Abstract
In “Omnibenevolence and Eternal Damnation”, I consider whether it is consistent to hold both that God is omnibenevolent and that he infinitely punishes human beings for the commission of finite transgressions. In exploring this problem, I discuss the utilitarian and retributive notions of punishment and justice, the possible mitigating effect of forewarning, and differing conceptions of the nature of the relationship of God to human beings. My conclusion is that it is inconsistant to hold both of these beliefs.
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Endnotes
I wish to thank two anonymous readers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I also wish to thank Joel Thomas Tiemo for allowing me access to his as-yet unpublished manuscript.
I define hell according to what Kvanvig calls the 'Punishment Model' and which he identifies as the traditional conception. That is, hell is a place to which those whose 'earthly lives and behavior warrant it' will be damned, from which there is no escape, and in which the inhabitants are eternally and consciously aware of their existence there. Kvanvig notes that, although there are non-traditional conceptions of hell, they 'all ... still endorse the punishment model.' Kvanvig, Jonathan, 'Heaven and Hell' in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter, 2003 edition; Zalta, Edward N. ed. (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2003/entries/heaven-hell)
Brodsky, Troyer, and Vance, eds.Readings in Social and Political Ethics (Buffalo: Prometheus Books. 1984), p.57.
Brodsky, Troyer, and Vance note that it is sometimes argued that assuming that punishment entails suffering begs the question on the retributive level. However, the sort of punishment at issue in this paper (i.e., eternal damnation) entails suf-fering by definition.
Cragg, Wesley,The Practice of Punishment: Towards a Theory of Restorative Justice (New York: Routledge. 1992), p. 15.
My thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing this out.
Wainwright, William J.,Philosophy of Religion (Belmont CA: Wadsworth 1999), ch. 1.
Ibid.
‘From the mind stem evil designs - murder, adulterous conduct, fornication, stealing, false witness, blasphemy. These are the things that make a man impure.’ Matthew 15:19–20; ‘[T]he will is the cause of sin.’ Augustine.De Duabus Anima. x, 10,11.
‘[J]ustice holds guilty those sinning by evil will alone.’ Augustine.De Duabus Anima. x, 10,11. ‘So long as voluntariness remains in the ignorant person, the intention of sin remains in him: so in this respect, his sin is not accidental.’ Aquinas.Summa Theologica 2.1.75. Furthermore, some sects still hold that it is possible to sin without taking any action. Thus, in a November 1976 interview with Playboy magazine, President Jimmy Carter could say, ‘I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.’
‘You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’ Ex. 20:17.
‘God is omnipotent. He can do all things. Can God, then, make a square circle.... Certainly not. God can do all things, but what you suggest aredenials of things.... If God could do the unthinkable and create contradictions asthings, he would not be all-perfect, for he would not be all-lrue.’ Glenn, Paul G.,Apologetics (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co. 1932), pp. 73–74; ‘Most theologians and theistic philosophers who hold that God is omnipotent, do not hold that he can create round squares... [they] may hold that there are no nonlogical limits to what an omnipotent being can do, but they concede that not even an omnipotent being can bring about logically impossible states of af-fairs or cause necessarily false propositions to be true.’ Plantinga, Alvin C.,God, Freedom, and Evil (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans 1977), p. 17.
I am not saying that God ever does infinitely punish us for these sorts of sins. I only claim that those who do must be incorrect or else God unjustly punishes us according to a retributive understanding of punishment.
‘You shall not steal.’ Ex. 20:15.
Tierno, Joel Thomas,Epistemic Evil: A Third Problem of Evil, unpublished Ms., 2005, ch. 6.
I am not here claiming that her choice is determined by an ineliminable natural disposition, only that she is very strongly inclined to do so as a result of her received nature.
‘[T]hose demerits which are not blotted out by repentance remain in the debt of punishment due to them’ Aquinas.Summa Theologica.
Tiemo,Descartes on God and Human Error (New Jersey: Humanities Press 1997), pp. 2–10, ch. 14;Epistemic Evil: A Third Problem of Evil, unpublished Ms.
‘God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right.’ Mackie, J. L.,Evil and Omnipotence in Mitchell (ed.),The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford UP 1971), pp. 100–101; See also, Madden, E. H. And Hare, Peter, ‘Rejection of Hick’s Theodicy’ in Stewart, David,Exploring the Philosophy of Religion (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall 1980), pp. 267–273, especially the discussion of the three fallacies used by Christian apologists.
‘An omibenevolent being would not consciously and willingly give one of his creations a faculty that, when it functions aright, leads directly to the production of something defective. An omniscient being never does anything unconsciously and an omnipotent being never does anything unwillingly’ Tierno,Descartes on God and Human Error, p. 45.
Tierno,Descartes on God and lluman Error; Epistemic Evil: A Third Problem of Evil, p. 63.
Only when they become dead to sin, will their sin be forgiven them. For, so long as they live in sin, it cannot be put away.‘ Jerome; Letter 147. Aquinas. op. cit.
See deMan, Paul, ‘Semiology and Rhetoric,’ inThe Norton Anthology of literary Criticism, Vincent B. Leitch et al., eds. (NewYork: W. W. Norton 2001), pp. 1514–1527; Johnson, Barbara, ‘FromMelville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd,’ in Leitch et. al., pp. 2319–2337; Derrida, Jacques, 'FromOf Grammatology; in Leitch et. al., pp. 1822–1830.
Brodsky, Troyer and Vance, op. cit.
An anonymous reader suggests that some sinners may continue to sin in hell. If this is the case, of course, my argument would not apply to them. However, it would have to be the case that a//sinners continue to sin in hell to negate the force of this argument.
Although Peter Geach offers a conception of time in which infinite punishment in hell could last for a finite period, the notion of a limited infinite punishment seems incoherent to me. However, assuming it is not, it is not the traditional understanding of either hell or time, and it is irrelevant to this paper.
‘A distinction must be drawn between actions caused or determined by the goodness associated with them and actions done for the sake of the goodness associated with them. Only the latter can occasion moral praise. Goodness of the will, in the morally significant sense, is only evidenced by actions done for the sake of the goodness associated with them. What is done as a function of necessity can never be an appropriate object of moral praise. Ought implies can and cannot! Just as there is no sense in the condemnation of agents for not performing actions that cannot be performed, there is no sense in the approbation of agents for performing actions that cannot be avoided .... The same result would follow with respect to the actions of God if those actions were a function of necessity. That God's actions were good would not supply a rational basis for praising him. Just as doing something evil - a wrongful act for which the agent is blameworthy- necessarily requires that the agent do it knowingly and willingly, that is, as a function of genuine and relevantly informed choice, the same is true of doing something morally good. This too must be a function of genuine and relevantly informed choice. Actions that are a function of logical, psychological, physiological, physical or any other form of necessity, although they may be good in the sense of having desirable consequences, can never be morally praiseworthy.’ Tierno, ‘Omnibenevolence, Omnipotence, and God's Ability to Do Evil,’Sophia, Vol. 36, No. 2, 1997.
‘According to this model, then, the divine is continuously involved in the processes of reality, but in a way that respects the integrity and appropriate autonomy of each entity.’ Pailin, David A.,Groundwork of Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edn. (London: Epworth Press 1989), pp. 125–126.
Tierno, ‘Omnibenevolence, Omnipotence, and God's Ability to Do Evil’,Sophia, Vol. 36, No. 2, 1997.
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Sully, G.M. Omnibenevolence and Eternal Damnation. SOPHIA 44, 7–22 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02912427
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02912427