Online research in philosophy

Escapism, a theory of hell proposed by Andrei Buckareff and Allen Plug, explicitly relies on claims about divine reasons for action. However, they say surprisingly little about the general account of reasons for action that would justify the inferences in the argument for escapism. I provide a couple of plausible interpretations of such an account and argue that they help revive the ‘Job objection’ to escapism that Buckareff and Plug had dismissed.

Problem: if God has middle knowledge, he should actualize a world containing only persons whom he knows would freely choose heaven. Thus there should be no hell. Craig offers an answer to this problem in his article “ ‘No Other Name’: a Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation Through Christ.” Craig is mainly concerned to give a logically possible defense of hell, though he thinks his suggestion does not lack the sort of plausibility needed for a theodicy. I consider various objections to the latter assessment. My conclusion is that, although Craig’s argument is implausible as a theodicy of conservative exclusivist soteriology, it is useful for less traditional ideas of hell.

This work develops an understanding of hell that is common to a broad variety of religious perspectives, and argues that the usual understandings of hell are ...

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).

A certain conception of Hell is inconsistent with God’s traditional attributes, or so I will argue. My argument is novel in focusing on considerations involving vagueness. The target doctrine of Hell is part of a “binary” conception of the afterlife, by which I mean one with the properties of dichotomy, badness, non-universality, and divine control. Dichotomy: there are exactly two states in the afterlife, Heaven and Hell. After death each person will come to be, determinately, in exactly one of these states. (The doctrine of Purgatory does not violate dichotomy provided everyone in Purgatory eventually ends up in Heaven.) My argument does not apply to a continuous conception of the afterlife, which to my mind is more defensible than the usual binary doctrine. Badness: Hell is very, very bad. Or at least, Hell is much worse than Heaven; for most of the argument this weaker premise will suf ce. More carefully, the premise is that everyone in Heaven is much, much better off than everyone in Hell. Non-universality: some people go to Heaven, and some people go to Hell. I have no objection to Universalists, according to whom everyone goes to Heaven. Nor does my argument apply to those who uphold universal damnation. Divine control: God is in control of the institution of divine judgment, in control of the mechanism or criterion that determines who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. This is not to say that God is solely responsible for the fate of created beings, for the divinely mandated criterion might contain a role for free choices. Nor is it to say that God is vindictive. The requirement makes no assumptions about the nature of the criterion, beyond that it is in God’s control. The argument proceeds as follows. Given dichotomy, the only possibilities in the afterlife are determinate membership in either Heaven or Hell; given badness, the second is far worse the rst; and given non-universality, each is populated. Divine control requires that God be in control of the criterion determining these populations, and thus that God’s choice of a criterion be consistent with his attributes.

Medieval views of both divine goodness and the doctrine of hell are examined and shown to be incompatible with our best understandings of goodness. The only manner in which God could be good to those in hell – by permitting their continued existence – is not sufficient to outweigh ‘the dreadful pains of eternal fire’. One might claim that God is good to them in the retributive sense; but I argue that retributive punishment is inadequate justification of eternal torment. The medieval notions of goodness and hell seem to make God more a sadistic torturer than a caring parent. Eleonore Stump, accepting the medievals' axiology, ameliorates the doctrine of hell. However, I argue that her Dantean version of hell fails because not to be in certain circumstances is rationally preferable to continued existence. In addition, life under those conditions would result in frustration, not fulfilment, of one's second nature and would result in a progressive loss of being. Indeed, it seems more reasonable to reject the identity of being and goodness which both the medievals and Stump embrace or to accept being as a prima facie good that is defeasible in the face of eternal damnation.

Most contemporary philosophers who defend the compatibility of hell with the divine goodness do so by arguing that the damned freely choose hell. Thomas Talbott denies that such a choice is possible, on the grounds that God in his goodness would remove any 'ignorance, deception, or bondage to desire' which would motivate a person to choose eternal misery. My strategy is to turn the tables on Talbott and ask why God would not remove the motives we have for any sin whatsoever. I argue that two plausible answers to this question also show why God would not remove our motives for choosing hell.

According to the proportionality objection to hell, infinite suffering is out of proportion to any wrong that finite human beings could commit and is hence unjust and inconsistent with God's moral perfection. The continuing-sin response concedes that eternal consignment to hell is out of proportion to the sins people commit during their earthly lives, but argues that people in hell continue to sin while in hell and, in this way, extend their consignment to hell ad infinitum. In this essay, I evaluate the continuing-sin response. In particular, I argue that whether there is a proportionality problem to begin with and whether the continuing-sin response succeeds as a response depends on the character of the suffering that is experienced in hell.

In this paper I contribute to the ongoing debate on hell in three ways: (1) I distinguish between three questions that play a key role in any discussion of the doctrine of hell; (2) I argue positively for the need of a doctrine of hell for Christian theism; (3) after evaluating several theological positions, I argue that the doctrine of hell should be construed as intrinsically bound up with the Christian conviction that God is love and wants to live with human beings in a relationship of mutual love and fellowship. From this perspective on hell I provide some fresh criticisms on the positions of John Hick, Thomas Talbott, and Charles Seymour.

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that given God’s just and loving character it would be most rational for God to maintain an open door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with God. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original paper. The first is an argument from religious luck offered by Rusty Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labeled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan.