Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin With Impunity by Thomas Talbott
Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. 97301 USA
Abstract: I argue that the very idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply incoherent and, quite apart from its incoherence, implies that we are free to sin with impunity forever and to defeat God’s justice forever as well.
According to traditional Christian theism, we are free to sin, perhaps even to sin with a degree of impunity for a while, but we are not free to sin with impunity forever. That, indeed, is part of the rationale behind the traditional understanding of hell as a place of punishment. If we manage to sin with impunity during our earthly life and fail to repent of our sin, then in the next life we shall discover that we have not escaped our punishment altogether. So it is not surprising, perhaps, that the brief allusions to hell in the New Testament, particularly as they occur in the words of Jesus, always picture hell as a forcibly imposed punishment rather than as a freely embraced condition.
In the parable of the sheep and the goats, those subjected to punishment not only do not choose their punishment; they are surprised to receive it. And in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man’s torment (from which he begs relief) is hardly something that he has freely chosen to endure. He may have freely chosen something— to live selfishly or disobediently during his earthly life, for example— but he has not freely chosen the punishment or the torment to which he is being subjected as a result of his sin.
Now when the traditional understanding of hell as unbearable suffering, forcibly imposed as punishment for sin, is conjoined with the idea of unending duration, we get the diabolical picture of an eternal torture chamber of some kind. And few religious thinkers today, even among the most conservative, are prepared to swallow an idea as unpalatable as that. Most would concede that an eternal torture chamber is utterly inconsistent with a supremely loving and supremely powerful being. But if that is true, then any theist who seeks to retain a doctrine of hell must revise the traditional doctrine in one of two ways: either by rejecting the idea of unbearable suffering or by rejecting the idea that the suffering literally endures forever.
Over the past decade, a number of Christian philosophers have set forth a free will defense, or perhaps even a free will theodicy, of hell1 and have therefore chosen the first alternative; they have in effect replaced the idea of unbearable suffering, which no one could freely embrace forever, with that of a freely chosen life apart from God…read remainder of article HERE
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