We saw in the last letter that much damage has been done to Christianity through the promulgation of a concept of eternal hell and suffering that does not correspond to what the totality of scriptures teaches. We saw some of the quotes that clearly indicate that the eternal suffering of part of mankind is not a goal of God’s. In fact, they show that He wants to save all of mankind. But we are left in a quandary because there is no doubt that judgement and punishment are also taught within the scriptures. What we will now try to do is unravel this question and propose a way of dealing with it which will respect what we have been taught about God’s character and also be true to what scriptures teach us.

The concept of eternal damnation and punishment is fraught with many contradictions and difficulties.

Central to Christianity is the concept of personhood which we have seen in previous letters as fundamental for understand what a human being is. But what is a person if not all of his/her relationships that have come into play in forming this person. If some of our relationships have been broken because some have been damned what does that mean about us? We are now some other being but not the person that we were, and therefore our bliss and the bliss of all others has been impacted and lessened by the damnation of some of humanity.

If there is eternal torment and punishment – and torment and punishment are not good things in themselves – then this means that evil is eternal as well. It has no end. If only God is eternal, then what does this say about the relationship between evil and God?

The counterargument comes that if there is no hell, then our actions do not count and there are no consequences. We can do whatever we will – there is no incentive to improve, to not sin, to love. All this is true and what it means is that we have to reconsider the concept of eternal punishment. To say that actions in time, of limited duration, deserve eternal punishment seems unfair as we have discussed in the previous letter, and this has caused many to lose faith and to drift away from belief in a loving God.

To propose that some of humanity will be lost because of their actions is also to impugn God’s sovereignty and goodness. How could God have created with the foreknowledge that some of His creation would end up lost and in misery? Again, this would call into question God’s goodness and to claim, as some have done, that his goodness has a different content from goodness for us, is to save that we do not know this god.

Let’s take a look at some of the parables in the Gospels, parables which are taken to represent and speak of eternal punishment for transgressions committed during a person’s earthly life. There is the famous parable of the last judgement and the division between ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’. You can read this parable in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25 starting at verse 32. A common interpretation is to see humanity being divided at the Last Judgement as those who are praised and those who are condemned, the sheep and goats, respectively. But a more likely interpretation of the parable is that within each of us there are two kinds of characters. This view is also supported by the parable of the good seeds and tares. All humans are creatures of God. What is sown by the devil are the weeds, the destructive suggestions and it is this that is to be judged and destroyed through ‘fire’. It is not a question of differences between people but, differences and evil inclinations, within individual people.

St. Gregory of Nyssa suggests a colorful image of God’s surgery in order to heal us in preparation for eternal life.

“In fact those who by incisions or cauterization remove boils or warts that have formed contrary to nature on the surface of the body, do not bring about the healing without pain….It is the same with the ‘warts’ that have formed on our souls… at the moment of judgement they are cut out and removed by the ineffable wisdom and power of him who is, as the Gospel says, the physician of the sick”.

This is in keeping with what we have seen above. What is judged and expunged are the evil thoughts, inclinations and judgements of ours so that we may be made capable of entering into eternal life. St. Ambrose of Milan says that ‘the same individual is at the same time saved and condemned’. Within each of us we carry the seeds of our destruction – sin – that needs to be addressed and healed and we also contain within ourselves good deeds and love.

Many theologians are losked in their own human ideas of what justice is, and seek to impose it onto God and it is this ‘god’ that many have turned against, in horror. Isaac of Ninevah writes: “Do not say that God is just… but God’s own Son has revealed to us that he is before all things good and kind. How can you call God just when you read the parable of the laborers in the vineyard and their wages. Likewise, how can you call God just when you read the parable of the prodigal son who squanders his father’s wealth in riotous living, and the moment he displays some nostalgia his father runs to him. O the wonder of the grace of our Creator…Anyone who has offended and blasphemed him he raises up again… Sin is to fail to understand the grace of the resurrection. Where is the hell that could afflict us? What is hell, face to face with the grace of the resurrection when he will rescue us from damnation… In place of what sinners justly deserve, he gives them resurrection”.

So does this mean that we are totally exempted from judgement? This is something that we can’t do because the teaching in scriptures and in the tradition of the Church does not allow us to endorse universalism – that everyone is saved irrespective of the lives they have lived. As we have seen from the above much caution and reservation has been expressed by the Fathers on this question and we too must keep an open mind. As Isaac of Ninevah writes: “As is a grain of sand weighed against a large amount of gold, so, in God, is the demand for equitable judgement weighed against his compassion….the Creator’s compassion cannot be conquered by the wickedness of creatures”.

One possible way out of this dilemma is to say that our actions do have repercussions which will lead to a need for us to be cleansed and this cleansing process will be painful. But there are no grounds to claim that this is a process that would take eternity thereby challenging God’s sovereignty and his plans for creation. Our goal in living a righteous life is to please God but, at the same time, to lessen the pains of our cleansing duration. Isaac of Ninevah asks: “where is the hell that could afflict us? Where is the damnation that could make us afraid to the extent of overwhelming the joy of God’s love”? Through it all – including judgement – the paramount attribute of creation is the experience of God’s overwhelming love and magnanimity.

For the highest spirituality, and theology, of the first centuries, the central point was that God was to be ‘all in all’. Certain Fathers granted that God would turn away from those who turned away from him. This is what Western Scholasticism came to term poema damni, the penalty of damnation. Such a fundamentalist reading of the Gospels (which leads to speculations on the nature of the ‘worm’ and the ‘fire’ that will torment the damned) was not only denounced as external to Christianity but as ‘absurd’, against the logic of what we are taught by the totality of scripture. It was seen as incompatible with what scripture teaches as a whole and this was pointed out by the greatest representatives of earliest Christianity such as St. Ambrose of Milan and John Cassian in the West, and John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor and many more in the East.

Prayer then has the last word. We do not speculate about hell. Neither need we formulate a doctrine of universal salvation. We pray, and hope, that all may be saved and what I have tried to do is show the coherence of this position. And as a final comment, it is interesting that those who espouse an eternal hell of suffering cast their eyes around themselves to others. But it remains spiritually impossible to talk of hell for others. The theme of hell can only be broached in the language concerning us, and only us. The threats of the Gospels concern me; they form the tragic element in my spiritual destiny; they prompt me to humility and repentance, because I recognize them as the diagnosis of my state. But for you, the numberless you – my neighbors – I pray that you and everyone will be saved and enter into the Kingdom.

Sincerely,
Bar-Abbas