[See http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/section/jc1.htm for the previous seven articles].

Matthew's Last Judgment scene has the King saying to 'those on his left hand, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels"' (25:41 NRSV).

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Now, the gist of C.S.Lewis's response in The Problem of Pain (which he wrote before his wife Joy died and he published A Grief Observed... I wonder if after all that he ever thought of revising his PP ideas?)

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The doctrine of hell, although barbarous to many, has the full support of Scripture, especially of our Lord's own words; and has always been held by Christendom. And it has the support of Reason: if a game is played it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in voluntary self-surrender to God, it also has the right to voluntarily refuse.

I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully 'All will be saved'. But my reason retorts, 'Without their will, or with it'? In fact, God has paid the price, and herein lies the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is hell.

God can't condone evil, forgiving the wilfully unrepentant. Lost souls have their wish - to live wholly in the Self, and to make the best of what they find there. And what they finds there is hell. Should God increase our chances to repent? I believe that if a million opportunities were likely to do good, they would be given. But finality has to come some time. Our Lord uses three symbols to describe hell - everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46), destruction (Matthew 10:28), and privation, exclusion, banishment (Matthew 22:13). The image of fire illustrates both torment and destruction (not annihilation - the destruction of one thing issues in the emergence of something else, in both worlds). It may be feasible that hell is hell not from its own point of view, but from that of heaven. And it is also possible that the eternal fixity of the lost soul need not imply endless duration. Our Lord emphasises rather the finality of hell. Does the ultimate loss of a soul mean the defeat of Omnipotence? In a sense, yes. The damned are successful rebels to the end, enslaved within the horrible freedom they have demanded. The doors of hell are locked on the inside.

In the long run, objectors to the doctrine of hell must answer this question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins, and at all costs to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty, and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so - in the life and death of his Son. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, that is what he does. Hell, it must be remembered, is not only inhabited by Neros or Judas Iscariots or Hitlers. They were merely the principal actors in this rebellious drama.

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Tomorrow I'll post a universalist response, then try the just-about-impossible task of making some sense of it all...

-- Shalom! Rowland Croucher http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

'We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.' - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man