Hell and the God of Justice

          

             One would arguably be hard pressed to find a recent philosophical theologian who has argued more powerfully and imaginatively for Christian Universalism -- or the view that Christ, like the shepherd in the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:1-7), will strive tirelessly until all human beings come to know him and are saved by him -- than Marilyn McCord Adams. In her article "Hell and the God of Justice," offers an interesting and, I think, partly convincing series of arguments against what she identifies as the "traditional doctrine of hell." That doctrine is one she understands as an articulation of the claim that there are

... certain principles of justice [that] entail that men who are sufficiently sinful ought to be made to suffer everlasting torment incompatible with any happiness.[1]

Advocates of this traditional doctrine, Adams continues, have typically defended this claim by arguing for the further assumption that

God would not measure up to these standards of justice if he failed to condemn such men to hell. Consequently, since God is perfectly just, and some men are sufficiently sinful, God will condemn such men to hell on the day of judgment.[2]

Following this, Adams first offers a brief articulation of the concept of justice that defenders of the traditional doctrine of hell (or TDH) have implicitly assumed. The rest of her essay is devoted to offering arguments against specific principles of justice that defenders of TDH have used to try to bolster the doctrine or make it convincing.

            First a comment or two on the concept of justice presupposed by defenders of TDH. According to Adams, some have conceived of justice in such a way that a person is just if and only if (i) he is fair (i.e., treats all cases alike) and (ii) treats no one worse than he deserves to be treated.[3] And as Adams rightly notes, no one who conceived of justice in these terms could rightly argue that God's perfect justice required of him that he condemn certain sufficiently evil men to hell.

On this conception, God will be unjust only if he treats equally sinful men differently or treats some persons worse than they deserve. But God could avoid both of these actions if he awarded eternal salvation to everyone without exception. The fact that he gave eternal salvation to Judas as well as to Peter and John would no more make him unjust on this conception, than it would show that vineyard owner in Jesus' parable (Matthew 20: 1-16) was unjust because he gave a penny both to the men who worked all day and to the men who worked for one hour.[4]

What the defender of TDH actually needs, according to Adams, is that (iii) a just person treats no one better than he deserves to be treated. For, otherwise, God could always treat such sufficiently evil men better than they deserve and decide to rescue them from eternal torment.

            Next, the first two conceptions of justice she articulates, and then criticizes are, first, the familiar principle of 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' or what one might call the retributive theory of justice (RTJ). The basic and familiar idea behind RTJ is that punishment is just if and only if it is in direct proportion to the offense that occasions the punishment. The second principle is from Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, and is what one might call the "worthiness of honor" theory of justice (WHTJ). This less familiar principle calls for proportional retribution against any agent who offends the honor of anyone whose moral status is superior to that of the one who offends. The third and final is, borrowing from St. Thomas Aquinas, based on the idea that someone who, in selecting a temporal good to the exclusion of his ultimate end, actually chooses such that he prefers to eternally enjoy this temporal good over his ultimate end. Thus, Aquinas argues, such a man is thereby justly condemned for eternity in consequence of his choice.

            Adams' arguments against the first two principles, RTJ and WHTJ, strike me as pretty powerful and as prima facie pretty convincing -- especially her criticisms of RTJ. So, therefore, I'll reserve my comments for what she has to say regarding the third principle. And as it currently stands, Aquinas's principle seems open to objection. For as Adams observes, it simply does not follow from the fact that someone wills to do something that in fact results in his eternal condemnation that the person wills to be deprived of happiness forever.[5] (For example, perhaps the person does not know or believe that the action in question has this direful consequence.) Nor does it follow from the fact that someone wills to do something that, as a matter of fact, results in his being forever deprived of happiness that the person a fortiori wills to have forever the good obtained from it.

            But as Adams herself admits, one can, without difficulty, reformulate the principle in such a way as to avoid these objections. At the core of Aquinas' argument is the principle that 'to will a certain evil is just as bad as to do it.' And taking this key insight into account, Adams suggests that

Even if it is true that human beings have only limited power to harm others in this world, they could will to cause unlimited and everlasting harm -- e.g., by willing to make someone totally unhappy forever. And if to will it is as bad as to do it, they could thereby merit an unlimited and everlasting punishment.[6]

Taking this suggestion to heart, moreover, the question, now, is whether there's good reason for thinking that 'to will it is as bad as to do it' is, in fact, true.  

            Ignoring the largely irrelevant social context in which the primary incentive for punishment is simply to prevent some men from harming others, Adams focuses on the point at which 'to will it is as bad as to do it' would be actually relevant for the purposes of settling the present doctrinal query. For, as Christians believe, it is on judgment day that God will mete out reward and punishment to various men on the basis of how well they lived their lives in accordance with his will. And here,

Volitions as well as deeds determine a man's character; and evil volitions as well as evil deeds are contrary to God's will.[7]

But, conceding that what one wills may sometimes be as bad a reflection on one's character as the actual doing, does it follow that this is generally true?

            Not so, Adams argues. And her argument here is based on the plausible assumption that persisting in an evil desire forever is a worse reflection of one's moral character than persisting in it for only a limited time. Using this principle as the hinge of her argument, Adams introduces the fictional case of Brown, who desires to torture another man, Black, for all eternity.  

Suppose that Brown wants personally to torture Black forever. Suppose further that Brown does torture Black for 30 years after which Black dies of his injuries. When Black dies, Brown expresses great disappointment that his opportunity to torture Black has come to an end. Brown's deeds and desires show him to be very wicked. But do they reflect as badly as would the actual everlasting torture? I do not think so. Persisting in an evil desire forever is a sign of greater moral defect that persisting in it for a limited time. Even though Brown strongly desires to torture Black forever and has made a beginning on the project, it remains possible that at some later time the desire will cease. His voluntarily continuing the torture forever, however, involves Brown's forever continuing to desire the torture. If for no other reason than this, torturing Black forever is a worse reflection on Brown's character than simply willing it at some particular time.[8]
 

In conclusion, then, it is not a general truth that willing something is as bad a reflection on one's character as is the actual doing. 

            But whether Adams' argument succeeds depends on what exact sense of "wills" or "willing" the argument requires. For there is an ambiguity in the thesis that "it is not generally true that what one wills is as bad a reflection on one's character as what one actually does." Relevant to the present discussion, it could, one, possibly mean that 

(a) "it is not generally true that what one wills, irrespective of the particular occasion and irrespective of the particular time, is as bad a reflection on one's character as what one actually does on a given occasion and at a particular time," 

or it could mean that 

(b) "it is not generally true that what one wills, on a given occasion and at a particular time, is as bad a reflection on one's character as what one actually does irrespective of the particular occasion and irrespective of the particular time,"

or it could also mean that 

(c) "it is not generally true that what one wills, irrespective of the particular occasion and irrespective of the particular time, is as bad a reflection on one's character as what one actually does irrespective of the particular occasion and irrespective of the particular time," 

or, finally, it could mean that

(d) "it is not generally true that what one wills, on a given occasion and at a given time, is as bad a reflection on one's character as what one actually does irrespective of the particular occasion and irrespective of the particular time. 
     

Adams argument against the thesis is effectively that Brown's torturing Black forever reflects worsely on his character than his willing it at a particular time. And here she takes the example of Black dying before Brown can torture him forever as an effective counter-example to the thesis in question. This, in turn, requires that Adam's thesis should be interpreted in the sense of (b).

            But taken in the sense of (b), it is not obvious that the principle is true. For it is further ambiguous as to whether "on a given occasion and at a particular time" from (b) means "at a specific time such that this time can include no further time," or whether it allows one to group together several times under the heading or the category of a single time. If taken in the sense of "at a specific time such that this time can include no further times," Adams' principle seems either correct or at least prima facie plausible. If taken, however, in the sense of one's grouping together several times under the heading or category of a single time, then it's not obvious that the principle is true.

            For while it may be considered an at least plausible principle with respect to relatively small groupings of times, Adam's principle would require I think much further argument to establish its conclusion for anything larger than a small grouping. But here is a problem. When compared to an infinite period of time, taken here as all times t - n after t, any grouping of time will be considered an equally small grouping of time. For, when compared to any infinite sum, any finite sum x that is less than any other finite sum y, the infinite sum will have infinitely more members than either x or y. But if the infinite sum has infinitely more members than either x or y, it follows that y is not greater than x with respect to the infinite sum. For the infinite sum will exceed either finite sum by an infinite number of its members. And if this is right, one will be simply unable to make any effective distinction between a grouping of times that is short with respect to, say, human reckoning with a grouping of time that is not short with respect to human reckoning when the comparison is between the finite time and the infinite time.

            And indeed one cannot take the "particular time" that Adam uses in her example in the sense of "a specific time such that this time can include no further time." For, here, Adams would need to give a plausible reason why one should include this reading while excluding the "grouping of times" reading. And it is just not easy to see what such a plausible reason could be. For once one grants (1) that "particular time" can include groupings of times and (2) that all groupings of time are small when compared to an infinite amount of time, it is unclear whether one can affirm that willing to cause an infinite length of suffering for or throughout a finite duration of time actually reflects worse on one's character than one's willing to cause an infinite length of suffering for or throughout an infinite duration of time. And if the main force behind Adams' counterexample was the intuition that willing something bad for a single time or an instant does not reflect as badly on one's character as one's willing it for all times after a certain time, it is unclear whether one should be able to affirm the same for 'any' amount of finite time.  
           For this would require that the character-deforming effects of the total consecutive times in which Brown tortures Black are straightforwardly additive, and this principle is not only one that does not seem very plausible in itself; it is also one that Adams herself has explicitly denied (i.e., she herself denies that harms or the effects of harms are straightforwardly additive in her reply against the Retributive Theory of Punishment). That is, even if one grants that it is true that Brown's actually torturing Black for all times is worse than Brown's willing, for *any* amount of finite time, to torture Black for all times, Adams cannot consistently say that it is *because* of the fact that one includes an infinite amount of time and the other does not include an infinite amount of time that makes the one worse than the other.

            I therefore conclude that Adams' argument against Aquinas' reformulated principle is not successful. In this, my final paragraph, however, I want to identify one point where Adams might renew her attack. Here, I do not necessarily agree with Adams that Christian Universalism is true. I do, however, share her conviction that there are some potential objections to TDH that require one to reformulate the doctrine somewhat if it is to survive sustained attack. Assuming that Adams is correct that the defender of TDH needs something like (iii) a just person treats no one better than he deserves to be treated the defender of TDH will possibly find himself in serious trouble if he insists on defending the doctrine of hell on the basis of doctrinal orthodoxy (which, in practice, seems perhaps like the most likely motivation for defending it).

            For, in addition to TDH, Christians (at least those in the Latin West) have traditionally also accepted the view that no human being is such as to have the power for meriting grace, without which no one can attain eternal salvation. But from the fact that no one has it in his power to merit grace, it seems to follow that no one has it in his power to deserve grace. For, surely, no one deserves a certain good unless he merits it. But, according to (iii), God is unjust if God gives to human beings anything better than they deserve. So, it follows, God is unjust for giving grace to any human beings. Here, the options for a defender of TDH seem to be either to (a) attack one of the premises in this last argument or to (b) find some alternative principle that is just as plausible as (iii) with which to replace (iii). But that is a task for another time.   

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[1] Marilyn McCord Adams, "Hell and the God of Justice," from Religious Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4 (December, 1975), 433.

[2] Adams, 433.

[3] Adams, 434.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Adams, 444.

[6] Adams, 445.

[7] Adams, 445.

[8] Adams, 446.