Thoughts on Hell

    Last week I led a colloquium on hell for the other Master's students. The two most helpful comments came from the Australian Lutheran pastor who is my classmate.

1. He noted that the degree of comfort we have with the sensible punishments of hell seem to parallel the ways in which we structure our own temporal penal systems. Calvin and Luther could relish in the idea of eternal torment the same way that they delighted in watching witches burn. We squirm at the idea in the same way that we protest against the cruel and unusual punishments of criminals. The point is not, of course, to argue from historical contingency into a relativism equally happy with both forms of civil retribution – I am happy to declare our form absolutely better than the form in Calvin's Geneva. The point is that our ability to conceive of eternal eschatological punishment is perhaps too connected with our sense of temporal justice – both in the case of the Reformers and in our own – and too little determined by revelation.
   
2. Our Aussie also noted that, for himself, he has a far easier time imagining himself than imagining anyone else in hell. I can experience within myself the freedom which I know capable of rejecting God. I know how often I have courted perdition. But so far am I from being able to experience anyone else's freedom from the inside that I can more easily find external reasons and explanations for the sins of others. There is an echo here of all the saints who have declared themselves to be the greatest sinners – and of Balthasar's hope for everyone else before one's self.