Hell is locked from the outside

C. S. Lewis said that hell is locked from the inside, meaning that those who are sent to hell are so full of ego and hatred against God that they would (eternally!) never admit that they were wrong in their beliefs, and would never wish to live with God. This matches another C. S. Lewis quote. To paraphrase: Those who are saved say to God "Thy will be done", but "Thy will be done" is what God says to those who are damned. Christian apologists want to make hell sound less like the insane doctrine it is. But those who say hell is locked from the inside are incorrect according to the teachings of Jesus (as recorded by whoever wrote Matthew and Luke) and according to the book of Revelation. Why do Christians so often believe the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches, I have no idea. Abysmal reading comprehension? Motivated reasoning? But have no fear. I have conveniently given you a list of easily copied verses to send to any Christian who repeats the falsehood that hell is locked from the inside.

 

(The eternity of it introduces yet another problem for the belief that hell is locked from the inside. Either the obstinance of the damned is free or not. If it is free, then there is some chance of some people in hell coming to regret their choices and desiring to repent. If God forgives them, then hell is not locked from the inside. If God doesn't forgive them, then God is not perfectly forgiving. If the obstinance is not free, then so much for free will defenses and theodicies for evil and hell. Someone might argue that if the damned have free will, then they are free to self-determine the probability of their repentance to be zero. God sends only those people to hell who would self-determine for an eternity their non-repentance. But what are the chances that someone would self-determine for an eternity their non-repentance? It sounds to me like there's a zero chance of that, or at the very least the chance is extremely small. That would mean only a tiny percentage of people, if any at all, would be damned, which conflicts with verses that indicate that many people are damned, and with the orthodox Christian assumption that all non-Christians, which have always been a large majority of humans, go to hell.)

 

Verses that say (or suggest) that hell is locked from the outside (translations are in NRSVUE):

 

Quick list:

 

Matthew 8:11-12

Matthew 13:40-42

Matthew 22:13-14

Matthew 25:10-13

Matthew 25:41-46

Luke 13:23-28

Luke 16:22-26

Revelation 19:20

Revelation 20:1-3 and 20:10-15

Revelation 21:1-2 and 21:8

Revelation 21:22-27

Revelation 22:18-19

 

Expanded list:

 

Matthew:

 

8:11-12 (Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant)

 

[Jesus speaking] "I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

 

13:40-42 (Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds)

 

[Jesus speaking] "Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

 

22:13-14 (The Parable of the Wedding Banquet)

 

[Jesus speaking] "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen."

 

25:10-13 (The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids)

 

[Jesus speaking] "And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

 

25:41-46 (The Judgment of the Nations)

 

[Jesus speaking] "Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life."

 

Luke:

 

13:23-28 (The Narrow Door)

 

"Someone asked him, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ He said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. Once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us,” then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!” There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out.’"

 

16:22-26 (The Rich Man and Lazarus)

 

[Jesus speaking] "The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’"

 

Revelation is notoriously difficult to interpret and, moreover, the New Testament in general contains verses that support eternal conscious torment, universalism, and annihilationism. From a theological point of view, it's difficult to know what the right doctrine of hell is (so much for the perspicuity of scripture, and so much for the idea that God is not the author of confusion). From a common sense point of view, the Bible contradicts itself on this and other doctrines because it was written by different authors at different times, inerrancy and inspiration are false, and the right "doctrine" of hell is that hell is a revenge fantasy, and the New Testament is a mishmash of myth and history.

 

Revelation 22:18-19

 

"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book."

 

Apparently God is willing to lock hell from the outside for anyone who takes away from the book of Revelation by taking away that person's share – so even someone who has a share, someone who otherwise would be saved. This hypothetical person starts off as saved, meaning they are expecting to get into heaven and would be shocked, like those described in Matthew 25:41-46, at being kept out. Even if God never makes good on this threat, God's willingness to lock hell from the outside for anyone says enough.

 

[How could someone who is saved and thus indwelt with the Holy Spirit commit a sin so egregious so as to result in their share of the tree of life being taken from them? Shouldn't being regenerated by the Holy Spirit prevent this? And what about assurance of salvation, if God can deem a sin you've committed to be worth taking away your share for? And isn't blasphemy of the Holy Spirit supposed to be the only unforgivable sin?]

 

Revelation 20:10-15

 

"And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
 

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire, and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."

 

Whether 'forever and ever' is a good translation should be checked to make sure the original semantics / intent wasn't something along the lines of: a period of time. But here we have four parties: the devil, the beast, the false prophet, and those whose names were not found written in the book of life. All four share the same destination: the lake of fire. Presumably, the same destination means the same fate. So if the devil, beast, and false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire and the lake of fire is locked from the outside, then it is plausible that it is locked from the outside for the humans who are also in the lake of fire. Though you could argue that if anyone were to be the kind of person who would refuse to admit that they are wrong and would refuse to repent and ask for forgiveness, it would be the devil and anyone sufficiently like him, perhaps the false prophet (whoever that is) and the beast (whoever that is).

 

[Side note: the devil is also called Satan, the ancient serpent, and the dragon. See Revelation 20:2. The beast is said to be a king. See Revelation 17:11.]

 

Curiously, Revelation 19:19-21 contrasts the fates of the beast and the false prophet with those who followed them:

 

"Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to wage war against the rider on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the brand of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh."

 

In light of Revelation 20:10-15 (and John 5:28-29), this suggests that the followers are killed and temporarily annihilated until they are resurrected unto condemnation.

 

Back to whether hell is locked from the outside:

 

Revelation 21:1-2 sets up the context for 21:8:

 

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."

 

Revelation 21:8 says the following about the damned:

 

"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."

 

And Revelation 21:22-27 says that those whose names are not written in the book of life are excluded from salvation:

 

"I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life."

 

This reinforces that it's not just the devil, the beast, and the false prophet that are thrown into the lake of fire (I suppose 'lake of burning sulfur' and 'lake that burns with fire and sulfur' refer to the same place as the lake of fire), but the damned as well. Again, it's plausible therefore that how the devil, beast, and false prophet are treated, the damned are treated the same. With that in mind, consider:

 

Revelation 20:1-3

 

"Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while."

 

Here we have another place: the pit / the bottomless pit / the abyss / the prison. I suppose this is not the same place as the lake of fire for the following reasons: (1) It is not described by fire or burning sulfur; (2) Satan alone spends 1000 years in this prison, and after being let out is thrown into the lake of fire where the beast and prophet already were as described by Revelation 19:20. So while the bottomless pit is described as literally locked from the outside with a physical key (not that any of Revelation is meant to be taken literally), this doesn't apply directly to the lake of fire. However, if God is willing to lock Satan from the outside when it comes to the bottomless pit, then why wouldn't God be willing to lock the lake of fire from the outside as well? And if the "forever and ever" is an accurate translation that applies to all inhabitants of the lake of fire, and given that there is no "until they repent and ask for forgiveness" exception mentioned, the picture Revelation paints is that of God locking hell from the outside and throwing away the key. And this is exactly the picture painted by the gospel verses quoted above. Indeed, it would make sense to me that the author of Revelation got their ideas from the gospels' Jesus.

Reacting to William Lane Craig's views on hell

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dCmBMQEIOD8

God pours out His wrath against sinners, as we see in the Flood and on the day of judgment as described by Jesus and Revelation (and Paul mentions God's wrath in Romans 1). But why? What's so bad about sin? Because it alienates us from God? How does sin do that? When a child makes a mistake, does their loving parent disown them, or correct their behavior? 

If God is in control, then it's up to God whether we are alienated from Him or not. Even the New Testament depicts Jesus as eating and drinking with sinners, because just as the doctor comes for the sick, not the healthy, so does God come for the unrighteous, not the righteous (Mark 2:17). Far from pushing God away, our sin should draw God all the closer to us! That's when we need God the most, and a loving God would recognize that.

Maybe God pours out His wrath against sin because of how bad sin is, because of the pain and death that sin causes. But that demands the question: What greater source of pain than hell? If causing pain is so bad, then hell, the greatest pains with the greatest duration, is the worst evil (see David Lewis, "Divine Evil").

Jesus and Revelation paint a picture that forgiveness is impossible for the damned. Why? Either the damned are incapable of asking for forgiveness, in which case their free will has been robbed (and so the Christian cannot appeal to free will to defend the justice of hell or God's hiddenness), or they can ask for forgiveness but God refuses it, in which case God is not perfectly forgiving.

Ad hoc model of hell

Here's a way a finite hell might be able to make sense, even on hedonistic terms.

-Problem: it feels unjust to just let a moral monster into heaven. There is no difference between the fates of culprits and their victims. There is no way to separate the evildoers from their deeds, leading to distrust, hatred, unforgiveness, inability for assimilation.

-God is maximally socially intelligent and would understand perfectly that this cannot work. If you're going to reintegrate moral monsters into heaven, there has to be a process for this, a grand ceremony, a special ritual involving the drama of forgiveness and repentance.

-(God could just erase memories, but then what was the point of earth?)

-In hell, evil people experience the exact suffering that they caused others on earth.

-This allows for reconciliation in a number of ways:

-1) There is a difference maker between the fates of good people and evil people; we are not letting evil people get away with it

-Second, it fulfills the aspect of justice that we might call acknowledgement, or understanding; the evil person needs to acknowledge and understand the sheer evil of their actions; by experiencing the exact pain of their victims, they experience the evilness of their actions. You don't have to try to tell them or convince them that what they did was wrong, you directly show them the wrongness of their actions by forcing them to experience the pain that they caused.

-Third, the victim, knowing that the culprit understands the pain that they caused, now shares something in common with the culprit: a shared trauma, a shared pain, and a shared understanding of the evil that was caused.

-Fourth, the victim can forgive the culprit knowing that when the culprit apologizes, the apology is known to be sincere, because the victim knows that the culprit knows exactly the pain that they caused.

-This allows for reconciliation and forgiveness between moral monsters and their victims.

-This in turn allows for all persons to participate in eudaimonia, and not just people who happened to be initially good enough.

-This is better than annihilating the moral monster, because this way the victim also receives resolution. By annihilating the moral monster, you lose out on true resolution for the victim(s).

-This is better than annihilating the moral monster also because it does right by the moral monster; you don't make their lives retroactively absurd.

-This does right by maximizing eudaimonia by having an additional member of the eudaimonic system.

-This also requires a profound amount of virtue on the part of the victims, virtues pertaining to love and forgiveness and a relinquishing of hatred, pain, and protest.

-This means the torture of hell is smart. Instead of a dumb torture where the pain is meaningless, the pain comes explicitly from the harm the damned committed while on earth. The damned experience all and only the pain they caused others.

-Hell is temporary, as it lasts until you have gone through all the pain you caused others.

-This is hedonistically viable because it allows the damned to reintegrate harmoniously into a eudaimonic system, maximizing happiness.

The only problem with this model of hell is that it's totally ad hoc. There's no biblical evidence for it; there is biblical evidence against it, and it's not the orthodox model.

In fact, the plausibility of this model, insofar as it really is a plausible justification of hell, counts against Christianity exactly because Christianity fails to teach it. If Christianity fails to teach the most plausible model of hell, then that counts against Christianity.

This model is a plausible ethical model, meaning that its justification is plausible, though the idea that this hell is real is not plausible.

The point of this is to show that it's not necessarily the case that retributive punishment goes against a perfect being, or against hedonism.

The damned would not experience unbearable suffering in the sense that the damned would rather cease to exist than go through this suffering. It might not even be determined whether the damned are willing or not to undergo this experience. On some level, the damned might understand that while the pain is bad, the pain is for a good reason, and will eventually lead to eudaimonia. In fact, God could implant this background understanding into the damned mind to prevent the damned from experiencing unbearable suffering by giving them hope that eventually it will all work out.

Project: Problems of Evil

The arguments go from weakest to strongest, or easiest to argue to hardest.

1) The Problem of Hell: A perfect being is logically incompatible with worst possible evils. The best possible being can't create a worst possible evil.

2) The Problem of Unjustified Evils, Failed Theodicies, and Skeptical Theism.

 

Fifteen Theodicies (add Justin Mooney's and Sam Leben's)

3) The Problem of Unbearable Suffering: A perfect being is logically incompatible with the rejection of consciousness.

 

4) The Ontological Problem of Evil: A perfect being is logically incompatible with any imperfection whatever. Define imperfections as imaginable improvements. There should be no imaginable improvements over the best possible world; everyone should be living their best life imaginable. But what would such a perfect life look like? Plausibly, it will involve creating, building, expanding, and... improving! Making the world better by adding more people to it and by creating beautiful things to be enjoyed by people.

 

So imperfections (as imaginable improvements) are not the problem. An imperfection is something deeper. Something like: an imaginable improvement that is impossible to work toward. Our world is full of imaginable improvements that are impossible to work toward. So, really, you could say imperfections are pessimism-causing evils. The imaginable improvements of the ideal world do not cause pessimism, because we always know that we can work toward them and will eventually succeed. So if God exists, there should be no pessimism. 

 

We might say: Just as a perfect being rules out consciousness rejecting itself, a perfect being rules out consciousness rejecting the world it finds itself in. (In fact, doesn't rejection of the world you are in entail a rejection of your consciousness?) 

 

And yet, pessimism is a rejection of our world. (With full pessimism being a full rejection, and mitigated pessimism being a mitigated rejection.) So a perfect being rules out pessimism.

 

A perfect being rules out imperfections (thus, any degree of pessimism) because perfection can only beget perfection. And perhaps a perfect being rules out imperfections (any degree of pessimism) because even the slightest degree of pessimism implies a degree of rejection of the world, and thus a rejection of consciousness, and a perfect being is incompatible with a rejection of consciousness.

5) Bonus: The Nightmare God of Love

An analysis of love reveals a contradiction in the Nightmare God of Love: God regards members of the nightmare world as wellsprings of value and also regards members of the nightmare world as not wellsprings of value. If this God fails to accurately regard members of the nightmare world as not wellsprings of value, then there are other aspects of love that he violates. Love to some degree is a success term. Love requires understanding. Plus, for a God to not recognize the members of the nightmare world as suffering, this God would have to be hopelessly confused.

If theists say there are relevant differences between the nightmare world and our world, they must answer 1) What those relevant differences are, and 2) At which point would our world feature those relevant differences were we to imagine our world to steadily get worse over time until it resembled the nightmare world. If the theist cannot do this, and in turns out that the basic analysis of love is correct, along with the analysis behind unbearable suffering, and if it turns out that its these analyses that allow us to see that the nightmare God is necessarily not loving, then we will be able to see that the God of the actual world is necessarily unloving as well.

David Bentley Hart on Hell and Autism

That All Shall Be Saved (2019), taken from the preface to the paperback edition:

My friends' son is now old enough to grant me permission to tell this story, but it happened more than a dozen years ago, when he was only seven or eight. The year before, he had been diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome. He was an extremely intelligent child, shy, typically gentle and quiet, but occasionally emotionally volatile—as tends to be the case with many children classified as "on the spectrum." They are often intensely sensitive to, and largely defensive against, extreme experiences: crowds, loud noises, overwhelming sensory stimulation of any kind, but also pronounced imaginative, affective, or moral dissonances. So perhaps it should have surprised no one when he fell into a state of panic for three days, and then into an extended state of depression, after a Dominican homilist who was visiting his parish happened to mention the eternity of hell in a sermon. It did in fact surprise his parents, though, as they had not realized until then that he had never before consciously absorbed the traditional Christian picture. Now that he had, his reaction was despair. All at once, he found himself imprisoned in a universe of absolute horror, and nothing could calm him until his father succeeded in convincing him that the priest had been repeating lies whose only purpose was to terrorize people into submission. . . . As a result, they have not gone to mass since that time . . . Now, to me it seems obvious—if chiefly at an intuitive level—that this story is more than sufficient evidence of the spiritual squalor of the traditional concept of an eternal hell. After all, another description for a "spectrum" child's "exaggerated" emotional sensitivity might simply be "acute moral intelligence." As difficult as it sometimes makes the ordinary business of life, it is precisely this lack of any very resilient emotional insulation against the world's jagged edges that makes that child incapable of the sort of complacent insensitivity that permits most of us to reconcile ourselves serenely to beliefs that should, soberly considered, cause us revulsion.