Who Goes to Hell?

Whilst Hell is not talked about that often in contemporary Catholic circles, it is important to the Church because it was important to Jesus. In fact, Jesus speaks more about Hell in the New Testament than anyone else. The usual blame-carrier for anything unpopular, Paul the apostle, never uses the term and rarely refers to the concept. And lest one think that that "dreadful" Old Testament must go on and on about Hell, I remind that Hell is not even really in the OT. Prior to Jesus, there was no properly developed understanding of what the justice of God entailed for the unrighteous. This does not entail that they did not believe in something that has now been developed into what we call Hell, but nonetheless, the Old Testament rarely speaks about the afterlife in any notable detail.

Hell is, however, a rather uncomfortable topic for a lot of people. Many have even objected that the existence of Hell would constitute evil on behalf of God, and that if God is good, Hell must be empty. This is rejection outright of the concept of Hell is not within the realm of possibilities for Catholics. Even so, embedded within the Christian tradition there is the hope that everyone would be saved, that no humans would be in Hell.* Until the 20th century, that view was peripheral, and the dominant view (championed by St Thomas Aquinas, among others) is that the saved are actually not that great in number.

I will not make any estimates about numbers. Simply as an aside, I note that I do not believe, as has become popular since Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Rahner, that we have reasonable hope that everyone will be saved. I do not deny that there may be hope, but I do not think such a hope is reasonable. I am particularly cautious of that idea because it leads easily to an assumption of universalism, it may contribute to an understanding of Christ that leaves him deficient of any redemptive or salvific message, and in turn that the Gospel and its missionary corollary be corrupted. These are not by any means necessary outcomes of the inculturation of this "reasonable hope" of universalism, but they seem likely.

In practice, any discussion of that sort must come after one answers another question: Who goes to Hell?  Or its complementary: Who goes to Heaven? The answer is, I think, remarkably simple. There are two sorts of person that go to Heaven: anybody who has lived a perfect life, and anyone who has been forgiven for the imperfections in their lives. Or in other words, you either do nothing wrong, or you get forgiven for what you did do wrong. Both sorts of people are, in principle, possible, but the former does not obtain in reality. So everyone else is in the category of having done something wrong, and so needing forgiveness for it. Forgiveness from where, though? Here things can be complicated, because wrongdoings affect at minimum two people, and involve the wrong-doer, a third.

A complete philosophy of forgiveness would be too long at this point, so I am going to simplify things somewhat by talking only about sin, and not wrongdoing in a larger sense. At the end of the day, all wrongdoing is sin, but the term sin singles out that it is an offence against God. This is why when King David kills Uriah after committing adultery with his wife, Bathsheba, he can still write that line in the psalm "against you alone have I sinned." The word sin singles out God as the party wronged.

Only sinless people enter Heaven. One can be sinless because one has committed no wrongs, or sinless because one has been forgiven. Since the wronged party when considering sin is God, it is God who must grant that forgiveness. Neither the forgiveness of some third party, nor a conscience that is clear, is sufficient. God must forgive, and God alone.

Now, it is central to Christian thought that God has done what is required to combine justice and mercy, to be both completely fair and still forgiving. Whilst it may seem simple at first, there are complicating factors in combining the two: for instance, in many cases, to forgive appears to mean that one no longer holds the forgiven party as guilty. On the other hand, to be just appears to mean that people must get their due for their wrongdoings. One would not consider a judge just if they forgave a murderer in a courtroom - the judge's job is to pass the sentence the murderer deserves. Nonetheless, if momentarily we skip over the brilliant solution God gives in Christ, the point remains: despite the necessity for justice, God offers forgiveness to everyone.

Forgiveness is, however, a transaction between two parties. It is a gift, and hence forgiveness has only truly been gifted once it has been received. Therefore, until the sinner has accepted forgiveness, they remain in their sins. As seems fairly obvious, the condition for forgiveness to be accepted is contrition, being sorry for one's wrongdoing. Exactly how much of that needs to be something felt and how much needs to be something acknowledged mentally is an interesting question (one that Catholic penitents often seem to ponder), but not important for the point I am making. Finally, it is important that the wrong-doer accept forgiveness as it comes from the wronged party. While this seems like a minor point, in real life situations, issues such as stubbornness or pride might push someone to, despite being sorry, not want to accept forgiveness. When one accepts forgiveness, one has to recognise the wronged party as exercising a certain power over oneself. Originally, this was the power of justice, and in forgiveness, it is the power of absolution. Both must be recognised: receiving forgiveness entails that one acknowledges that one has done wrong and is hence sorry, and acknowledges that the wronged party had the power of justice, the right to give what is deserved - and yet that, in forgiving, one exercises instead an act of absolution. In short, for the gifting of forgiveness to happen, the wronged party must offer it, and the wrong-doer must receive it, particularly admitting to their fault and acknowledging the forgiveness as it is, coming from the wronged party.

Ignoring the difficulties (philosophical, theological and practical) posed by mercy and justice combining, this is fairly analogous to how we forgive in our daily lives. I want to draw attention to one point about being sorry for something: not only is it the recognition that one ought not have done (or should have actually done) that thing, but it must be clear to the sorry person that their action was wrong. They cannot simply be sorry "that you feel that way."

If what I have said so far is broadly correct, then we know what the second class of people who enter Heaven is: sinners who have accepted forgiveness. Moreover, we know what forgiveness means from the point of view of the wrong-doer. We hence know what it means for someone to go to Hell: they are a sinner who has not accepted forgiveness. That is the crucial point: forgiveness is open to all, and anyone who goes to Hell has not accepted it.

What sort of person would not accept forgiveness, free as it is? There are many reasons that one would not accept forgiveness, or grace, as it is often called by Christians. They might not be sorry for what they have done, they might prefer to excuse themselves and hence not consider themselves as wrongdoers at all, they might not see an action as wrong anyway, they might not want to accept forgiveness from God. There are countless others.

God allows us the free choice of accepting or rejecting forgiveness. Precisely because the decision is now in the hands of the sinner, of people like myself, we are the ones that decide whether we go to Heaven or Hell.** So ultimately, the person who goes to Hell is the person that wants to go to Hell, that prefers Hell to Heaven.

I recommend The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis, a novel that describes some of the different ways one might prefer Hell to Heaven. Novels that describe theological points really are much more of a strong point for Lewis than his apologetic material, and this is one of his better ones. I think he is right when he depicts Hell as a gloomy place where nobody likes, much less loves, each other. Everyone is just a miserable individual, and the particularly bad people get as far away as possible from everyone else. A few people get to visit the outskirts of Heaven, where the reader gets a glimpse of why they ended up in Hell. Lewis is masterful at creating the characters, and I do him disservice if I try and summarise them, but he has the same sort of people in Hell as I have explained would be there: people who will not accept forgiveness, for instance, because others who are "worse" are also forgiven, like the man annoyed that there is a murderer in Heaven, but his "lesser" wrongdoings got him in Hell.

There's the man who is unwilling to let go of some character trait that is no longer acceptable in Heaven. There is the artist who would not accept that she is not held in glory and fame if she goes to Heaven, who denies she should be subject to God, given she is so talented an artist. There are some more eye-brow raising characters: there is the woman who will not accept forgiveness because she thinks she has been wronged by God in allowing her son to die, and will not enter Heaven even though her child is there. There is the "liberal" bishop, who could not accept that he ended up being wrong, who lives in self-denial about Heaven and Hell actually being "literal." Lewis' characters are richer than I have presented them, and I really do recommend reading The Great Divorce.

The preceding has hopefully given some clarity as to why I am not a universalist, someone who believes that Hell is empty. I hope that it does turn out to be empty, but I think I hope in vain, because there seems to be a wealth of people who are unrepentant, who would rather anything but communion with God, anything before actually accepting forgiveness. Those are the people, in summary, who I think go to Hell.


* It is a set doctrine that the devil goes to Hell, and all Satan's demons. So whilst I may slip into the language of saying "Hell is empty", I really mean that Hell is empty of humans.

 ** Alarm bells should be ringing in the ears of Christians with that sort of statement, and someone like St Augustine of Hippo is glaring at me from on high. I think that statement is, in a general sense, quite misleading. It reeks of semi-Pelagianism. I contend that who decides what is entirely a matter of grace, as would St Augustine. I can still make that sort of statement because I think that, despite it being entirely in the hands of God, it is God who causes us to freely choose to accept or reject forgiveness. The end result is what I have said, though: the person who goes to Heaven is the one who decides to accept it, and that decision is free. All the complication arises because we have no experience whatsoever of any agent being caused to freely choose something. We normally presume that if it is caused, it is less free, and that if it is free, then it is not caused. This is simply not correct in this case. Predestination and free will remain difficult to combine.