To hell with freedom

John Hick, in hisPhilosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1983), concludes his discussion of what he calls “The Augustinian Theodicy” with the comment that hell “… would render impossible any solution to the problem of evil, for it would build both the sinfulness of the damned and the nonmoral evil of the pains and sufferings into the permanent structure of the universe” (p. 45). And in hisDeath and Eternal Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976) he claims that unlike pre-20th century days when “theology was exempt from moral criticism and the theologian could with good conscience attribute to God an unappeasable vindictiveness and insatiable cruelty … today theological ideas are subject to an ethical and rational criticism” (p. 200). Charles Hartshorne, inOmnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), a veritable catechism of fallacies, gives us even less rationale for rejecting the idea of hell (see pp. 97–99). Hans Kung, inEternal Life (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1984) claims that the eternal punishment of hell “remains subject to God and His will” (p. 42), for no punishment, even freely gained, can be “definitive” if God is all-good, all-merciful and almighty (p. 137).Google Scholar

St. Augustine,The City of God BK XXI, Chapter XXIII, cited in Oates,Basic Writings of St. Augustine (New York: Random House, 1948), p. 593.Google Scholar

This is how I think Dante'sInferno needs to be interpreted and this view is nicely presented in C.S. Lewis'The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan, 1946).Google Scholar

Although some contemporary theists would deny this doctrine e.g. James Ross in hisPhilosophical Theology (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), most who develop the freewill defense take this position.Google Scholar

This position is defended in the paper “Omnimpotence and Concurrence” by Zeis and Jacobs in theInternational Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 14: 17–23 (1983).Google Scholar

St. Thomas Aquinas, I.II q.87 a.3 ad 1.Google Scholar

See n. 1 above.Google Scholar