I was watching a debate between Glen Veltum and Emery Wang called "Straight to Hell with Glen Veltum" (with Wang as the host) that discussed the notion God would send people to Hell eternally and how that place should not exist if God is all good. Wang reasons (in my own words) Hell is a place to punish sin, so how can someone suffer eternally in Hell when his sin is finite? Another way of putting it is--Why would God permanently etch sin into the universe (and in fact be a reciprocal cause of it) if he is perfectly loving? To start with Veltum labeled himself as sympathetic to Calvinist thought that, as he describes, God creates wicked people only to be contrasted with the good. There are some problems I see with this at first glance, such as the notion God uses people for the good of others and that he creates people only for them to inevitably suffer. But let's put that aside for this post. Instead let's attempt to address this problem of Hell by reciting some solutions that philosophers have argued for over the years. One is suggested by Irenaeus (that should be the correct spelling) that Hell is not eternal, instead it is a part of a growing process to one day meet and become one with God. Another, suggested I think by C.S. Lewis, is that one only loses what they never had in the first place--a relationship with God. In this manner one only goes to the afterlife without, as Wang put it, a common relationship with God. One would, in this picture, go to a place of cold, quiet despair. As I've already stated the main problem with the fire and brimstone Hell, what supports it is this is the picture of Hell described in the Bible. Ireneaus offers a partial solution, one that is abound in a partial universe, that we are a work in progress with the ultimate goal being God. It does not explicitly (though it does implicitly) state that it is not possible for the fire and brimstone Hell, but I will have to appeal to authority because I do not know if this interpretation of the Bible is accurate. This is my favorite one (maybe because I'm Buddhist) because everybody eventually reaches God and becomes whole and nobody needs to suffer eternally (which coincides with an all loving God). The idea C.S. Lewis puts forth does not seem to be the correct interpretation of the Bible, as Veltum argues, because it is more wishful thinking than anything else. We want to believe while we are in Heaven the damned don't suffer 'too' much (after all they did earn it!), but it does not seem to coincide with the Biblically described Hell. The best solution, which actually addresses Wang's concern that the damned be annihilated, is ingeniously constructed by Dante. His notion of Hell is of eternal suffering, that is until the Final Judgment, when God (through a certain action) destroys Hell and every soul living in it. This seems to be the best interpretation in consideration of Veltum and Wang because it coincides with Biblical literature and it evokes a merciful God. With Dante's interpretation we can see God can possibly be all loving because the suffering in Hell has an end. Although, when he came in the flesh he told people to turn the other cheek (I guess cause his Father would gun them down in the afterlife). If I were to give my own opinion on the matter, I'd say because God is all loving his construction of the Biblical Hell is contradictory. I would hope this is a problem Christians toil with because as Veltum put at one point in the interview (again in my own words) that those in Heaven should not (and indeed possibly may not be able to) think about those in Hell. I cannot accept that a truly compassionate person would be able to 'forget' about others so easily. But I think to talk about this it would be necessary to lay out two types of forgetting--forgetting others in your mind and forgetting others who just don't happen to be there. I would imagine a mother losing her son would sometimes in Heaven lament and wonder where her son could be, but then at another moment laugh with the laughter of the angels.
P.S. If you ever get the chance, find out how Dante destroys Hell, it is truly the work of a great artist.
