Jonathan Edwards on Hell

Jonathan Edwards on Hell

Every religion offers both hope and fear. They offer hope in virtue of the benefits promised to adherents, and fear in virtue of costs incurred by adversaries. In traditional Christianity, the costs incurred are expressed in terms of the doctrine of hell, according to which each person consigned to hell receives the same infinite punishment. This strong view of hell involves four distinct theses. First, it maintains that those in hell exist forever in that state (the Existence Thesis) and that at least some human persons will end up in hell (the Anti-Universalism Thesis). Once in hell, there is no possibility of escape (the No Escape Thesis), and the justification of and purpose for hell is to mete out punishment to those whose earthly lives and character deserve it (the Retribution Thesis).

There was a time when such a picture of hell engendered fear rather than a perceived need for defense, a time when traditional Christianity was more a cultural presupposition than it now is. The need for defense is felt much more strongly now than in the past, but the strong view of hell has always been in need of an adequate ground. For if reality is structured as traditional Christianity claims, some explanation is required for the strong view of hell in terms of God’s nature and character. The alternative is to treat Christian doctrine as some collage of literary motifs drawn from an ancient collection of stories and writings, elevated to the status of accurate information through the power of myth. Traditional Christianity places higher demands on itself, insisting that it forms a coherent and accurate picture of the nature of God and his relationship to the created universe. When Christianity is taken in this theoretically serious way, questions of justification and explanation becomes pressing. In particular, those aspects that appear to threaten theoretical unity require explanation, and the strong view of hell is surely among such aspects, given the centrality of God’s love in traditional Christianity and the lengths to which God will go in that gospel to redeem lost humanity.

Jonathan Edwards not only preached the doctrine of hell in astounding and disturbing ways, but also addressed these theoretical questions in as sound a way as can be found. I will argue for this claim by investigating how one might try to defend the strong view of hell, in order to show where Edwards’s discussion fits into this larger picture, and then will investigate more carefully his own contribution to the question of the acceptability of the strong view of hell.

Requirements on a Defense of the Strong View of Hell

The question which must be answered by a defender of the strong view of hell is why anyone would think it is true. It is, of course, one quite natural interpretation of the teachings of Scripture on the subject, but it is far from clear that it is unique in this regard. Furthermore, if the strong view fails on theoretical grounds, an appeal to Scripture in defense of the view will be inadequate. So the prior question that must be asked concerns the theoretical adequacy of the view, and since the strong view is intrinsically a retributive account, we can begin by investigating that aspect of the view.

Any justification for retribution requires wrongdoing, ordinarily in terms of harm caused or harm intended, and neither source provides an obvious defense of a view of hell on which every person is equally guilty and all deserve an infinite punishment. Some people cause more harm than others, thereby rendering ineffective an appeal to the principle of “an eye for an eye,” and some people intend, or at least appear to intend, more harm than others. There is some moral presumption in favor of the view that willing evil is as bad as doing it, but even if we grant this principle, we would need some equality of intended harm in order to justify the claim that everyone deserves an equal, infinite punishment. Furthermore, one would need to claim that every person was guilty of such an egregious act or intention that an infinite punishment is warranted. Perhaps such actions or intentions are possible, on some account akin to that given by defenders of capital punishment, but it is hard to see how everyone is guilty of such actions or intentions.

One might argue here that we ought to attend more carefully to the darkness of the human heart, and the fact that even the best and wisest of us carry enormous capacities for evil within us. I have no doubt that these claims are true, that the heart of human beings is deeply corrupt and full of all kinds of evil thoughts, but even granting very dark views about human nature will not sustain the strong view of hell. For it is implausible to deny that some inflict more harm than others and some intend more harm than others.

These factors lead straightforwardly to a search for another source of justified retribution other than that arising out of actual or intended harm, and the traditional answer has been to find such a source in the status of the one wronged. On this viewpoint, the degree of guilt incurred by a wrong action is a function not only of harm caused and harm intended, but also a function of the status of the one against whom the wrong is done. We can call this principle the “status principle,” for short.

A facile dismissal of this defense would attempt to tie the plausibility of such an appeal to status to the moral experience within nonegalitarian societies. The claim would be that such an appeal could only be plausible to those involved in such societies, where, e.g., the moral experience of killing a prince would be quite different from that of killing a serf. I think, however, that this dismissal is too quick. For the concept of status need not be interpreted in such a sociological fashion. Consider, for example, the appeal to status central to humanism. Even in an age emphasizing the moral dimension of the rights of animals, it is too facile to dismiss the humanistic elements of our moral experience as entirely unfounded. Even if it is prima facie wrong to kill any animal, it is implausible to think that the forced choice between the death of a human and the death of, say, a lizard is an unresolvable moral dilemma. Furthermore, notice that the moral choice here is difficult to explain in terms only of harm caused or harm intended, unless one builds into the idea of harm caused the idea that human life has an intrinsic value beyond that of a lizard. Such a viewpoint, I suggest, is nothing more than a recognition of the intuitive plausibility of some type of status principle.

If we attempt to defend the traditional doctrine of hell by appeal to the status principle, however, two central tasks face us. First, we must identify that on which status depends. Some wholly implausible ideas can be rejected immediately, such as defining status in terms of fame, or fortune, or longevity, or wisdom. If these ideas are implausible, however, what more plausible account can be given? Second, we need to find some function on harm caused, harm intended, and status to yield the result that an infinite punishment can be justified given some combination of these three factors.

This second task is exacerbated by the need for the value of the function to be infinite for all (unregenerate) human beings, for the strong view of hell requires that every person deserves an infinite punishment. Since there are clear differences among human beings in terms of harm caused and harm intended, there must be something about the feature of status that swamps these differences to yield a justified infinite punishment in every case. Moreover, there are clear differences among human beings in terms of the status of the objects of their wrongdoing. Some are thieves while others are murderers; some torture only lower animals while others torture human beings.

So we will need to identify some special action or class of actions that every person performs which triggers justified infinite punishment in order to defend the strong view of hell. As we have seen, it is difficult to find such an action when we look for it in terms of harm caused or harm intended, and it is difficult to find such an action when we look at the things of ordinary life which suffer harm or which we attempt to harm. The only other place to look for an adequate defense of the strong view is at actions which wrong God. Only by bringing God into the picture is there any hope of finding a wronged party with sufficient status to swamp the differences that exist in terms of harm caused and harm intended.

In addition, because all such wrongs deserve the same punishment on the strong view, the appeal to wrongs against God must be sufficient in itself to justify the infinite punishment of the strong view, regardless of any differences in terms of harm caused and harm intended. Not only must there be some way to sin against God which deserves infinite punishment, but it must also be the case that any sin against God requires such punishment. Otherwise God’s presence in the moral story would be insufficient to justify an infinite punishment.

If sinning against God were not sufficient in itself to justify an infinite punishment, the strong view would have to be defended additionally in terms of the quality or quantity of wrongdoing that could justify an infinite punishment. Quality differences would have to trace to kinds or degrees of harm caused or harm intended, and we have already seen the failure of such appeals to justify an infinite punishment. So all that remains would be some appeal to quantity of wrongdoing against God. Such an account would be highly arbitrary, however. If one sin against God is insufficient to warrant infinite punishment, how could one a larger number, say, fifteen, or five hundred? The only plausible, non-arbitrary answer would be that an infinite number of sins would make a difference, but it is hard to see how it is possible for finite beings to perform that many distinct sins, let alone something of which all humans are inevitably guilty. So, the best hope for a defense of the strong view of hell is to hold that God’s status is so overwhelmingly high that it renders irrelevant any other moral differences. No matter how insignificant a sin is in terms of harm caused and harm intended, if it is a sin against God, it automatically becomes so serious that it deserves an infinite punishment. No weaker account of God’s relationship to human sinfulness could give a theoretically satisfactory defense of the strong view of hell.

Once we have determined that any sin against God is sufficient to merit an infinite punishment, we must address the question of which of our wrongdoings count as sins against God and which do not. One might try to identify actions in which human beings make God the intentional object of their wrongdoing, aiming to harm him, or insult him in some way by their behavior. Yet, it is not obvious that all people perform such actions, especially in an age of increasing atheism and agnosticism. For in such an age, it is a hard empirical claim to defend that atheists and agnostics affirm connatively what they refuse to endorse cognitively.

The difficulty of identifying some particular sin against God of which all are guilty suggests that a more egalitarian approach might provide more hope for success. On this egalitarian approach, all sins are equal, for all sins are against God, whether or not God is the intentional object of that sin. It is here that the work of Jonathan Edwards is most relevant, especially The Nature of True Virtue, for Edwards gives the most complete and detailed defense found in the literature of the claim that all sin is against God. It is this defense that I wish to examine and comment on here. I will argue, first, that though Edwards’ explicit arguments need some emendation, the changes required are small and sufficient to yield an adequate defense of the claim that all sin is against God.

Edwards’ Defense of All Sin Being Against God

Edwards classifies all behavior as either sinful or truly virtuous. True virtue, according to Edwards, consists primarily in “love to being in general,”^{^[1]} and secondarily in a relish of, or delight in, the intrinsic excellence of benevolence.^{^[2]} Edwards connects this conception of virtue to God by identifying God with being in general: “God is infinitely the greatest Being,” “the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty . . . the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence.”^{^[3]} God’s preeminent reality, in this sense, prevents one from displaying true virtue and yet insisting “on benevolence to the created system in such a manner as would naturally lead one to suppose” that it is “by far the most important and essential thing.”^{^[4]} According to Edwards, “a determination of mind to union and benevolence to a particular person, or private system, which is but a small part of the universal system of being . . . is not of the nature of true virtue” unless it is “subordinate to benevolence to being in general.”^{^[5]} So no person is truly virtuous who is not governed by a love of God and a delight in His beauty.

By contrast, then, sinful behavior is identified with attachment to private systems (such as individual persons or groups, special causes or concerns, including personal happiness, the well-being of all humans, and even the well-being of the entire created order) rather than benevolence to being in general. Edwards thus requires a proper motivation in order for one to avoid sin, and anything less than properly motivated behavior is sinful.

It is here that the relationship between God and being in general is central to Edwards’ thinking. Once we have granted the identification between God and being in general, or at least the claim that the two are inextricably linked, Edwards concludes that one can only be truly virtuous by being motivated in a way that makes God central to that motivation. Because God must be central to virtuous behavior in this way, the central failure in sinful behavior is a failure to involve God in one’s motivations, and hence to sin against God.

This argument requires as a premise the claim that any behavior aimed at something less than God himself constitutes an offense against God. One might wonder why this claim is true. After all, in the usual case we sin against a person by intentionally directing our actions toward that person. Mere failure to take the interests of a person into account when deciding on a course of action doesn’t imply that when things go wrong, one’s behavior constitutes an offense against that person. The decision to marry a certain person, for example, might harm some third party, but the marriage need not constitute an offense against that third party. So why are things different in the case of God?

There are two ways to try to answer this question, one ethical and the other metaphysical. Let us consider the ethical answer first. To do so, let us engage in the fictional project of reifying morality, allowing us to talk of offenses against morality. The question then is under what conditions one can commit an offense against morality. In particular, the question is whether it is ever possible to do something morally wrong and yet not commit an offense against morality.

Such a possibility could arise if there were a distinction between what is morally required of a person and what that person ought to do, all things considered (including the moral features of the situation). If there is such a distinction, then when deliberating about what to do, one first should determine what is religiously required, what is morally required, what is required in terms of self-interest, etc. Each of these factors would then play some role in a function on all of these factors that yielded some overall obligatory course of action. The overall, obligatory course of action might, in any given case, be what is morally required, but it might also be what is religiously required, or required in terms of self-interest, or in terms of some other requirement (or maybe what is required is something different from what is required from each of these limited perspectives).

Suppose then that we are considering a situation in which what is obligatory, all things considered, is incompatible with what is morally required. In such a case, one ought to violate morality, because morality is just one factor to be taken into account when deciding what one ought to do. If one does as one should, one will have acted contrary to the demands of morality, but one will have committed no offense against morality. For on this theory of the relationship between morality and what one ought to do, there is a logical gap between honoring morality and doing the right thing, all things considered. Hence, one can fail to honor morality without offending against it. The explanation of this possibility is that one has an overriding reason to fail to honor morality, and it is the existence of this overriding reason that allows one to occupy the neutral position of failing to honor morality without committing an offense against it.

Suppose, however, (and much more plausibly) that there can’t be any difference between what one ought to do, all things considered, and what morality requires of one (though, of course, there can be a difference between what one ought to do, all things considered, and what conventional morality, the moral viewpoint of one’s culture, implies). In such a case, every wrong action constitutes an offense against morality. Morality always occupies the pre-eminent position in all matters of conduct on this view, so that even those who care not at all about morality and do not take its demands into account nonetheless offend against it when they act contrary to its demands. On this view of the relationship between what one ought to do, all things considered, and what morality requires of one, any deliberation that fails to honor the overriding nature of morality offends against it. Courses of action which show a weighing of reasons which does not grant pre-eminent position to moral reasons offend against morality for that very reason. For such courses of action betray a presupposition that the demands of morality might not be the same as what is required of us, all things considered, and that view is false and necessarily so.

Edwards’ position against the possibility of a neutral position with regard to God can be defended by adopting this same view of morality as necessarily overriding. Some people do not care about morality and treat its demands as less than overriding, but they are wrong. And because they are wrong, any improperly motivated action constitutes an offense against morality, even if the action which they perform is one required by morality.

So if we adopt the plausible view that obligation, all things considered, is just morality, we can generate an ethical defense of Edwards’ position if we can find a way to link together offenses against morality with offenses against God. The first Edwardsian step here is to identify the appropriate object of moral concern with being in general, a step which will cause some to balk on the same grounds that they balk at utilitarian theories which require the common good to be the object of our moral concern. Such lofty aims are unrealistic or improper in some way, according to these objectors. More realistic and more appropriate is the view that the object of moral concern is local: our concern should be localized to a particular crying child in need of our help, for example.

I think we should be sympathetic to this complaint, for it is common and disturbing to find people who care in the abstract but not in the particular. They care about poverty but not about any particular poor people, and perhaps the problem is that moral concern at too abstract a level is simply not the ideal. Still, there is an important qualifier on moral concern displayed at the local level, for any concern to alleviate immediate and particular suffering, as in the case of a crying child, needs to be sensitive to the way in which other moral concerns can conflict with what is immediate and present. At times, the right thing to do is to leave the immediate and particular suffering as it is in service of some greater good or in order to respond to some more important concern. For example, a doctor might have to leave an elderly couple on the side of the road, unable to change their flat tire, in order to make it to an emergency surgery.

Such factors show that any concern for the local and immediate must be tempered by sensitivity to overriding information. Those in whom such sensitivity is present need not sacrifice moral concern for the immediate and present, but they also display a concern for the well-being of things that is quite general. Furthermore, without this very general concern, the concern for the immediate and present can lead to moral wrongdoing, so it is necessary for any attachment to the immediate and present to be governed or subordinated, as Edwards insists, to something more general. Moreover, this sensitivity must be completely general, since overriders concerning the immediate and present can arise from anywhere. Hence, the need for sensitivity to overriders can be used to sustain Edwards’ point that the appropriate object of moral concern must be being in general.

Edwards needs something more as well, however. He also needs some special relationship between being in general and God in order to maintain that improper motivation necessarily offends against God. Earlier, in describing Edwards’ position, I claimed that Edwards “identifies” being in general with God. Such a description suggests a relationship of identity, and if God were identical with being in general, then offenses against morality would automatically be offenses against God, given the centrality of being in general to proper moral motivation. Such an identification is not one Edwards would make, for not even an appeal to idealism, which Edwards does find attractive, can undergird the pantheistic implications of this kind of identification between God and being in general. Moreover, even if Edwards found the thesis palatable, there is no reason for anyone else to adopt it, and one cannot defend a difficult view of hell by appeal to controversial premises for which no adequate argument can be found.

Without such an identification between God and being in general, the ethical defense of the centrality of God to true virtue outlined above cannot succeed. All is not lost, however, for there is a metaphysical defense of the view which might work even if the ethical defense fails. That is, I believe Edwards has a metaphysical answer to the question of why God is central to proper moral motivation, even though the identification between God and being in general cannot be taken to be strict identity. That answer is in terms of Edwards’ doctrine of continuous creation. Edwards says,

God’s upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment, because its existence at this moment is not merely in part from God, but wholly from him; and not in any part, or degree, from its antecedent existence.^{^[6]}

This claim constitutes a straightforward denial of deistic tendencies to think that things have in themselves the power of self-sustenance. Edwards goes further, however, than merely to deny deism:

If the existence of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of God’s immediate power, in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect; and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method. And there is no identity or oneness in the case, but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator; who by his wise sovereign establishment so unites these successive new effects, that he treats them as one, by communicating to them like properties, relations, and circumstances; and so, leads us to regard and treat them as one.^{^[7]}

Edwards here embraces the view that identity over time is an arbitrary construction by God; that there is no such thing as the persistence of a thing as an intrinsic property of that thing. Instead, persistence is a relation between things and some unifying activity on the part of God to constitute, arbitrarily, the existence of a thing which is the same over time.

How does this account of continuous creation help to defend the view that all sin is against God? Consider an analogy. Things can be related in such a way that harming a thing can constitute an offense against another thing related to it in an appropriate way. For example, property relations are often conceived of in this way, and certainly familial relationships are as well. If you intentionally deface a building belonging to me, you have committed an offense against me, and if you attack my child, you equally commit an offense against me.

These relationships that give rise to the possibility of such offenses can be more or less direct. For example, as a child grows and develops, wrongs done against the child are not quite as obviously offenses against the parent of the child. By the time the child has become an adult, it may be that wrongs done no longer constitute offenses against the parent. I do not know whether that is true, but it is at least true that they are less obviously wrongs against the parent.

The effect of Edwards’ doctrine of continuous creation is to establish a direct and immediate relationship between God and the created order. Because of the intimate dependence, the complete and total, of things on God, harm to the created order automatically constitutes an offense against the being on whom this order completely depends.

Unfortunately, Edwards’ doctrine of continuous creation faces serious difficulties. Philip Quinn argues persuasively that Edwards’ position implies that action is impossible. Quinn argues that for any action to occur, certain bodily movements must occur, and such movements essentially take time. An agent literally must persist through time in order for the action to be performed, and Edwards’ view implies that such persistence is impossible: as he says in the above quoted passage, “what exists at this moment, . . . simply and absolutely considered, [is] not the same with any past existence.” Hence, if action requires persistence through time, then, on Edwards’ view, action is impossible.^{^[8]}

Regardless of whether we endorse Quinn’s criticism, there is no reason to think that persistence through time is impossible, and if it isn’t, then Edwards has not yet given us an adequate defense of the claim that all sin is against God. I think his position is nonetheless suggestive, for there is a related, but slightly weaker thesis that can be used to achieve the same metaphysical result. For one need only appeal to the doctrine of divine conservation to support Edwards’ account of how all sin is against God.

The standard way of denying the doctrine of divine conservation is by appeal to some analogy such as the watch-watchmaker analogy. God’s relation to the universe, it is held, is like that of a watchmaker to a watch he builds, winds up, and puts aside to let it run on its own. This analogy is defective at its core, for what allows the watchmaker to stand back and let the watch run on its own is the structure of the universe that the watchmaker uses to his advantage in order to secure the continued operation of the watch. The watchmaker relies on the physical constituents of the universe together with the laws governing them to be able to create a watch which runs independently of the watchmaker. In the case of God, no such structure is in place for God to exploit in order to secure the continued operation of the universe, making the case of God’s relationship to the universe radically different from that of the watchmaker’s relationship to the watch.

This difference cuts to the heart of the matter, for divine conservation is false only if God creates things with a power of self-sustenance within them, a power involving a relationship between the present existence of a thing and its future existence. If this power were contingent, we would need an explanation why a thing continues to have that property even if God created the thing in question with that property initially. One might argue that the continued possession of the property is a continued effect of God’s original creative act, but there is no medium that is independent of God and capable of accounting for such continuation. God can, of course, will that the property of self-sustenance continues to be a property of things, but it would obtain as a result of God’s continual willing of it, not in virtue of God exploiting some medium, causal or otherwise, which ensures the continued presence of the property. So if there is a merely contingent power of self-sustenance in things, this contingency prevents any appeal to such a power in service of denying the doctrine of divine conservation.

That leaves as the only option that the power of self-sustenance is essential to the things that have it. Such a view is problematic for two reasons. First, since the power involves a relation to the continued existence of the thing, the power could be present only if the persistence of that thing were logically guaranteed. Yet, nothing that contingently exists can have its persistence logically guaranteed.

One might claim that this objection depends on an account of the relation to its continued existence that is too strong. In particular, one might claim that the relation is one of defeasibly continuing to exist, i.e., continuing to exist so long as some competing power doesn’t prevent it from existing. On this construal, the power of self-sustenance would be analogous to laws of inertia in physics: things continue on as they are unless acted upon by some force.

Still, this picture of self-sustenance is problematic, for it is incompatible with the possibility that God create the very things He has created, but without such powers. Any view which treats the power of self-sustenance as essential to the things that have it must deny this possibility, for essential properties are those properties that a thing must have in order to exist. What this view implies, then, is something that appears to be false. God could have created each of us so that we continued to exist only by his activity of conservation, and this possibility shows that no power of self-sustenance is essential to us.

Therefore, the only plausible version of the self-sustenance doctrine is one that makes that property a contingent one, and we have already seen why no such contingent property can successfully avoid the doctrine of divine conservation. Such a property could obtain only given some medium for carrying the effects of an action that no longer exists. We are able to so act because the universe is structured causally and temporally so as to allow that which no longer exists to still have effects. Apart from such a structure, however, all that exists to explain the continued possession of the power of self-sustenance is God’s resolve to continue carrying out His original decision. The power in question might exist, but its existence in no way removes the need for a doctrine of divine conservation. Instead, its continued presence is itself another call for that very doctrine.

Given this defense of the doctrine of divine conservation, we are in a position to see how God can be centrally involved in all instances of proper moral motivation for Edwards. This doctrine demonstrates the intimate relationship between God and everything that exists, throughout the entire history of the existence of things. No remoteness or distance between God and his creation can be maintained, and so wrongs done against God’s creation constitute offenses against God, in a way mirrored darkly by wrongs done against one’s offspring constituting sins against the parents.

Once it has been established that all sin is against God, the moral relevance of status becomes the crucial aspect of any defense of the strong view of hell. On any reasonable measure, however, God must be granted the very highest status. So Edwards’ account and the refinements of it presented here provide a strong foundation for a defense of the strong view of hell.

Conclusion

I remain unconvinced, however, that the strong view of hell can be defended completely, even given this foundation. For even if all sin is against God, and sinning against God is the most serious wrong that could be committed, there is still the issue of mitigating factors in the theory of punishment to be considered. It is one thing to intentionally take a human life, and another thing to accidentally do so, and such mitigating factors place constraints on what sort of punishment is fair and just. If both wrongs are punished equally, the punishment is not fair, for the mitigating factor in the case of accidental death has not been taken into account. Something similar may exist in sins against God, for a person may commit wrongs with no thought or awareness of their relationship to God at all. The strong view of hell ignores such mitigating factors, and is problematic for that reason.