In the wake of the controversy over Love Wins, someone recently suggested to me that perhaps hell is not eternal after all and that those sent there might one day complete their sentences, much as a prisoner serves for a certain period and is then released. It’s an intriguing and hopeful thought, but it raises two difficulties, as I see it.
First, my understanding, following that of the historic church, is that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for sin for all those who are in Christ. Mere human beings could never pay the price for their own transgressions. To suggest that they could — by, in effect, serving time — would seem to imply that there is a second path to salvation other than through the only begotten Son of God. But, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “no mere creature can bear the weight of God’s eternal anger against sin” (Q&A, 14), and “Only those are saved who by true faith are grafted into Christ and accept all his blessings” (Q&A, 20).
Second, would not a non-eternal, temporary hell be tantamount to purgatory? Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion definitively condemns belief in purgatory, but if one conceives of the possibility of completing one’s sentence in hell, then it seems to me that the distinction between purgatory and hell fades away.
Incidentally, the Rev. Wes Bredenhof has discovered something interesting about the author of the Belgic Confession: Guido De Bres and His Belief in Purgatory.
May 31st, 2011 | 7:49 am | #1
It’s funny that Hans Urs von Balthasar gets mentioned in these debates by people who have heard the title of his Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved. In his five-volume work Theo-Drama, he more or less comes to the conclusion (by volume five) that Hell and Purgatory are identical – a position influenced by Adrienne von Speyr and Kierkegaard, but rooted in the logic of Eastern theologians like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa and the idea that the human will must be turned back toward God through a process that involves purgation.
May 31st, 2011 | 1:28 pm | #2
would not a non-eternal, temporary hell be tantamount to purgatory?
C.S. Lewis suggests in his book “The Great Divorce” that purgatory and Hell are the same thing – which you are in depends on whether you leave. Leaving is a choice at any time, but the conditions for leaving remain as formidable as ever – letting go of self-will remains as impossible in death as it was in life, and that, rather than some external barrier, is what keeps souls “down there”.
Don’t know how theologically justified it is, but it is an intriguing thought.
The problem, though, would be that once you are in Hell, it would be even harder to accept Jesus – you would be in circumstances that would make you more inclined to curse than embrace Him. It would be ever more difficult to simply put aside the feeling of being treated unjustly: a person would even more become committed to all the thought-patterns that lead one to believe in an inherently spiteful universe, rather than knowing how to let go of it all and embrace “love”.
I tend to believe in something like this simply because that is, in my experience, the nature of how things work: the more you hold on to things, the more it starts to feel like how I imagine Hell being like – even when, or maybe especially when, what you are holding on to is what you think you’re entitled to, or what you think is “justice”, or whatever. And the key to getting out of that bind is the counter-intuitive step of letting go of all things that are hateful and bad, and embracing what is right.
(And one of the reasons I became convinced that Christianity is not just some “silly myth” about an “invisible sky-god” is because the teachings just happen to coincide with what you need to know in order to know what to embrace, if you want to embrace what is right: there is truth there, and the hard part genuinely is seeing it, through the fog and the filter of all those things that cloud our vision and make us cling to what we are sure we are entitled to, even when it costs us everything we value.)
May 31st, 2011 | 5:57 pm | #3
@Blake,
I have a problem with your reading of “The Great Divorce.” Whereas Lewis did believe in purgatory, he never equated it with Hell. His argument, as I understand it, is that Hell is life without God and that choice is the key. Rather than Lewis describing his view of the afterlife and all its inner workings, he is describing the nature of choice and that eventually there is a bona fide finality. It’s essentially an allegory for our lives now.
June 4th, 2011 | 4:41 pm | #4
I take C.S. Lewis’s comments as meant to open a discussion, not resolve that discussion.
I do not know at what point Hell becomes inescapable – is it at death, or is it when your heart hardens, or is there a specific judgment day for all people? I realize these are denominational questions, but if you don’t have answers to these questions, how do you know which denomination?
So I like what Lewis wrote because it is thought provoking, in a way that can be useful when one actually tries to think through what (little!) we know about Hell and Purgatory.
(I admit the entire idea of Purgatory makes little sense to me. If death = judgment, what would be the point of Purgatory?)
June 4th, 2011 | 4:42 pm | #5
I think I misread your comment. Sorry if I did.
I am not sure what specifically you do not like about my reading (misreading) of the Great Divorce.
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