Areas of Specialization: Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysics
Areas of Concentration: Logic, Ethics, History of Philosophy
Education
Title: A Theodicy of Hell
Advisor: Philip Quinn
Abstract:
From Epicurus to John Mackie, the existence of suffering has always presented a problem for religious belief. The doctrine of hell, which posits the possibility of unending suffering, is thus prima facie difficult to justify. I attempt this justification by developing a theodicy of hell—that is, a plausible explanation of how a perfectly good, all-powerful, all-knowing God could allow creatures to endure eternal pain. This theodicy is developed dialectically in the process of answering arguments against the compossibility of God and hell. I divide these arguments into three categories: arguments from divine justice, arguments from divine goodness, and arguments from human choice.
The theodicy is first conceived in response to arguments from justice, which claim that no finite sin can come to deserve infinite punishment. This sort of argument draws its force from the traditional assumption that the damned are punished merely for the sins they committed during their stay on earth, sins which seem to be finite both in number and in seriousness. My theodicy of hell answers arguments from divine justice by rejecting the idea that hell is a punishment merely for the sins of the past. I suppose instead that the damned retain their freedom but never cease to sin; they thereby draw upon themselves continued punishment forever. I call this version of hell “the freedom view of hell.”
The freedom view is further defended and clarified as I deal with arguments from divine goodness and human choice. Arguments from divine goodness see an inconsistency between God’s love for created persons and the existence of hell. The most forceful of these arguments is Marilyn Adams' suggestion that a loving and omniscient God would create only those persons whom he knows beforehand would choose heaven rather than hell. This argument, employing the notion of God’s “middle knowledge,” raises the issue of Molinism. I adapt William Lane Craig's Molinist defense of Christian exclusivist soteriology to show how Adams’ suggestion, as plausible as it seems, may not in fact be feasible—the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom may be such that God cannot create a world filled only with the saved. I then answer a critique of Jonathan Kvanvig to the effect that the Plantingian modal logic employed by Craig is flawed.
What I call “arguments from human choice” provide an opportunity for elaborating my theodicy of hell. These arguments hold that even if God can be both just and loving in creating people who freely choose hell, no one can make a genuinely free choice for eternal unhappiness. Marilyn Adams bases her version of the argument on an epistemological point: we can only conceive of what we have experienced, and can only genuinely choose what we can conceive of, but none of us have experienced anything like hell. Adams is clearly aiming her argument at a traditional view of hell which portrays the damned as suffering eternal torment of a kind unequalled on earth. But the freedom view of hell implies only that the continued sins of the damned merit continued punishment. There is nothing in the view that would entail that this punishment is any more severe than pains experienced in this life, and so my theodicy of hell is immune to Adams' argument.
I further articulate my position in response to the central argument of Thomas Talbott’s article “The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment.” Talbott argues that we cannot genuinely choose an action for which we have no motivation; but since God could easily remove whatever motives would lead someone to choose eternal misery, choosing hell is ultimately impossible. My strategy is to turn the tables on Talbott and ask why God would not remove the motives we have for any sin whatsoever. If Talbott appeals to the value of free choice as an explanation of why God does not remove our sinful desires, it is open to the theodicist of hell to employ the same strategy. God respects our freedom to choose hell and so does not wipe out all the motives which might lead us to damn ourselves. The freedom view of hell, of course, is especially consonant with theodicies based on the value of free choice.
In the final chapter I show the advantages the freedom view has over rival medieval and contemporary models of hell. The freedom view is able to solve the problem of the justice of hell which the efforts of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas were not able to overcome, without resorting to a purely separationist view of hell favored by recent authors such as Jerry Walls and Jonathan Kvanvig.
As Marilyn Adams says, hell is the most difficult problem of evil for Christian philosophers. I believe that my theodicy of hell has gone some way to solving this problem.