{"id":46828,"date":"2024-03-26T05:11:26","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T11:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=46828"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:16:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T02:16:54","slug":"does-humanity-deserve-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/03\/does-humanity-deserve-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Humanity Deserve Hell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Scene from Jonathan Edwards\u2019 “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not much of a theologian. Some of this is part Joseph Smith saying that if you stared into heaven for five minutes you would know more than has ever been said on the subject, and some of it is Aquinas\u2019 cryptic comment near the end of his life after some sort of numinous experience that all of his work was straw. It also just seems very convenient for intellectual types that God\u2019s system lends itself to the kind of puzzles and mind games that they find interesting.<\/p>\n

But I can speak from my gut, and sometimes what makes sense intuitively is at variance with what theologians say, with a prime case of this being Julian of Eclanum\u2019s response to Augustine (that I discuss in another post<\/a>) that his conclusion that unbaptized babies are burning in hell \u201cis beneath argument.\u201d He doesn\u2019t try to systematically challenge Augustine\u2019s arguments based on shared premises or scriptures, but simply points out that the idea of ridiculous on the face of it regardless of his reasons.<\/p>\n

Similarly, another notion that never sat well with me is the idea that our default as humanity without the divinity of the atonement and God\u2019s grace is hell, that we\u2019re inherently so depraved that we all \u201cdeserve\u201d to be tortured for eternity, consigned to outer darkness, or what have you. It reminds me of a famous\/infamous bit<\/a> by the comedian George Carlin (who mocked religion before it was cool) where he states that there is an \u201cinvisible man\u201d who, if you don\u2019t do what he says, will send you to a place of crying, screaming, torture, fire, brimstone and hell for all eternity\u2026but he loves you.<\/p>\n

I suspect the depravity of humanity is so pointedly emphasized in some religious rhetoric so as to more strongly juxtapose God\u2019s glory with our own fallen nature. But God\u2019s glory doesn\u2019t need our own sniveling worm-ness to make His seem great by comparison, it just inherently is. To be clear, I am not saying that we can be exalted by our own efforts, by muscling our way into the celestial kingdom. We basically \u201cdeserve\u201d the milquetoast lives we have in our own fallen world. Nothing great but nothing horrible.<\/p>\n

To take the next step in our development as Gods we do need the atonement and God\u2019s grace, and that\u2019s so important because of how magnificent it is compared to our lone and dreary world; but without it we are not consigned to a blowtorch in our face for all eternity. (Sorry to be graphic. Although we\u2019re talking about a very mainstream belief that people have simply habituated to, it\u2019s important to not mince words about what we\u2019re talking about). I am fine with the default being the sort of telestial hell C.S. Lewis depicts in The Great Divorce<\/em>, where miserable people live together and make each other miserable, and if they want to step out and up using the ladder of the atonement they can, but the religious rhetoric strongly emphasizing our low and fallen state per se<\/em>, not just our low and fallen state relative to God, seems to be the kind of religious belief for which humanism adds corrective light and knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scene from Jonathan Edwards\u2019 “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” I\u2019m not much of a theologian. Some of this is part Joseph Smith saying that if you stared into heaven for five minutes you would know more than has ever been said on the subject, and some of it is Aquinas\u2019 cryptic comment near the end of his life after some sort of numinous experience that all of his work was straw. It also just seems very convenient for intellectual types that God\u2019s system lends itself to the kind of puzzles and mind games that they find interesting. But I can speak from my gut, and sometimes what makes sense intuitively is at variance with what theologians say, with a prime case of this being Julian of Eclanum\u2019s response to Augustine (that I discuss in another post) that his conclusion that unbaptized babies are burning in hell \u201cis beneath argument.\u201d He doesn\u2019t try to systematically challenge Augustine\u2019s arguments based on shared premises or scriptures, but simply points out that the idea of ridiculous on the face of it regardless of his reasons. Similarly, another notion that never sat well with me is the idea that our default as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":46830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy-and-theology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/scranney_ultralistic_close-up_of_a_hand_dangling_a_squirming_sp_68149170-96e5-455a-807a-cc79878515da.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46828"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50239,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46828\/revisions\/50239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}