Jürgen Moltmann said that the logic of hell is inhumane and extremely atheistic and Pelagian in his essay "The Logic of Hell" included in God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann (pp. 43-47). Proponents of hell (!) argue that God's love is extended to all people but anyone who does not freely accept it will be condemned to eternal conscious torment in hell, such that all people who end up in hell are there by their own free will and God is absolved from their horrific ends. Moltmann cites The Mystery of Salvation by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, as an example of such proponents of hell. C.S. Lewis followed this logic of hell when he said that "the gates of hell are locked on the inside" (The Problem of Pain).
Moltmann says that any theology of hell based upon human free will is inhumane because the vast majority of humanity never has the opportunity to choose God's love by their own free will and many people are incapable of choosing God's love—such as those people who are disabled, or children who die prematurely, or the masses who have never heard the gospel. Is the gospel truly good news if the supermajority of the human race will not escape the horrors of eternal conscious torment in hell? Also, what will happen to the earth? Will God's Creation that was called "very good" perish in a ball of fire? It is difficult to understand how such a god of these proponents of hell is good. Moltmann also contends that hell is atheistic because it teaches that each and every person is the master of their own destiny, and by their own free will they choose either heaven or hell. God has no part in their decision, and so the doctrine of hell is ultimately identical with the secular humanism of Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche.
The following brief quotation is from Moltmann's "The Logic of Hell". The full essay begins with a discussion of the Church of England's theology of hell and addresses the question "§1. Is There Fire in Hell?" that I referenced early in this article, and includes criticism referencing the fires from the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The following quotation (included below) follows this first section and explains the most common logic of hell that most evangelicals use when they defend hell. The essay ends with "§3. The Gospel of Christ's Descent into Hell" that explains that a biblical theology of hell is nothing like the fires resulting from the bombing of Hiroshima or the gas furnaces of Auschwitz. Moltmann concludes that hell is about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, where Jesus experienced the 'inescapable remotes from God' and the 'torments of hell" for us. I highly recommend acquiring and reading Moltmann's essay "The Logic of Hell".
2. The Logic of Hell
The logic of hell is nothing other than the logic of human free will, in so far as this is identical with freedom of choice. The theological argument runs as follows: 'God whose being is love preserves our human freedom, for freedom is the condition of love. Although God’s love goes, and has gone, to the uttermost, plumbing the depth of hell, the possibility remains for each human being of a final rejection of God, and so of eternal life' (The Mystery of Salvation: The Story of God's Gift, p. 198). Does God's love preserve our free will, or does it free our enslaved will, which has become un-free through[sic] the power of sin? Does God love free men and women, or does he seek the men and women who have become lost? It is apparently not Augustine who is the Father of Anglo-Saxon Christianity; the Church Father who secretly presides over it is his opponent Pelagius. And it is Erasmus who is the saint of modern times, not Luther or Calvin. Let us gather some arguments against this logic of hell.
The first conclusion, it seems to me, is that it is inhumane, for there are not many people who can enjoy free will where their eternal fate in heaven or hell is concerned. What happens to the people who never had the choice, or never had the power to decide? The children who died early, the severely handicapped, the people suffering from geriatric diseases? Are they in heaven, in total non-being, or somewhere between, in a limbo? What happens to the billions of people whom the gospel has never reached and who were never faced with the choice? What happens to God's chosen people Israel, the Jews, who are unable to believe in Christ? Are all the adherents of other religions destined for annihilation? And not least: how firm must our own decision of faith be if it is to preserve us from total non-being? Anyone who faces men and women with the choice of heaven or hell, does not merely expect too much of them. It leaves them in a state of uncertainty, because we cannot base the assurance of our salvation on the shaky ground of our own decisions. If we think about these questions, we have to come to the conclusion that in the end not many are going to be with God in heaven; most people are going to be in total non-being. Or is the presupposition of this logic of hell perhaps an illusion—the presupposition that it all depends on the human being's free will?
If ultimately, after God's final judgment on human decisions of will, all that is left is 'heaven' and 'hell', we still have to ask ourselves: what is going to happen to the earth, and all the earthly creatures, which the Creator after all found to be 'very good'? If they too are to disappear into 'total non-being', because they are no longer required, how can there then be 'a new earth'?
The logic of hell seems to me not merely inhumane but also extremely atheistic: here the human being in his freedom of choice is his own lord and god. His own will is his heaven—or his hell. God is merely the accessory who puts that will into effect. If I decide for heaven, God must put me there; if I decide for hell, he has to leave me there. If God has to abide by our free decision, then we can do with him what we like. Is that 'the love of God'? Free human beings forge their own happiness and are their own executioners. They do not just dispose over their lives here; they decide on their eternal destinies as well. So they have no need of any God at all. After a God has perhaps created us free as we are, he leaves us to our fate. Carried to this ultimate conclusion, the logic of hell is secular humanism, as Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche already perceived a long time ago. [1]
Moltmann's "The Logic of Hell" primarily criticizes Pelagian theologies of hell that justifies hell by an appeal to free will. Moltmann does not directly address the Calvinist theology of hell that teaches that all people are predestined to heaven or hell by a pre-temporal absolute decree of God alone. The Calvinist view has some strength because it allows for the possibility of universal reconciliation (i.e. universalism), where all people are predestined to heaven (or almost all) but it has a severe weakness that teaches that those who are predestined to hell are done so by God before they ever existed, and this calls into question whether God is truly good. There are some alternates, such as Molinism in Jesuit Theology that argue for middle knowledge (scientia media) teaching that God foresees what a person would choose, and determines their final destination by what God foresees, but this is the same logic of hell that Moltmann criticized in this essay.
Sources:
- Jürgen Moltmann. “The Logic of Hell.”God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann, ed. Richard Bauckham, T & T Clark, 2006, pp. 44–45.
Related: Hell, Jürgen Moltmann, logic of hell, the logic of hell
December 18th, 2017 - 13:16
Solid, straightforward rundown of where Moltmann stood and why. Thank you!
Forgive me for some bonus pedantry. I am a Christian determinist, though not a Calvinist. However, neither Calvinism, nor Christian determinism more generally, are needed for universal reconciliation. That is, the statement, “The Calvinist view has some strength because it allows for the possibility of universal reconciliation,” is not correct because it allows nothing more than was already allowed; it boasts no positive strength here, or to be more plain, universal reconciliation is in-theory foreknowable (and transmissible) even under indeterminism. Google “stanrock please stop saying” for a simple illustration.
December 18th, 2017 - 15:12
Calvinism has the advantage because it places the determination into God’s will, and may include people who do not will it for themselves. Under this schema, God may decide to save people who do not wish to be saved (which in Calvinism is everyone), and this includes a work of the Holy Spirit to cause a change of heart that is contrary to one’s free will.
You mentioned foreknowledge, but I discussed this in my comment on Molinism. It would only evade the criticism somehow if all people willingly chose God’s love. Which is experientially not the case at all. So it collapses into the logic of hell that Moltmann criticizes.
Thanks for commenting!
December 18th, 2017 - 16:12
You said, “It would only evade the criticism somehow if all people willingly chose God’s love. Which is experientially not the case at all.” All people willingly choose God may be the case with postmortem opportunity, to which the early Christians held (via prayers and alms), forcing Augustine to account for it in his advocacy of endless hell belief.
That is, you can believe in indeterministic free will, and that many die unrepentant, but that all will eventually be reconciled. Thus we have folks like St. Clement of Alexandria saying people will be converted by hell, and St. Gregory of Nyssa saying that hell will purify the unrighteous (who perhaps have already repented & submitted per Romans 14:10-11). All patristic universalists believed that the ultimate reconciliation relied in part upon the roles served by the general resurrection & Judgment.
May 4th, 2018 - 21:54
It is ultimately a lack of faith that inhabits people like Calvin. They don’t trust God so they dig & dig until they formulate something that absolves themselves of the faith that is obviously required & so blatantly demonstrated by the scriptures themselves by their utter silence on these questions. Sorry but Romans 9-11 is about as clear as Ezekiel prophecies. We’re not supposed to know or be sure & the people the who are championed as reformers, those guys who murdered their opponents, swung the pendulum too far in their lust for power. They became precisely what they claimed they were fighting.
Christianity is littered with people who go beyond what is written. They don’t want to actually Do what Christ commanded. Most of us are like this – we rather intellectualize & appoint ourselves inquisiters.
Just think about the Fruit of the inquisiter mind when they data mine the Bible for their doctrines. Well they drowned Baptists, burned, beheaded & even started wars. Calvin lacked so much faith in his own theory that he instituted umpteenth laws & penalties that you would swear he believes in works for salvation. That’s their fruit. Today, we can’t murder them but is there any good that comes from it?
Peace
August 24th, 2022 - 09:13
What blather. The Bible (our only source and norm for faith and life) says that Jesus paid for all sins on the cross (universal justification), however it is only applied to the individual by faith given by the Holy Spirit (subjective justification).
All conceived in sin, born in sin and by nature sinful, and thus condemned, absent the gift of faith, they can only choose the sin, death and the devil. Those who are saved by solely by the choice of the Holy Spirit, Who chooses whom He chooses for reasons unknown to us. So, we might say: those who are lost chose to be, and those who are saved were chosen to be.
March 10th, 2023 - 07:12
“they can only choose the sin, death and the devil”
“So, we might say: those who are lost chose to be”