalterable fixity of their wills in evil as their last end.
Nor, lastly, is it to be conceived that any act of theirs could bring them true enjoyment. Obstinately cleaving to evil, the damned are not only in a state of aversion from God, their supernatural end, but they are also in a state of positive adherence to another and different end, which, precisely because it is moral evil, tends to the exclusion of God from all their actions and brings upon them the awful pain of loss, which, as we have seen, is insupportable because it robs them of the sole good for which they were created.
Undoubtedly their condition is not that of absolute evil, for this would be nothingness, but whatever remains to them of their natural possessions, existence, intelligence, knowledge, will, desires, will serve only to add to their sufferings.
The parable of the rich man buried in Hell proves nothing to the contrary. Though he is represented as feeling and speaking as one who has learnt from suffering the consequences of his sins and wishes to save those dear to him from the same fate, we must not conclude that in this he shows us the desires and preoccupations really entertained by the damned. It is not so, but simply that Jesus, teaching in parables, invests the characters with the sentiments best calculated to convey the lesson he wishes his hearers to learn.
It is sometimes objected that, if the torments of the damned were so terrible, their sufferings would be so overwhelming that all power of action would be destroyed: they would be unable to give their minds to other things, the devils would not be able to tempt men, and the lost incapable of giving a thought to those they had left on earth.
St. Thomas disposes of this difficulty in his article on the sufferings of the demons (Sum. Theol. I. q. 72, art. 3). The pain endured by the devils is a real suffering, but differs from that endured by man, who is composed of soul and body. It is not, in the true sense of the word apassio, or affliction, which can exist only in a sensitive faculty acting through some bodily organ. The suffering which so absorbs the sufferer as to render him insensible to other feelings and rob him of the power of action is that which acting directly upon his sensitive faculties, through them affects his higher faculties, just as, in the moral order, the impulses of his lower appetites may exert an evil influence upon the determinations of his will.
But this does not apply to a purely spiritual being, or to the human soul after death. In them pain is nothing but an act of the will, an effort of the will against everything that thwarts their perverse desires, a struggle to overcome the obstacles in their way.
Think for a moment what it is that the lost, devils or men, in their perversion desire. The root and essence of sin is naturalism, the negation of God as the author and the end of supernatural life.
The lost, at the moment of their damnation, will and intend this negation, they will it still and always, with the fullness of all their powers. Consequently, although Satan and his fellows suffer from the frustration of their perverted desires, they would suffer still more if they did not seek the destruction of God’s supreme dominion over creatures destined for supernatural beatitude. Far, then, from being prevented by their sufferings from attempting the moral ruin of others, the devils are rather impelledthereby to bring to this work all the resources of their richly endowed natures. The same principles apply, with the necessary reservations, to the souls of the damned.
The starting-point of all this wrong thinking about Hell is the idea of a future life modelled on the lines of life on earth. The psychology is wrong and the metaphysicalso; imagination takes the place of reason. If we set up a comparison between the sufferings of earth and of Hell we are sure to go astray; no such comparison will hold because there is no real connection between the two terms. In this life man’s will is always changeable, in the next it is immovably fixed in good or evil.
While this life lasts the sinner’s conversion is always possible; the will of the damned in Hell is radically and irrevocably perverted. From this fundamental perversity arises the intensity of the sufferings, which are its necessary consequence and which allow of no possible alleviation.
Those apologists who exclude the traditional ideas of anguish and despair from their description of Hell, far from serving the Catholic cause, run the risk of leading the faithful themselves into error, and paving the way to the sin of presumption.
For all eternity will it be true that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebr. 10:31), and no subtleties of interpretation, baseless as they are, and designed only to soften the rigour of the truth, can prevail against the words that Jesus spoke of Judas, which apply equally to all the damned in general and to each and every one of them: “It were better for him, if that man had not been born” (Matt. 26:24).
II. TRUE CATHOLIC APOLOGETIC
The aim of the Catholic apologist is to prove:
- the fitness of a twofold eternal punishment, and
- to refute objections based on God’s goodness, justice and mercy.
(1) It is fitting that eternal punishment should be of a twofold kind
The sinner not only turns his back on God, his supernatural end, but at the same time and by the same act, attaches himself to some finite and perishable object, which he prefers to God.
In reality he chooses himself as his last end and criminally substitutes self-love for love of God.
Hence mortal sin has two aspects: it is a turning away from God, and a turning to a creature, the self.
Because it is a turning from God, mortal sin, if persisted in until death, entails the pain of loss in the next world. That he who wilfully turns his back on God should be punished by the loss of God, is surely equitable, and since the desertion of God, involved in mortal sin, is of its very nature irremediable, the consequent pain of loss must continue for ever. Even in this life it would be absolutely impossible for the sinner to repair his fault if God did not help him with His grace.
On the other hand, since mortal sin is also the turning to a created, finite object, chosen by the sinner as his last end in place of God, the supreme God and man’s only true end, it is right that it should entail the positive pain of sense. There are two reasons for this punishment. In the first place it may be maintained that, man being what he is with his mind absorbed in material things, the far off vision of the pain of loss would be of no value as a deterrent from sin; only the fear of some positive chastisement, of which he can form some idea from its analogy with the sufferings of this world, is capable of making any impression on him.
But the principal reason for the pain of sense is the expediency of some proportion between crime and punishment. The sinner turns his back on God to cleave to a creature, he takes the love of self as the final end of all his actions; it is fitting, therefore, as St. Thomas says (Contra Gentes III, c. 144), that this ill-regulated love for creatures should be punished with some positive punishment through the instrumentality of some created agent.
But, it must be observed, the pain of loss is of itself infinite, both because it will last for ever, and because it is the loss of the infinite Good.
The pain of sense, on the contrary, is of itself finite, because the misdirected love for which it is imposed, is the essentially finite act of a creature.
The reason for its eternal duration is that it is the necessary accompaniment of the eternal pain of loss; if this could possibly be remitted by God, the former would at once come to an end.
(2) Solution of Objections
(a) God’s infinite goodness and the eternity of Hell.
Objection: It is said that, even in the case of the incorrigible, the divine goodness must grant some alleviation of their sufferings. God, in His infinite goodness, can never suffer even the guilty to be tormented forever.
Answer: P. Bernard says:
“This argument merely plays with abstractions and turns topsy-turvy the truths both of reason and revelation. God is not only goodness, in the special sense commonly given to this word; He is justice and wisdom; He is infinite perfection. . . To isolate one divine attribute and live to it the fullest effect, to the exclusion of all His other attributes, is to rob it of its truly divine character, its infinite perfection, because it is, in reality, identical with the other attributes, which are necessarily included in it; it is an implicit contradiction, for the infinite is, at one and the same time, posited and denied… It is evident that it is not God’s goodness, as such, that inflicts punishment, and the most penetrating analysis of God’s mercy and love will never extract from these attributes alone the idea of eternal punishment, or of any punishment at all” (Dictionnaire Apologétique, art. Enfer, t. I, col. 1393).
It is, in fact, upon justice, and justice alone, that sanctions depend and the punishment of violations of the law, and by no analysis of the idea of justice can we discover the element of pardon, or the alleviation of punishment.
Furthermore, it is easy to turn this objection against the adversaries who deny the eternity of Hell. For it is, indeed, God’s love for men that condemns impenitent sinners to Hell. Is not the fear of Hell one of the most effective means we now have of preserving our souls from sin? This consideration alone is enough to show that God, Who wishes all men to be saved, gives proof of His great love for them by His creation of Hell, for it is an efficacious, if terrible, means of assuring their salvation, since it is so powerful a preventive and corrective of the abuses of human freedom.
And if, notwithstanding, a certain number of men are, in fact, damned, it is no less true that, with regard to the common good of men, eternal punishment is an institution well worthy of our common Father’s love.
St. Thomas says:
“There is no good reason why, in accordance with the judgments of God some men should not be excluded for ever from the society of the good and punished eternally, in order that men should give up sinning through fear of eternal punishment, and also that the society of the good may be purified by the exclusion of the wicked.” (Cont. Gentes, III c. 114).
And what is true in this life by reason of the salutary fear inspired by Hell, is true also in the next by reason of the outrage suffered by God’s infinite love for men. How could it be otherwise?
God has done everything for man’s eternal happiness; He has prepared and offered and given abundant graces; He has given His only Son in sacrifice for man’s redemption, and when man rejects contemptuously all these advances of divine love, is he to be punished for but a span of years? This would be an insult to God’s wisdom, for it would show that all the proofs of God’s love for man were purposeless. The contempt of God’s infinite love can be avenged only by a Hell without end.
Père Monsabré says:
“Do away with eternal punishment and that great work of divine love, the Redemption, becomes wholly incomprehensible. In His love and all His works of love God is profoundly wise; but is it wisdom for God to sacrifice His own Son to save us from a punishment that, sooner or later, must issue in eternal happiness? Is it wisdom for God to inspire the martyrs to suffer the most frightful tortures to gain happiness which, whatever happens, they cannot finally lose? Is it wisdom to send forth the Apostles to labour even unto death in order to save the nations from ignorance and vice which cannot rob them of eternal beatitude? Is that wisdom; is it not rather the extravagance of folly?” (Exposition du dogme, 96th Conf.).
(b) Hell and God’s justice.
1st Objection: How can God punish unendingly a sin, which is but the disorder of a moment? True, the injury done to God must be repaired. But where is the reparation if the punishment is unending, if it leaves the sinner unrepentant and does not lead to his amendment? All punishment, imposed in the name of justice, should necessarily conduce to the amelioration of the guilty, but, if the punishment is never to have an end, this becomes impossible.
Answer: We must first rid ourselves of an idea that is quite false. It is perfectly true that all punishment is decreed and instituted with a view to our correction, but nothing can be farther from the truth than the idea that a penalty must be inflicted for the sinner’s amendment and that unless this be effected the punishment is contrary to law and justice.
Père Monsabré truly observes:
“It would follow that only well-intentioned criminals who promise amendment should be punished, and that hardened incorrigibles should go scot-free; which is absurd. He who does not intend to amend his ways must suffer for his contempt of law and order and duty” (loc. cit.).
Moreover, eternal punishment, which does not lead to repentance, is legitimate and necessary on account of the grave and direct violation of God’s rights involved in mortal sin.
As Père Bernard writes:
“The rights of God are supreme, but it is not enough that they should simply be inviolate, it is necessary that his unimpaired sovereignty should be clearly evident. Sovereign rights that are not effectively enforced in the fullness of their reality and to the full range of their moral power, would be lacking in that perfection that must characterize the rights of God, which are essentially infinite. God’s sovereignty, then, must be affirmed and upheld against all rebellion, against every pretender who would destroy or impair it. This is an inevitable necessity, and the repression of rebellion is nothing but the enforcement of law, whereby the insurgent is put back into his own place and made to feel, willy-nilly, the power of the sovereign whom he had repudiated. Thus are manifested God’s sovereignty, holiness and justice; thus is God glorified by the sinner himself, and reparation made for the violation of the law. Therefore in condemning unrepentant sinners to eternal punishment God’s action is in perfect accord with his wisdom.” (loc. cit. col. 1396)
St. Thomas says:
“God does not inflict punishment for its own sake, or because he takes pleasure in it; but he has an end in view, which is to establish creatures according to that order of things which constitutes the well-being of the whole universe.” (loc. cit.).
2nd Objection: But, persists the objector, there is no proportion between the sin which, being a human act, must be finite, and the infinite penalty of eternal damnation.
Answer: Here again there is a confusion of thought. Eternal damnation is not an infinite penalty. Infinite and unending are not synonymous. In an infinite penalty, if such a thing were conceivable, there could be no differences of degree, such as, according to Catholic teaching, maintaining a due proportion between the sufferings of the lost and the sins for which they suffer. It was said above that the pain of loss is infinite, both by reason of its endlessness and because of the infinite good that is lost. And this statement far from contradicting what we are now saying, in reality confirms it. For it is precisely because it is the loss of God, the infinite good, that the pain of loss is the same for all and admits of no degrees. The differing degrees of suffering, corresponding to the various degrees of guilt, are on the side of the sufferers, in the varying intensity of their anguish, misery and despair.
In this way only does the pain of loss vary according to the number and the heinousness of the sins of which it is the consequence.
On the other hand, the pain of sense, as has been pointed out, in itself limited and measured according to the gravity of the sins committed, has only a participated endlessness, in so far as it is the accompaniment of the pain of loss.
It is equally false to maintain, without conditions and due explanation, that there can be only a finite and limited measure of malice in sin, since it is the act of an essentially finite and limited creature. On the contrary, as all theologians allow, there is a certain infinity of malice in sin.
St. Thomas says:
“The malice of mortal sin is in a manner infinite, because it is an offence against the infinite majesty of God. The higher the dignity of him who is offended, the greater is the offence . . . Since it is impossible that a man’s punishment should be of infinite intensity, it must needs be that the punishment of sin should be infinite in its duration” (III q. 1, art. 2, ad. 2; Suppl. q. 100, a. 1).
Apart, however, from all possible theological discussions as to the infinite character of the offence against God, and even supposing that it is not in itself infinite, it still remains true that God’s justice requires that the sinner shall be punished eternally.
The offence is measured by the dignity of the person offended; but the value of the satisfaction made corresponds with the dignity of him who offers it.
Hence, on any hypothesis, the satisfaction for sin offered to God by a mere creature can never equal the injury done to His majesty, God’s supreme dignity always towering high above that of the most perfect and the holiest of creatures. If this is true of reparation by way of satisfaction, according to commutative justice, it is equally true of reparation by way of punishment, according to vindictive or retributive justice. Any punishment suffered by a creature, even if continuing for all eternity and of the utmost possible intensity, can never satisfy the demands of justice by making full reparation for the insult offered by sin to God’s infinite majesty.
3rd Objection: Then there is the popular form of the same objection, which, however, will not detain us long. Is it just for God to punish a moment’s forgetfulness with an eternity of misery?
Answer: True, the material act of sinning, which may be the result of an instant’s culpable forgetfulness, and which is over in a moment, is in itself but a trifle from the moral point of view.
What really matters and what makes it morally evil is the perverse will whence it proceeds. And it cannot be denied that the will, by one single deliberate mortal sin, becomes irremediably perverted. As far as in him lies, he who commits a mortal sin turns his back finally and definitely upon his true last end. This is a total and complete destruction of the principle of order, and the resultant disorder is, of itself, irreparable.
Charity is the root of the supernatural order, which is violated by sin, and charity being totally destroyed by mortal sin, man of his own efforts is absolutely unable to make good the damage.
For this God’s intervention is necessary, and although this is always possible while the present life lasts, it is not possible after death, when, as has been proved, the sinner’s will remains for ever fixed in its state of perversion.
Hence, it is not true that God punishes a moment’s waywardness with an eternity of misery; he punishes eternally an eternal perversion of man’s freewill.
(c) Eternal punishment and God’s mercy.
Objection: But, it is urged, the difficulty remains in all its force. Could not God be merciful to sinners in the next world? Could not the lost rehabilitate themselves by accepting their punishment in a good spirit and by a moral reformation of the will? Would God in such a case still withhold his grace?
Answer: All this is really an illusion of the imagination.
First of all, seeing that the sinner died impenitent, how do we know that his sufferings in the next life will lead him to repent?
Also, How do we know that, much as he may hate his punishment, he will also have such an abhorrence for his sins, the cause of his punishment, as will bring him to sorrow and repentance?
Regret and repentance are two very different things, and the severest chastisement does not always produce repentance. Now, as we have seen, to dream of the rehabilitation of the damned by repentance, even with the help of God’s grace, is to misconceive the character of the condition of terminal immobility which man reaches at death.
According to Catholic teaching, as set forth in our first chapter, death puts man into a state of complete moral immobility; all possibility of merit or demerit passes from him, and he can no longer change his state of grace or of sin. As death finds him, so will he stay throughout eternity.
The theological proofs of this truth have already been given.
Now from the apologetic point of view, we put it simply as a possible hypothesis, and the mere fact of its possibility renders indecisive the argument drawn from God’s mercy.
Undoubtedly the theory that God would be willing to forgive may be valid, but if, on account of the radical perversion of the human will, forgiveness be impossible, then God’s mercy can do nothing to save the lost.
If “having reached the end of the developments of life on earth, the impenitent sinner’s free will is bound, by the very fact of his impenitence, with chains stronger and tighter than those forged by the excesses of passion, or folly, or madness in this life,” if “by the final refusal that sealed his fate, he hermetically closed his soul against the penetration of grace” (Monsabré), there is no longer any possibility, not only moral, but even physical, of his rehabilitation. “The unhappy man, says Bossuet, is neither in the act nor the habit, but in the state of sin; sin has become incarnate in him, man has become sin” (Esquisse d’un sermon pour l’ouverture d’une retraite).
III. ST. THOMAS’ APOLOGETIC
If we are to give a final and exhaustive answer to the objection under consideration, we must, it seems, go all the way with St. Thomas, making our own his teaching in its entirety, as expounded in the first chapter of this volume.
It is not enough to say, in accord with all Catholic theologians, that the reason for the obduracy of the lost is to be looked for in the withholding from them of all grace, actual and habitual.
We must go deeper and affirm that God refuses to give them grace because, by the very nature of their state, they are obstinately rooted in evil, and hence incapable of accepting it.
This obduracy in evil is, therefore, the cause, not the effect of God’s refusal to exercise mercy towards the damned.
St. Thomas writes:
“With respect to extrinsic causes angels are immovably fixed, either in good or evil, once they have made their first choice, because this puts an end to their state of probation; hence it does not accord with the exercise of divine wisdom that further grace should be given to the lost angels, to convert them from the evil of their first aversion from God, in which they unchangeably persist” (De Malo, q. 16, art. 5).
To explain the withholding of all grace, the Angelic Doctor appeals, then, not to God’s will but to his Wisdom, since the offer of grace would be useless to a will irrevocably fixed in the choice of evil.
On a previous page we have set out the psychological proof of the immovability in evil of the will of the lost. We have also pointed out that the act, by which the soul makes definite and final choice of its last end, is measured by what is called aeviternity.
Hence the choice and the love of the last end is not only psychologically unchangeable, but is also an ever present act, so that, however long the future may be, the time will never come when it will be possible for anyone who is damned to retract and amend his choice.
This is a physical impossibility over and above the psychological impossibility already explained. The lost will never again have “the time” to start afresh. Having once begun his eternity, the sinner, immovably chained to evil, clings to it forever throughout the whole of his never ending present.
This teaching of St. Thomas shows us Hell from a point of view that is too often neglected. It puts before us the very nature of things and enables us to see that the ultimate reason for eternal punishment is not to be looked for in God, but in the lost themselves, in their obdurate will and the impossibility of their disentangling themselves from the net of evil. This is the decisive answer to all objections founded on God’s goodness, justice and mercy.
“God is too good to condemn me to Hell,” is the cry repeated in a hundred different forms.
Yes, he is indeed too good to condemn to Hell those whom he created for Heaven, and for whose salvation, in his exceeding love, he sent his own Son into the world.
But how is he to release from Hell those whose existence and will are immutably rooted in the eternal “now” of sin?
St. Thomas says again:
“The punishment of the damned would not be eternal if it were possible to convert their will to good. It would be unjust to punish them for ever once they became men of good will” (Cont. Gentes bk. IV ch. 93).
It is impossible to turn the souls of the damned once more unto good. Let the argument be well weighed. The punishment of the lost will be eternal, not simply because their wills are in fact immovably fixed in evil, but because there is lacking to them even the possibility of conversion; their state is such that it is morally, psychologically and physically impossible for them to accept the grace of conversion.
