Quarterly Bulletin

The challenge for each one of us, whether a preacher or a lay person, is the teaching about hell. Clive Dillon-Malone, the Head of the Department of Philosophy and Applied Ethics at the University of Zambia, in this article shares his personal understanding of what hell is about.

I must confess that this is a topic I never thought I’d be writing about. I never preach about the existence of hell nor do I preach about the existence of the devil. However, I was recently approached after Mass by one of our more sophisticated parishioners here at St. Ignatius Parish with a question that was apparently troubling him very much.

The question was this: “How did talk about hell get into the Catholic Church?” In order to put him at ease, I blurted out without much thought. “Look, if anyone goes to hell, then Christ has failed!” He looked at me with a visible sign of excitement and consolation and said, “Father, you have no idea of the relief that your comment has given me. It has somehow removed a block that has lodged deep down within me for a long time.”

Although this was only one incident, it got me thinking about what I had said and I began to feel the need to unpack my response for my own benefit. What follows here then are my personal reflections which I wish to share. I readily acknowledge that I am neither a professional theologian nor a professional biblical scholar.

While any discussion about the topic of hell might disturb some and seem to be both depressing and somewhat morbid, my intention is actually the very opposite. It is to remove from our thinking what may well be a hindrance to God’s loving and saving work among us in the way we perceive our relationship with God.

Church Teaching

Let me first of all say that the Catholic Church does in fact accept a belief in hell. In the Old Testament, hell referred to “the underworld” (Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek) which was understood as a place of a shadowy existence involving neither joy nor punishment.

In later Inter-Testamental times, a distinction was drawn between the fate of the good and that of the wicked who would suffer punishment in a place identified as Gehenna. Zachary Hayes comments in the New Dictionary of Theology, “No doubt this development is related to reflection on the problem of retribution and the attempt to gain some insight into the disparity between the moral quality of human life and the good and bad fortune by people on earth.” Hayes goes on to comment that the New Testament Christian writers presuppose and utilise the earlier Jewish traditions of Gehenna accompanied by the traditional imagery of fire, darkness, worms, howling and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew’s Gospel quotes Jesus as saying that his angels will throw all evil doers into the furnace of fire (13:41-42) and that God will condemn the wicked with the words: “Depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire” (25:41). St. Paul also speaks of the idea of eternal punishment and of banishment from the face of God. In 1979, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed the traditional teaching of an eternal punishment for sinners “who will be deprived of the sight of God”.

Christ descended into hell!

It is only in recent times that the phrase that Christ “descended into hell” has been dropped from the Creed in view of the obvious confusion that such a reference much have caused to the faithful. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him” (# 633).

One wonders why the term “hell” was used in the first place! Indeed, this usage has perhaps expressed a more correct understanding of “hell” as not a situation of eternal damnation but rather a state in which people separated from God -- not just by physical death but by the death of sin -- could only be united with God through the saving work of Christ (see Matthew16:18).

Leaving aside the imaginative descriptions of what pains and sufferings hell might entail, hell is understood as basically a state of total and eternal separation from God, a state in which there is no love. Behind the possibility of placing oneself in this situation is of course the issue of the abuse of our God-given free will.

Free will is not absolute

Because God has given us free will, we have the capacity to use it to choose what is “for God” or to choose what is “against God”. This belief is captured in the story narrated in Genesis with reference to the abuse of free will by human beings. God had forbidden Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge and they abused their free will by disobeying God resulting in their separation and alienation from God.

The Church teaches that “mortal sin” is the situation of separation from God that we place ourselves in. Such a state becomes one of a “fundamental option” against God if we remain in that state. Consequently, if we die in such a state, we have in fact damned ourselves to hell for all eternity. It is not God‘s doing but ours. As the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus narrates so vividly, there is no passing over from hell of Hades to the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:19-31).

St. John seems to refer to “mortal sin” when he says that “there is a sin that is death” (1 John 5:16). However, he also says very significantly, “If anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, not only ours, but the whole world’” (1 John 2:1-2). It should be noted that John’s theology is written within the extremes of light and darkness, the conflict between Christ and Satan.

The absolute triumph of God’s love

The issue raised by the above, of course, is whether in fact we are in the position of being able to damn ourselves eternally to hell by the personal abuse of our free will. It seems to me that such a possibility fundamentally overlooks the power of God’s love.

St. Paul teaches that the incarnation and resurrection of Christ makes him head not only of the entire human race, but of the entire created cosmos so that every thing that was involved in the fall is equally involved in the salvation of Christ. He tells us that in the end, God will “bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth” (Ephesians 1:10) and that “God wanted all perfection to be found in him [Christ], and all things to be reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross” (Colossians 1:19-20).

Christ has overcome evil absolutely. Evil in our world is not on par with good. Whatever is said about fallen angels or sinful human beings, God’s love is not limited by such forces. And neither is our free will absolute. Just as we believe that doing good is only possible if God’s grace is moving us in this direction, surely our decision to do evil does not have the last word to the extent that we can damn ourselves to eternal separation from God. The only thing that remains absolute is God’s redeeming love in Christ.

Retribution

The doctrine of hell seems to be largely based on the principle of retributive justice. As criminals are tried, judged and subjected to punishment, so it is believed that the damned are tried, judged and punished by God. However, this legal courtroom type of justice should be seen as a travesty of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and one that does not correspond to the God we know in Jesus Christ. Jesus will indeed come at the end of the world to judge us, but it will be a judgement in accordance with the justice or righteousness of God and not with our human understanding of justice.

Jesus told a parable of God’s merciful generosity to those who has worked far less than others. In response to the labourers who expressed their resentment, he said, “Why be envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20: 16). Deep down in our human nature, there is a tendency to think of God in human terms. We can only think of justice in our limited human categories. We seek not God’s justice but retribution -- and sometimes even vengeance --against those who have done wrong to us or to others.

And yet, when dying on the cross, Jesus said of his persecutors, “Father, forgive them!” (Luke 23:34). And to us he said, “Forgive your enemies!” (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27). So how can we think of God allowing anyone to be punished eternally in hell? Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether those who support the death penalty are not acting on unredeemed human thinking only!

Universal Salvation

Christ died for all! This is what is referred to as “universal salvation”. At the Last Supper, taking the cup, Jesus said, “this is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many” (Mark 14:24). The New Jerome Biblical Commentary comments as follows, “The poured out for many alludes to Isaiah 53:12 (one of the Suffering Servant passages) and gives the action a sacrificial dimension. The two OT allusions serve to characterise the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for others. The phrase hyper pollon, “for many”is based on the Hebrew of Isaiah 53:12; it means “for all”, not just for one or a few” [my italics].

Purgatory

While I find it very difficult to accept even the possibility that there is or ever will be anyone in the state of hell, I find it crucially important to believe in the reality of purgatory. By purgatory is understood a state in which we need to be purified, indeed to purify ourselves, before we are ready to be united with God. For the first time, we somehow see ourselves and our sinfulness in a way that prevents us from going into God’s company.

Is there, then, an opportunity for repentance after death? What takes place at the moment of physical death remains a mystery to us. It is part of the mystery of the relationship between time and eternity. We don’t know. However, it would be rather presumptuous of us to conclude that God in God’s infinite mercy and love cannot offer such an opportunity to those who have separated themselves from God during life on earth.

Like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is not that God wants to punish us. God is lovingly and passionately anxious that we should return to our heavenly home but like the prodigal son or daughter, we say, “Father, I am not worthy!” Of course, we are not worthy. We never were. We are totally dependent on the love of God for us. And surely that love will not allow us to destroy ourselves.

While God does indeed call us to repentance and conversion, God will never desert us. How often does God renew his covenant with us by saying, “You may desert me but I will never desert you.” The covenant made in the blood of Jesus is an eternal covenant.

The mystery of evil

So what about really evil people such as Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, etc.? One cannot deny the evil they have done and the manner in which they have somehow become the very embodiment of evil. Evil is one of the greatest mysteries in our world. And yet, can this evil be stronger than the love of God?

When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him, he said to his disciples, “Look, there is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) [my italics]. The singular is used for sin to emphasise the struggle against evil that Jesus had come to fight, a struggle that was only complete by his victorious death on the cross. We are all living in a sinful world, a world somehow enveloped in sin.

Our personal sins are situations in which we contribute to the sin of the world just as by our good deeds we share in the redeeming work of Christ. In the mystery of evil and the mystery of purgatory, evil people will have to undergo a form of purification that only God can determine.

However, the point at issue is that this state of purification will not be eternal. Evil will finally be destroyed in the all-consuming love of God.

A God who punishes?

We are told that “fear of the Lord” is a good thing. It does seem to be true that for many, the fear of God’s punishment acts as a motivation for avoiding evil. I can remember in my early years attending what were then called “parish missions” during which preaching on hell and damnation was commonplace as a means of motivating people to avoid doing wrong and drawing (frightening, scaring) people back to God.

While one cannot deny some validity to this somewhat dubious strategy, and one that may well respond to the roots of human depravity, it seems to me to be a rather misleading way of recognising and re-establishing our filial relationship with God.

In the Old Testament, there is a twofold image of God as a God of love and a God who punishes. If you can’t be good out of love, then be good out of fear -- and particularly out of the fear of hell and damnation! But what kind of a God is one who establishes this kind of relationship? Jesus himself, of course, was born and grew up within the framework of Old Testament thinking and the Gospels present the awareness of Jesus of the punishments of hell. Indeed, as referred to above, there are many references that can be quoted with respect to the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” in the fires of hell.

Nevertheless, the kind of fear that is spoken of with respect to a punishing God is surely not a fear of dread in the presence of a jealous threatening God but rather a feeling of our total dependence on God and of our need for an attitude of reverence, respect and worship in the presence of our loving Creator.

Fear may force some people to turn to God but the power of God to draw us to God’s self is essentially the attraction of love. Indeed, “God is Love” (1 John 4:16). And it is only through love that we can really know our God.

This is the God whom Jesus has revealed to us, a God whom Jesus told us to address as “Abba” (Father).

redeeming merits of christ

Thankfully an explicitly focus on hell no longer dominates Christian thinking. However, our patterns of thought are subtly and unconsciously conditioned by the images we have of God and the Old Testament image of God as a jealous and punishing God has a way of subtly affecting, not just our understanding of God, but our attitude to our fellow men and women.

Despite the Church’s belief in the existence of hell, the point I have been anxious to emphasise is that the Church does not teach that there is, or ever will be, anyone in hell. In fact, I go further to suggest that while the abstract possibility of someone ending up in a hell of eternal separation from God may be there, in reality such a belief runs contrary to the image of a wholly loving, compassionate, merciful and forgiving God who is the God of Jesus Christ. Despite our human depravity, it is my belief that the redeeming merits of Christ will not allow us to condemn ourselves or anyone else to eternal damnation.

Clive Dillon-Malone, S.J.
St. Ignatius Jesuit Community
Lusaka