Is Augustine right about any of this? His view is sometimes criticized for overlooking neutral actions, states of affairs, characters, and so on. He seems to presume that
necessarily, something is either good or it is evil. But some things are clearly neutral (absent extremely special circumstances): for example, the action whereby I moved my pen two inches to my left. Perhaps there is a genuine distinction between
being morally good and
being morally neutral. On this interpretation of Augustine, it might seem his view is incorrect. (In a moment, I will contend otherwise.) But suppose we were to interpret Augustine as saying
necessarily, something is either morally permissible (okay to do) or it is morally impermissible (not okay to do). This is a necessary truth, since there is no third option and one of the options must be true. If we interpret Augustine in this way, then the example of moving my pen two inches to my left is not a counterexample to Augustine's views. That action is morally permissible; there is nothing wrong with doing it. It therefore falls into one of the categories of Augustine's disjunction (i.e., it is permissible) and is therefore not an exception to Augustine's disjunction.
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No doubt some will argue that this contorts the saint's meaning. For it makes little sense to speak of something other than actions being 'permissible' (is free will permissible? Is a box permissible?), yet Augustine is speaking about far more things than actions. He is speaking about
each and every thing in existence. I question the initial premise: namely, that it makes little sense to speak of something other than actions being permissible. Of course, it makes little sense to say "free will is permissible," or "a box is permissible," but it makes perfect sense to say that "having or using free will is permissible," or "being or using a box is permissible." But let's suppose that this talk is meaningless. What follows from that? The answer, it seems to me, is 'not much.' For we might then return to our talk of the various things in existence of being necessarily good or bad. What is necessary
[11] here is to make conceptual room for 'neutral things,' like neutral actions, neutral characters, and so on. A simple and plausible way to accomplish this is by defining 'good' as 'that which fails to include anything evil.' As a corollary, we might define 'evil' as 'that which fails to include anything good.' Having defined good and evil in these ways, we're ready to endorse the following definitions of good (G) and evil (E):
(G) Something X is morally good (permissible) if and only if X fails to include any evil-making or evil-sustaining features
(E) Something Y is morally evil (impermissible) if and only if Y fails to include any good-making or good-sustaining features
These definitions are broad, and I have not specified what qualify as 'evil-making' or 'good-making' features. Ordinarily, we consider pain, coercion, poverty, and harmful intentions as evil-making features: their presence in a given action, agent, or state of affairs contributes or maintains (partially or wholly) to the badness of that action, agent, or state of affairs. On the other hand, we consider pleasure, autonomy, affluence (at least minimally construed), and helpful intentions as good-making features: their presence in a given action, agent, or state of affairs contributes or maintains (partially or wholly) the goodness of that action, agent, or state of affairs. I think these judgments are more-or-less correct. Something similar can be said of 'evil-sustaining' and 'good-sustaining' features, except in the case of 'sustaining,' evil and good are not produced but rather upheld. Consider a corrupt political system where ethnic minorities are not allowed to vote. The politicians don't continue to make laws to this effect, and neither do they campaign for it, publicly or privately. Rather, they allow it to remain a law. Their actions (or inactions, perhaps) are therefore evil-sustaining actions: they keep evil around.
Within orthodox Christian thought, there have been two predominant, logically compatible understandings of hell. The first is that hell is
punitive. Because human persons commit sinful acts and (in many cases) develop sinful dispositions, or sinful characters, they are punished in the afterlife. Various passages seem to support this view strongly (e.g., Rev. 14:10-11, 20:13-15, 21:8; Matt. 8:12, 25:46). However, hell is also viewed as
chosen. According to this view, those in hell are those who rejected God's ways and instead chose the way of evil. They desire eternal separation from God and from God's ways. Out of respect for their freedom, God gives them this eternal separation. As philosopher Jerry Walls, citing Lewis, puts the matter, "[T]here is good reason to believe that [God] will continue to respect that freedom. Even if this means that hell is forever."
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I affirm both understandings. However, for the remainder of this post, I will focus on the second understanding, which (I hope) will be greatly helpful in providing a plausible explanation for how the severity of hell might be justified. I will offer an argument to the conclusion that, given the existence of human (libertarian) freedom, hell must be significantly evil in order for that (libertarian) freedom to maintain moral significance.
My argument concerns a certain condition for morally significant freedom (henceforth MSF). I take this condition to be necessary in the sense that anyone who acted freely in the absence of this condition would lack MSF. However, it is also my belief that this condition constitutes, at the very least, an
optimal condition for MSF, and that is sufficient for my argument to work well. What is the necessary or optimal condition I have in mind? Let us say that someone is significantly free if and only if the consequences of the choices of the individual are permitted to occur. Suppose my mother tells me that I am significantly free when it comes to my college choices; yet, when I select any given college, she blocks my efforts. I apply to a given college, and she intercepts my application and burns it. I am accepted to a college of my choice, and she hides my acceptance letter. I choose to take certain classes, and she brings me home from college so that I cannot participate in those classes. In these cases, I think it is clear that I have freedom, but not MSF. I lack MSF precisely because what I freely choose is withheld from me; I make free decisions, and the consequences I expected and accepted do not obtain. Put another way, I am robbed of MSF because my free decision to do
A has the same results as if I were to freely decide to do not-
A. In both cases, the consequences of
A-ing do not occur. I act freely, and nothing I chose to happen occurs.
The same condition applies to our relationship with God. If human persons have MSF with respect to their eternal destiny - with respect to the option to love God freely or fail to love God freely - then the consequences of their choices
must obtain. Thus, if I have MSF and use it to reject God freely, then the consequences of my choice must occur. If God prevented me from experiencing eternity apart from Her, then my free decision to reject God would lack moral significance, akin to when a mother 'allows' her son to make college decisions and then prevents her son's decisions from 'going through.' Freely rejecting God with MSF entails that the consequences of one's decision actually obtain. A free rejection of God, as I understand it, is a decision to reject God's being and ways, to reject what is good (permissible) and cling to what is evil (impermissible), and so on. It is, in effect, to choose one sort of lifestyle over another: a lifestyle of evil over a lifestyle of good.
To make this more explicit, consider two scenarios. In both cases, I am asked to make a free decision whether to love my mother, live according to her rules/guidelines. In both cases, I decline to do this; I make a free decision to refrain from loving my mother, to refrain from living according to her rules/guidelines. Suppose, in the first scenario, my choice makes no real difference. She still acts the same way towards me. She still treats me
as if I freely decided to love her and live according to her rules/guidelines. In the second scenario, my mother lets me go my own way to some degree, but also prints and posts numerous posterboards of her rules throughout my room, brings individuals into my life who try to influence me to love my mother and live according to her rules/guidelines, and (despite my choice to live in a different environment - an environment where love of my mother is absent; where a lifestyle of following her rules/guidelines is absent) creates and/or maintains an environment where there is love for her and her ways. I think it is clear that, in both cases, I lack MSF. Again, I lack MSF because my free decisions are void of any significant consequence. Despite rejecting my mother and her ways, I am nonetheless exposed to an environment in which my mother perpetually attempts to bring me back into the fold. I simply cannot escape (or, at any rate, have not escaped) the 'Mother Love' environment.
These observations, in conjunction with a basic observation about divine omnipotence, should make clear why hell needs to be significantly evil if it is to be the consequence of the human persons who exercise MSF. To say that a given being
G is omnipotent is to say that
anything logically possible can be brought about by G. This entails that, for any contingent set of circumstances
C (e.g., someone freely rejecting God),
C occurs if and only if
G permits
C. Since God is omnipotent, it follows that there is no contingent event or set of circumstances in the universe that occurs (or can occur) without Her permission. Take some contingent good
x that occurs in some set of circumstances
C. Given divine omnipotence,
x occurs in
C if and only if
G permits
x in
C. Nearly all of the goods that occur in the world are contingent in this way: It was within God's power to decline permitting them. If God decided to do so, She could remove
all of the contingent goods throughout the universe in a moment. These facts entail that, for any contingent good that exists in hell, that good exists only because God permits it to exist.
The Scriptures portray God as the source of everything good. Saint James declares, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights" (1:17). The psalmist declares to God, "'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing'" (16:2). Given omnipotence, any contingent good that occurs must be permitted by God. What's more, the Scriptures portray God as being capable of withdrawing Her moral influence: God allows people to go their own way (Rom. 1:24-32; Gen. 6:3; Psa. 27:9, 89:46). Indeed, the prophet Hosea gives God's warning to the nations, claiming, "'Woe to them when I depart from them" (9:12)! Since God is capable of withdrawing various goods in the world, it follows that the existence of those goods was not metaphysically necessary (i.e., those goods were contingent). In order to leave Her creatures significantly free, God must (either necessarily, or for optimal conditions for MSF) withdraw Her influence for those who freely reject Her, since permitting hell (on the whole) to be a 'God-fearing' or 'God-promoting' place would (necessarily or at least probably, given the nature of MSF) undermine the significance of the decisions of human persons who chose a life independent of God. This is where Saint Augustine's thoughts are relevant: By removing (most if not all of) Her moral influence in hell, God effectively makes it the case that any events that occur in hell lack goodness (permissibility), and are therefore evil (impermissible). Indeed, given that God must (in order to maintain MSF for the insubordinate) refrain from permitting hardly any (contingent) goods at all, the events that occur in hell are very likely evil. What's more, given that there will be many events in hell - many thoughts, many words, many feelings, etc. - and given that the overwhelming majority of those events will be evil (impermissible), hell is overwhelmingly likely to be an extremely bad place or state.
Here's the idea in a nutshell: If God is going to leave the damned with their MSF, then God must withdraw all or most of Her moral influence. If God withdraws all or most of Her moral influence, then there are zero or at least very few (contingent) goods that occur for the damned. If there are zero or at least very few (contingent) goods that occur for the damned, then if there are many events surrounding the damned (thoughts, actions, feelings, etc.), then those events are necessarily or overwhelmingly likely to be evil (impermissible). And that's bad, probably extremely bad, for the damned.
I would now like to consider an objection that I have heard many times over, mostly in conversation with others. The account I have offered has a (seemingly) implausible consequence: namely, that people
freely choose to experience a hellish or severely tortuous state of affairs. It is highly doubtful that many people desire a
tortuous state of affairs, and even more doubtful that very many persons prefer an utterly evil state of affairs. After all, hardly anyone likes experiencing pain, much less torture, much less torture for eternity; and hardly anyone likes evil, or evil on the whole, or a state of affairs characterized by utter and complete evil.
My initial response is that my account has no such implication. I have said nothing about whether anyone, much less a whole lot of someones, actually opt for hell. All I have claimed is that a severe view of hell
would be morally justified
if it were brought about in response to the free choices of human persons in the way described above. But this isn't a particularly helpful response, for the objector might simply rephrase and say, "I know that your account doesn't
itself have this implausible implication; however, your account
in conjunction with the auxiliary premise that most human persons go to hell has this implausible implication."
I am unsure whether I accept the auxiliary premise that most human persons go to hell. But let's suppose I did. Is there anything to be said in response to the objector? My response is that anyone who freely rejects God necessarily rejects God's moral influence. Perhaps they don't mean to do this. Perhaps they think that the Christian God is evil and adopt moral perspectives contrary to those of the Christian God (e.g., perhaps they believe that child sacrifice is morally permissible), perspectives they believe are in fact good. On a objective level, they are mistaken; they have (mistakenly) rejected God and Her ways, and thus (mistakenly) rejected what is good (permissible). Assuming that the mistake is non-culpable (i.e., they aren't
guilty for making the mistake; it was, rather, an accident of sorts), then those who make the mistakes do not incur subjective guilt. Nevertheless, they are objectively guilty and are therefore subject to the objective consequences of the moral law, although it is likely (in my own view) that an omnibenevolent God would afford them another opportunity to decide freely whether to love Her.
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But this answer will not satisfy everyone. Some will argue that there is no such thing as "objective guilt." What does "objective guilt" even mean? An initially plausible interpretation is that "objective guilt" means "being the performer of some free but evil action." But in the absence of "subjective guilt," the performer of the free but evil action did not know that the action she freely performed was evil, so it seems misleading to say that the agent in question is guilty in any sense that justifies punishment, of which H is a most severe instance. I am tempted to reply that H is no instance of punishment; H is merely the metaphysical consequence of having MSF and freely rejecting God. I resist this temptation because it is insufficient; it does something for my case, but not enough to save it from the objection. For although it might be true that H is not a punishment, H is a place that is the metaphysical consequence of freely rejecting God with MSF. But anyone who performs some objectively evil action A, yet does so without knowing that A is evil, has not knowingly chosen A. Assuming this ignorance is something for which the agent is non-culpable, we have strong reason to suppose that the agent in question did not mean to choose anything like H.
So, is there another response available? I suspect there are several. I will briefly mention two. The first response is this: Scripture suggests that a significant number of human persons will experience H, and that is a strong reason to believe that the objection is mistaken; that, in fact, many people do opt for H. I have argued elsewhere[14] that this sort of response can be, and often is, epistemically justified. But although this shows us that we are (or can be) justified in rejecting the objection, it fails to provide us with a theory of how so many persons freely opt for H.
This brings me to my second response, which provides us with at least some explanation for how so many people could, and do, freely opt for H. It seems to me that many people genuinely despise the Christian concept of God. They find certain activities of God - perhaps God's willingness to permit particular evils, or God's decision to "hide" Herself, or God's exercise of Her retributive justice, or whatever - to be morally distasteful. To be fair, this is understandable to a certain degree. It is controversial whether these activities are morally permissible. (I have doubted whether retributive justice is permissible.) But I have heard plenty of people say, quite genuinely, and no doubt many other people have claimed this as well, that they would rather opt for H even if they were wrong. In other words, even if God's "controversial" activities did turn out to be permissible, they would nevertheless despise those activities.[15] In a word, they would persist in the way things seem to them rather than submit themselves to the conclusion that their preferences are immoral and that God is good and should be worshiped. It is harder to conceive of a better interpretation for the verse that reads, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" (Prov. 14:12).[16]
This (tentatively) concludes my moral defense of
H, the traditional Christian conception of hell. To wrap up: I have offered reasons to believe that the high price of morally significant (libertarian) freedom requires, either necessarily or for optimal conditions, a severe shortage of contingent goods. The auxiliary premises are these: There will be plenty of events in hell (emotions, thoughts, actions, etc.) and any event that lacks goodness (permissibility) is evil (impermissible). I think each of these premises is plausible, although each premise is certainly open to attack. But as it stands, a strong prima facie case has been offered for the conclusion that the severity of
H is morally justi
fiable, and likely morally justi
fied.