Hell—a speculation that has become weary with the years. Preachers themselves ignore it, perhaps because they've been abandoned by the poor, but serviceable, human allusion that the ecclesiastical fires of the Holy Office had in this world: a temporal torment no doubt, but not unworthy within terrestrial limitations of being a metaphor for an immortal, perfect pain without destruction, which the heirs of the divine wrath will know forever. Whether this hypothesis is satisfactory or not, it is unarguable that there is a general lassitude in the propaganda of this institution. (Let no one jump to conclusions: the term propaganda is not of commercial origin, but catholic; it is a meeting of cardinals.) In the second century, the Carthaginian Tertullian could imagine Hell and foresee its operation in this discourse:
"Do spectacles please you? then expect a greater one, the Final Judgment. What wonder will I experience, what laughter, what celebration, what joy, when I see so many arrogant kings and lying gods agonizing in the very lowest prison of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, melting in fires more fierce than the ones they ever incinerated for Christians; so many grave philosophers shaming themselves in the red flames with their illusory auditors; so many acclaimed poets trembling not before the tribunal of Midas, but of Christ; so many actors of tragedy more eloquent now in the manifestation of so genuine a torment... (De spectaculis, 30; citation and version from Gibbon.)Dante himself, who in his great task to foresee in anecdotal mode some decisions of the Divine Justice concerning northern Italy, does not display an equal enthusiasm. The literary infernos of Quevedo—mere comedic opportunities for anachronisms—and of Torres Villaroel—mere opportunity for metaphors—only prove the growing abuse of the dogma. The decadence of Hell is in them almost similar to Baudelaire's, who was so skeptical of the imperishable torments that he pretends to adore them. (A significant etymology derives the innocuous French verb géner from the powerful Scriptural word gehnna.)
I now consider Hell. The nominal but thoughtless article from Diccionario enciclopédico hispano-americano is useful reading, not for its dispirited news or for its frightening ecclesiastical theology, but for the perplexity evident in its pages. It begins by observing that the notion of hell does not belong exclusively to the catholic church, a precaution whose intrinsic meaning is: "Let not the masons say that the Church introduced those brutalities"; but it constantly reminds us that Hell is dogma, and it adds with urgency: " It is to the unfading glory of Christianity that it attracts all the truths it finds dispersed in false religions." Whether Hell is a fact of natural religion or simply of revealed religion, for me no other topic of theology is as fascinating and powerful. I am not referring to the simplistic mythology of dung, roasters, fire and tongs, which has been growing at the root and which all the writers have been repeating to the dishonor of their imagination and their decency [1]. I am speaking of the strict notion—a place of eternal punishment for the wicked—which constitutes the dogma without other obligations to place it in loco reali, in a precise space, and a beatorum sede distincto, a different place from that which the elect inhabit. To imagine the contrary would be sinister. In the fiftieth chapter of his History, Gibbon attempts to remove Hell's wonder and writes that the two vulgar ingredients of fire and darkness are sufficient to create a sensation of pain that can be aggravated infinitely by the idea of duration without end. This unhappy objection proves, perhaps, that the creation of infernos is easy, but it does not mitigate the admirable terror of its invention. The attribute of eternity is horrifying. Continuity—the fact that the divine persecution lacks intervals, that in Hell there is no rest—is even more so, but imagining it is impossible. The eternity of the punishment is what is under dispute.
There are two important and wonderful arguments to invalidate its eternity. The oldest is the one concerning conditional immortality or annihilation. Immortality, argues this comprehensive reasoning, is not an attribute of fallen human nature, it is a gift of God in Christ. It cannot be mobilized, therefore, against the same individual upon whom it is bestowed. It is not a curse, it is a gift. Whoever is worthy of it deserves heaven; whoever is unworthy of receiving it, dies in death, as Bunyan wrote, dies without rest. Hell, according to this pious theory, is the blasphemous human name for oblivion from God. One of its propagators was Whately, the author of that famous unforgettable pamphlet: Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte.
A more curious speculation is the one presented by the evangelical theologian Rothe, in 1869. His argument—ennobled by the secret mercy of denying the infinite punishment of the condemned—observes that to make punishment eternal is to make Evil eternal. God, he affirms, cannot will that eternity for His universe. He insists on the scandal of supposing that sinful man and the devil can mock God's benevolent intentions forever. (Theology teaches that the creation of the world is a work of love. The term predestination, in theology, refers to predestination to glory; depravation is merely the opposite, it is a non-election translated into infernal punishment, but it does not constitute a special act of divine grace.) He advocates, then, a declining, waning life for reprobates. He envisions them loitering in the edges of Creation and the emptiness of infinite space, maintaining themselves with scraps of life. He concludes: "Just as demons are unconditionally removed from God and are his unconditional enemies, their activity is against the kingdom of God and is organized into a diabolical kingdom, which must naturally elect a leader. The head of that demoniacal government—the Devil—must be imagined as changing. The individuals that assume the throne of that kingdom succumb to the phantasm of their being, but are renewed within the diabolical lineage" (Dogmatik, 1,248).
I arrive at the most unlikely part of my task: the reasons elaborated by humanity in favor of the eternity of Hell. I will summarize them in order of increasing significance. The first is of a punitive nature: it postulates that the fear of punishment resides precisely in its eternal aspect and that to question this invalidates the efficacy of the dogma and is like playing games with the devil. This is an argument made by police-types and doesn't deserve a refutation. The second one is written: The punishment must be infinite because so is the sin of attacking the majesty of the Lord who is an infinite Being. It has been observed that this demonstration proves so much that we may infer it proves nothing: it proves there is no venial sin, all faults are unpardonable. I would add that this is a case of scholastic frivolity and that its trap lies in the plurality of meanings of the term infinite, which when applied to the Lord means unconditional, to punishment it means unceasing, and to sin nothing that I understand. Besides, to argue that a sin is infinite because it assails God who is an infinite Being, is like arguing that it is holy because God is, or like thinking that all injuries against a tiger have to be striped.
Now I deal with the burden of the third argument, the only one. Perhaps it is written in this manner: Heaven and Hell are eternal because the dignity of free will demands it; either our deeds are eternal or the "I" is a delusion. The virtue of this reasoning is not logic, it is much more; it is entirely dramatic. It imposes on us a terrible game, it dispenses on us the atrocious right of damning ourselves, of insisting on evil, of rejecting the operations of grace, of being fuel for the fire that never ends, of causing God to fail in our destiny, of being ghostly bodies in eternity and detestabile cum cacodaemonibus consortium. "Your destiny is real," it tells us, "eternal condemnation and eternal salvation are in your hands; this responsibility is your honor." This sentiment is similar to Bunyan's: "God did not play in tempting me; neither did I play, when I sunk as into the bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me; wherefore I may not play in relating them..." (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners; The Preface).
I believe that in our unthinkable destiny, in which infamies rule like a carnal pain, every bizarre thing is possible, even the perpetuity of a Hell, but also that it is irreligious to believe in it.
POSTSCRIPT
On this merely factual page I can also relate a dream. I dreamed that I awoke from another dream—populated with cataclysms and tumults—and that I awoke into an unrecognizable room. It grew clear: a general small light defined the foot of the metal bedframe, the standard chair, the closed door and window, the clear table. I thought with fear, "Where am I?" and intuited that I didn't know. I thought, "Who am I?" and couldn't recognize myself. Fear grew within me. I thought: This disconsolate vigil is Hell, this vigil without destiny will be my eternity. Then I really awoke: trembling.
[1]: Nonetheless, the amateur of hells will do well not to ignore these honorable infractions: the sabian hell, whose four superimposed vestibules admit tiny streams of dirty water on the floor, but whose principal habitation is dilapidated, dusty, and empty; the hell of Swedenborg, whose murkiness is not perceived by the condemned who have rejected heaven; the hell of Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman, pages 86-137), which vainly distracts eternity with the artifices of luxury, art, erotica and fame.
translated by AE
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