There's a previous thread that takes this argument and applies it to the ethics of believers: The moral character of Christians — Banno

You are sort of the king of ad hominem, no? If there is insufficient ad hominem on TPF, you show up and remedy the problem. :roll:

But, on the other hand, our experience seems to be fundamentally temporal. A process. Not something static. If time stops, can we really speak of beatitude or torment? — boundless

The impermanence of emotions and sensations isn't necessarily in conflict with the thought that an emotion or sensation is temporally unbounded. Consider for instance the mood of grief. On the one hand the mood is all absorbing and the grieving cannot comprehend an end to their grief and locate it on a timeline, yet on the other hand the emotions of grief do in fact come to an end, in spite of the inconceivability of the end when in the state of grief.

Well read what I actually wrote: "If everyone turns out fine in the end, then there is no ultimate need to evangelize or even help others." What do you think about that?

If God wills to save every human being and repentance is necessary for salvation, evangelization is a way to cooperate in the process. If universalism were true, ultimately God's will will be realized, independently of people choices to evangelize or not. But this doesn't make evangelization irrelevant. It would be still a way to cooperate with God for the sake of others.

So yeah maybe you are right here, ultimately the result will be the same, but evangelization would be still important.

BTW, even for an anti-universalist the question of evangelization (or spreading one's theistic religion to make the argument more general) is IMHO no less mysterious. If people need to be evangelized in order to be saved and end up not being evangelized because some believers refuse to evangelize (or live wickedly), these people end up outside salvation which would be a problem if God wants the salvation of every human being. That is, the salvation of a person would then depend also on the choices of others.*

*Edit: note that the argument here also applies if christians are unable to evangelize a given person, despite their efforts. That is if being evangelized by Christians is a necessary condition to being saved, and we assume God wants that all human beings will be saved, then it follows that the accomplishment of God's salvific will for that given person can depend on the actions of others and/or their ability to perform their task to evangelize.
So the question of the role of evangelization in the salvation is IMHO a mysterious topic even in the anti-universalist case, at least if one assumes that God wants the salvation of every human being.

I think the best argument against 'universalism' is what I believe is called the 'pastoral argument', that is at least some people would not bother to strive for salvation if they hear that, eventually, all will be saved (incidentally, I believe that ancient universalists tended to not spread that doctrine exactly for this reason...).

1. A man fixes his end in sin
2. Therefore he has the will to sin, everlastingly [or: he sins in his own eternity] — Leontiskos

I believe that my problem isn't (1) but perhaps (2), but I'm not even sure of what that means. Perhaps you are right that I am misunderstanding, I'll try my best now to clarify.

That is, I believe that one can fix his end in sin/evil (and have the, at least implicit, intention to remain 'fixed' in that end) but I doubt that such a fixation can be irrevocable (at least in this life, where we are obviously in a state of limited knowledge, limited freedom of the will and so on).

If however what (1) says is that one has the power to irrevocably fix his own end in sin/evil, then yeah I have my doubts about it even if the intention is to remain in sin/evil forever.

But note that this doesn't contradict the view that God's help and one's faith (trust) in that help is necessary for salvation. I believe that a human being, no matter how strives to be perfectly good, can't avoid make mistakes, errors and so on. There is a disconnect between how we should be and how we can actually live. So, I tend to believe that human beings can't invariably fix our end in God/good and this is why faith in God's help. If one sincerely strives to be good, one has the intention to be always good but this doesn't imply that such an intention ('fixing one's end in') is irrevocable.

BTW, even if one could fix one's end irrevocably in sin/evil I still can't concede that a finite human being can deserve an infinite amount of suffering as an adequate punishment. I can concede that annihilation can be an adequate punishment in such a case because it involves a finite amount of suffering and annihilation is, in some sense, an irrevocable, unending, punishment. But not 'unending pain' (of some sorts).

So, hoping that I made myself clear and I have now a better understanding, could you please answer this question: assuming that, indeed, a human being mind is invariably fixed in sin/evil, why do you believe that a punishment of unending pain is a deserved punishment? Why not, say, annihilation which is still an 'unending' punishment in some sense?

If you believe that because you have trust in the traditional view of hell, that's ok, I guess. But here we are discussing the matter philosophically. In my opinion, the traditional view has difficulties to be justified even in a retributive proportional understanding of 'justice' for the reason I explained in my previous posts and even in this one, where I argued that even if one's fixation in evil/sin is irrevocable, then, the traditional view of hell doesn't necessarily follow.

Someone who thinks we can't will marriage for life will not get married, or admit that a couple can properly perform the act of fixing their joint, earthly end. Someone who admits that the couple can perform that act must also admit that the end can be willed for the term of earthly life. — Leontiskos

I think I can agree with that. But I believe that, unfortunately, even if one has sincerely that will at the moment of marriage, one's will might not irrevocably set. A 'change of mind' (in this case for the worse) is indeed possible. One might seek help from faith in God's help that this bad change of mind won't occur.

So, I guess that I can say that in the case of 'fixing one's end in sin', my point is similar. While one can will to remain in sin forever, such a will is not necessarily irrevocable. If one's will isn't irrevocable, then there is still hope in repentance, in turning away from sin.

In the former case breaking the oath by failing to love at a certain point the spouse is of course a negative 'change of mind' (just like in the case when one breaks the oath to follow the good, to love etc in general). But in the latter case, the possibility of 'breaking the oath' is actually a good thing.

Do you agree with this?

I'm going to leave it there for now. This conversation is beginning to sprawl and becoming unwieldy, and what is needed is for you to attend to the words and arguments on offer, rather than deviating from those words and arguments. If you don't properly read and interpret the words of Aquinas or myself, then I fear that multiplying words will do me no good. Maybe narrowing the conversation will make it easier to attend to the actual words being written. — Leontiskos

I made my sincere efforts to understand your and St Thomas' words. Probably, I got it wrong again. I admit that it is possible. But I now believe that I have a better understanding. What you (and Aquinas) seem to say here is that can make an 'oath' to evil/sin. Yes, we can make oaths. But for the better or the worse at least in this earthly life I don't think that we have the power to be irrevocably faithful to the oaths.

Furthermore, even if we are able to make irreversible 'fixing of the wills'/'oaths', I still believe that one has not show why such an irreversible 'fixation' deserves a form of 'unending torment' as an adequate, proportional punishment even in a purely retributive framework.

Yes, I would agree that the point is to change one's mind and orient it towards the good. But still, I believe that in order to do that, arguably, as a precondition one has to acknowledge one's moral failures and take responsibility for them. I believe that this can be quite a painful and hard experience. This 'purgation' might be the necessary precondition to sincerely change one's mind.

This doesn't mean that one has to indulge in shame and guilt. But certainly, one has to face the awareness of one's moral failures and take responsibility for them, which I believe it is actually a hard thing to do.

The impermanence of emotions and sensations isn't necessarily in conflict with the thought that an emotion or sensation is temporally unbounded. Consider for instance the mood of grief. On the one hand the mood is all absorbing and the grieving cannot comprehend an end to their grief and locate it on a timeline, yet on the other hand the emotions of grief do in fact come to an end, in spite of the inconceivability of the end when in the state of grief. — sime

Ok. But temporal unboundedness is not the same as 'timelessness'. If the mood is unchanging (i.e. the 'flavour' of experiences), experience still seems to remain a process.

I can't imagine a 'timeless' suffering. And I even suspect that an 'eternal bliss' would be an unending process of good experiences. But in contrast to suffering, the experience of 'positive awe' might actually be an approximation of what a 'timeless bliss' might feel like. So, in the case of 'eternal bliss', it may be timeless, after all. I have more difficulties to imagine a 'timeless' negative experience.

Yes, I would agree that the point is to change one's mind and orient it towards the good. But still, I believe that in order to do that, arguably, as a precondition one has to acknowledge one's moral failures and take responsibility for them. I believe that this can be quite a painful and hard experience. This 'purgation' might be the necessary precondition to sincerely change one's mind. — boundless

Please note the words 'can' and 'might'. I am allowing the possibility that for some the repentance could not be accompanied by suffering. But maybe some kind of suffering for the reason stated above is necessary.

That is, if humans don't have the power to sin mortally, then they probably also don't have the power to accept a gift of salvation, or to be deified. The "eternal consequences" that humans cannot effect are bidirectional. Created freedom always has a dual potency, and this is precisely why "Corruptio optimi pessima" (the corruption of the highest is the lowest). It's no coincidence that the same world which holds to a low anthropology has also lost its grasp on human dignity and nobility. The reprobate and the saint disappear simultaneously.

Doesn't this point back to the controversy surrounding the Pelagian heresy though? Man, on the orthodox view, cannot know and strive towards the Good on his own. His nous (intellect and will) are diseased and malfunctioning. Even in writers accused of being Pelagians like St. Jonn Cassian have a large role for grace and the sacraments in the very possibility of the healing of the nous, which is itself a precondition of knowing and choosing the Good as good (i.e. known and willed as good).

The eternal consequences man can effect as man aren't bidirectional. For man to have this capacity in the upwards direction would mean something like Pelagius' conception of the righteous man who attains merit warranting beatitude on his own.

The other issue is that movement upwards, towards God, is classically conceived of as making us "more free." St. Paul used the language of "slavery in sin." So movement in either direction is not the same. As the Imago Dei becomes more disfigured by the curvatus in se of sin man also loses his capacity for self-determination.

TBH, I find the dialectical of nature and grace to generally be unhelpful. I think they are the same thing, looked at from different aspects. If one takes something like Ferdinand Ulrich's conception of "being as gift" it's "grace all the way down." Or, more appropriately, Eros all the way up, Agape all the way down, which is why St. Bernard of Clairvaux's "Ladder of Love" terminates in "love of creatures for God's sake," or "with God's love."

At any rate, I think the larger issue would tend to center around God (and us as Christians) wanting "what is truly best for every creature." It is hard to see how eternal torment could ever be "truly best" for someone, nor how, if we are called to forgive everyone, we should ever want eternal torment for anyone. Is the benefit of God's justice for the damned greater than their suffering? But what of the late repenters? Wouldn't God's mercy be a violation of justice here?

Consider a man born out by the Indus, who never had a chance to hear of Christ and dies as a young adult. He grows up in a violent culture, perhaps part of a low caste. And he does wicked things. Perhaps not abhorrent things, but "lower level mortal sins." And he cannot repent and turn to Christ, for he has never heard the name of Christ. Thus he dies in his sins. Might he benefit from purgation, or even the retributive punishment of justice? Sure. But after the first 9,999 billion years of suffering, does justice still require additional torment to be met out for his 20 miserable years on Earth? More to the point, is continued torment "what is truly best" for him?

Even if one has a strong place for retributive justice, there is a point at which, at least on human scales, it becomes sadistic. There is a plotline in Pierce Brown's Red Rising series where a side character admits to having kept an enemy alive through high tech medical means for decades after decades while subjecting him to all the tortured futuristic science can provide. He has good reason for his wrath. If I recall correctly, the high caste captive had betrayed him, violated his wife, and killed his family, and likely done this to others on a regular basis. But of course, we find the endless nature of the retribution, that it goes on for human lifetimes to be gratitous and indeed demeaning for the original victim. When the side character decides to move on and kill the man, he has attained a sort of moral progress. Yet, depending on how God's "eternal punishment" is conceived, it puts God in the role of the punisher who, though initially justified, seems by all human measures to be demeaning himself by extending his vengeance indefinitely.

The risk here, as I see it, is that if one just passes over this disconnect one opens up a chasm of total equivocity between God's justice and man's, between God's goodness and man's, of the sort that plagues Protestant theology and sets up renewed Euthyphro dilemmas and voluntarism.

Hart has recently further popularized the thesis that Hell is unjust, and if a Christian views Hell as unjust then salvation is not undeserved. That is, if it is unjust for someone to not be saved, then salvation is not gratuitous.

This is a thorny issue. If beatitude in union with God is the natural end of all rational creatures, then it would seem that the denial of this end could be seen as a punishment by itself. Yet, we normally don't think of withholding rewards—i.e., of withholding aid towards a dessert we cannot attain to on our own—as punishment.

What exactly is the nature of the punishment in Hell though? Is it a denial? Is it primarily regret as in St. Isaac of Nineveh? It is sensuous torment, as in the image of Hell as a cosmic torture chamber or some subterranean Satanic kingdom?

I think this is an important issue because it is perhaps not "universalist" to deny that any soul is subjected to sensuous torments of infinite duration (the "cosmic torture chamber"), although it could also be seen that way. If everyone is "beatified to the extent they have made themselves able," this still might allow for a gradation (e.g. the metaphor of all cups filled to the brim, but some cups being smaller than others). And this "differential cup size" might also be taken as a punishment, although it is perhaps a punishment God cannot revoke through mercy without simply replacing sinners with new versions of themselves.

Or perhaps, punishment could consist in the very denial of beatitude and the grief this brings, something like Dante's Limbo. The problem there though is that, unless the will is extrinsically fixed some how, it seems that the damned in Limbo are striving to know and follow the Good as much as they are able.

At any rate, I think Hart would say that focusing on the gratuity of salvation as framed within the confines the infernalist lays out for it misses the point. Creation itself is completely gratuitous; man does not create himself, so it is still "grace all the way down" as seen from the top.

There is also an issue where soteriology ends up reducing the whole of the Christian life to avoiding extrinsic punishment and meriting extrinsic reward. The idea that sin is its own penalty tends to get washed out by the scale of retributive justice.

These look like thoughtful posts. I am aware of many exceedingly able-minded theists who are capable of defending the traditional doctrine of Hell, but don't spend a lot of time on it because of its negative nature. It would be like if someone claimed that murder never happens, and then in order to refute them you had to engage in the dark business of investigating and presenting cases of murder. C. S. Lewis actually said that writing The Screwtape Letters was very taxing for this same reason.

With that in mind, I am going to postpone a response until at least Easter Monday.

No worries. Good Easter to you!

Or perhaps, punishment could consist in the very denial of beatitude and the grief this brings, something like Dante's Limbo. The problem there though is that, unless the will is extrinsically fixed some how, it seems that the damned in Limbo are striving to know and follow the Good as much as they are able. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great post!

I wanted to make just some thoughts on this.

In some of the strictest 'free-will' conceptions of hell, the unending suffering isn't due to the fact that the will becomes irremediably fixed. The claim is that sinners in hell will continue forever to confirm their choices, even if they are invited in Paradise.

And yet, if St. Augustine was right when he said that our heart is restless until it rests in God, the movements of heart will continue forever. The damned would experience at least perpetual disappointment and forever will seek to rest their heart. So, if unending hell isn't a punishment of God but the result of a perpetual confirmation of one's own choice of being self-excluded from God, one has to leave at least open the possibility that the damned will at a certain point come to sincerely repent (and God in this doctrine of 'eternal hell' would still accept the repentance due to the fact that damnation is purely the result of the choice of the damned). This would not be strictly 'universalistic' as a scenario but certainly if this is the case there would be reason to hope that nobody is forever beyond hope.

If, on the other hand, one assumes that the damned, despite the perpetual disappointment, will certainly never repent, one should explain where this kind of 'fixation' comes from. Personally, in this latter scenario, I believe that the free-will model collapses in a retributive model, where at least the damned is abandoned to his or her fate ('complete desertion' to use the expression of St. John of Damascus term in the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Book 2, ch 29 'concerning providence'), who, despite asserting that damnation is due to the stubborn refusal of salvation made by the damned, unending hell is still seen as a form of (retributive) punishment. As an aside, the Damascene has the closest conception of hell of C.S. Lewis that I have encountered in ancient Christian writers). Furthermore, if there is no desire of the Good in the damned in this latter scenario (assuming that the fixation of the will in evil would to just that), would they still experience disappointment? If they do experience disappointment, it would seem that they are still seeking the Good, albeit in the wrong places. If they are still seeking the good, would they be completely beyond hope? So, maybe, disappointment in frustrated desires can't a part of the torment of the damned in this scenario. In any case, if the will is irrevocably fixed, the punishment must be thought as a extrinsical 'deserved' punishment in my opinion.

In some of the strictest 'free-will' conceptions of hell, the unending suffering isn't due to the fact that the will becomes irremediably fixed. The claim is that sinners in hell will continue forever to confirm their choices, even if they are invited in Paradise.

Yes, that's true. That's C.S. Lewis' view in The Great Divorce. The damned are damned just in that they spread out into ever greater isolation and multiplicity according to their own free choices. They can start the painful pilgrimage to Paradise whenever they want, it's just that they see no reason to. They are "at home in Hell." They have made themselves thus.

I am not sure how this is supposed to correspond to "every knee bowing," "all praising God," and "God being all in all," though. It rather suggests the eternal survival of sin, and that some knees will never bow and that some lips will never praise. Whereas visions that involve more extrinsic punishment have knees bowing and lips praising, but only through coercion not sincerity. I suppose God might be "all in all" here, but God is beatitude in some and torment in others (sort of what Pope Benedict says). The difficulty here is that this direct contact with God, experienced as torment, seems incapable of improving the sinner. Hence there is this weird thing where contact with a mortal evangelist might reform man right up to the moment of death, but eternal (painful) union with God Himself is insufficient to ever bring about such change.

And yet, if St. Augustine was right when he said that our heart is restless until it rests in God, the movements of heart will continue forever. The damned would experience at least perpetual disappointment and forever will seek to rest their heart. So, if unending hell isn't a punishment of God but the result of a perpetual confirmation of one's own choice of being self-excluded from God, one has to leave at least open the possibility that the damned will at a certain point come to sincerely repent (and God in this doctrine of 'eternal hell' would still accept the repentance due to the fact that damnation is purely the result of the choice of the damned). This would not be strictly 'universalistic' as a scenario but certainly if this is the case there would be reason to hope that nobody is forever beyond hope.

Maybe, although Lewis' vision doesn't seem inconsistent. His damned spread out in space more and more over time, moving further and further from others as they become folded more inwards and become more spiteful towards all others. Hell is in some ways an education in vice (although some do leave it, and all are free to leave it). People sit around moping all day in a world much like ours.

But, even if these people are "eternally moving" the image is of them diffusing into an ever expanding space. If space is always expanding at a rate at least equal to movement, there is no need for eternal movement to necessitate a return to the "center" of the space. To use a mathematical example, I am pretty sure Poincaré's recurrence theorem only holds if the system is closed and not expanding. Of course, the question would be if man's eternal life is actually infinitely expansive in this way. I suppose the counterargument from people like Talbot would be that man cannot drift arbitrarily away from the Good and still retain a rational nature (and thus still be man). They would have to be replaced by some other substance.

So, maybe, disappointment in frustrated desires can't a part of the torment of the damned in this scenario. In any case, if the will is irrevocably fixed, the punishment must be thought as a extrinsical 'deserved' punishment in my opinion.

That seems fair to me, since I have never seen a good argument for why the will must necessarily be fixed in this way.

I mentioned Dante avoiding the problem of repetent sinners earlier because he does have souls in Hell (Limbo) who do seem to have repented and live in "hopelessness" despite this. His ultimate vision is somewhat unclear though, because he ultimately makes appeals to divine justice being unknowable, even to the beatified (a voluntarist problem perhaps), but provocatively includes some Pagans in Purgatory and Paradise.

I am not sure how this is supposed to correspond to "every knee bowing," "all praising God," and "God being all in all," though. It rather suggests the eternal survival of sin, and that some knees will never bow and that some lips will never praise. Whereas visions that involve more extrinsic punishment have knees bowing and lips praising, but only through coercion not sincerity. I suppose God might be "all in all" here, but God is beatitude in some and torment in others (sort of what Pope Benedict says). The difficulty here is that this direct contact with God, experienced as torment, seems incapable of improving the sinner. Hence there is this weird thing where contact with a mortal evangelist might reform man right up to the moment of death, but eternal (painful) union with God Himself is insufficient to ever bring about such change. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed, it seems implausible. But, of course, those who insist in the non-universalistic readings of those passages mention that there are other passages in St Paul's epistles which affirm that some categories of sinners will not enter in God's Kingdom (if we want to restrict ourselves to St Paul's writings, where most apparently universalist statements are to be found). Of course, these can be read as not implying that they will never enter in the Kingdom, but such a reading is already a harmonization.
That's why I don't think one can rely only on exegesis in these kind of discussions.

I do believe, however, that maybe the point you made about equivocation leads to the strongest arguments that one can make regarding this kind of discussions (and one can also support it with various scriptural passages, I think). To make just an example, if one says that any kind of acceptable meaning of 'justice' involves the fact that people cannot be punished due to other people faults, then St Augustine's position of the 'massa damnata', where everyone inherits guilt, is automatically ruled out as a correct description of how divine justice operates. Also, if one says that a 'just judge' must also take into account the capacities of the transgressors when deciding the punishments, then St Anselm's view that any sin is justly punished with an unending punishment is also automatically ruled out or seriously modified (for instance, the current Catholic Catechism explicitly says that in order for a sin to be mortal one has to commit it with sufficient intent and awareness).

Of course, if one insists that divine justice can punish people for the sins of their ancestors and we have no right to question that idea, then any discussion becomes impossible.

Maybe, although Lewis' vision doesn't seem inconsistent. His damned spread out in space more and more over time, moving further and further from others as they become folded more inwards and become more spiteful towards all others. Hell is in some ways an education in vice (although some do leave it, and all are free to leave it). People sit around moping all day in a world much like ours.
... — Count Timothy von Icarus

interesting, thanks. The point you make about the ever expanding space is very good (and BTW yes Poincare's recurrence argument is valid for finite, closed systems). But IMHO it doesn't preclude the possibility of post-mortem salvation. So, my point that nobody is ever 'beyond hope' I think remains valid.

Regarding, Talbott, yes, I would suppose so. But I don't think that defenders of free-will models of hell would find it convincing. Still, if they are consistent they must leave open the possibility of post-mortem salvation. I didn't know that Lewis allowed that possibility for some of the damned.

That seems fair to me, since I have never seen a good argument for why the will must necessarily be fixed in this way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Same. At the end of the day, most supporters of the traditional view of hell have adopted a retributivist model of some sort where eternal punishment is deserved.

I mentioned Dante avoiding the problem of repetent sinners earlier because he does have souls in Hell (Limbo) who do seem to have repented and live in "hopelessness" despite this. His ultimate vision is somewhat unclear though, because he ultimately makes appeals to divine justice being unknowable, even to the beatified (a voluntarist problem perhaps), but provocatively includes some Pagans in Purgatory and Paradise. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for that. Despite being an Italian I never read the whole Comedy, only some famous excerpts (I have some difficulties to read poetry, actually).

Regarding the first kind of souls, after all, if one accepts a form of unending torment as a deserved punishment, post-mortem repentace can be irrelevant. If after repentance one is still being punished, one can argue that the punishment is still just.
Of course, if God gives mercy to the repentant and delivers them from the deserved punishment, but the punishment is deserved, so God could refrain to do that and remain just. Of course, if God's mercy requires to deliver the repentant sinners and God's justice requires to punish them eternally, then one has a conflict between God's mercy and God's justice. So, I suppose the 'simplest' way to resolve this problem is to say that the damned can't repent after death.

On the other hand, if one doesn't accept that unending pain can be a deserved punishment for human beings, then things change (IMO the contention about the possibility for humans to justly deserve a punishment of an infinite amount of suffering is the central one in this debate).

Regarding, Dante's choice to include Pagans in Purgatory and Paradise. It's very interesting indeed.