The Off-Center Cross of Christian Universalism
Christian universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be reconciled to God and be saved, and that there is therefore no eternal hell.
It is not the belief that salvation is available to all people if they choose to accept it, nor is it the belief that all religions lead to God. Rather, it is the belief that all people are eventually saved by Christ and go to heaven—or to whatever blessed state it is believed God has in store for humanity.
Recently a Christian blogger whose screen name is The Iron Knuckle posted an article titled, “Tough Apologetic Questions for the Non-Universalist.” I took up his challenge, and posted a long comment in response, whose original version you can read here.
The rest of this post is:
- My comment, edited to add the main questions from the original article as headings, and to remove a closing biblical question for The Iron Knuckle.
- Some commentary on The Iron Knuckle’s reply, and on the general aftermath of my response.
- Some additional thoughts on why many people believe what they do about God’s omnipotence.
Here goes:
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
I don’t expect you to change your mind (I think we’ve had conversations before). But I’ll answer your questions from the point of view of a Swedenborgian Christian non-universalist.
1. Does God love the people in Hell?
Yes, God loves the people in hell.
Hell is not “eternal conscious torment.” This horrible and insane idea comes from reading literally statements in the Bible that should be read metaphorically. There is no literal hellfire. Rather, hellfire is the spiritual fire (in a negative sense) of anger and hatred that people in hell feel and express toward one another and toward God. Hell is not a place where people are punished by God for sins committed on earth. Rather, it is a place where people who have chosen to enjoy evil rather than enjoying good are allowed to engage in their particular foul enjoyments as much as is possible, but suffer the inevitable consequences of their actions, inflicted, not by God, but by each other and by themselves. I invite you to read my article:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
God does not love the people in hell differently. God’s love is always, everywhere, with everyone and everything, the same. However, people in hell accept God’s love differently than people in heaven. Specifically, people in hell reject God’s love, and what they do inadvertently accept they twist into its opposite.
This means that God did not make hell, as your opening meme suggests. Nor does God send anyone to hell. Though the power to make hell comes from God (there is no other source of power), the people who live in hell make hell for themselves by twisting the power of God’s love into its opposite: greed, selfishness, lust for power over others, lust for promiscuous and adulterous sex, anger, hatred, jealousy, and so on. The people who go to hell send themselves there because they prefer hell over heaven.
2. Can God’s will be defeated?
God’s will cannot be defeated.
However, God’s will is not fully described by the single biblical statement that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3).
God also wills that people be saved in freedom, by their own free will choice, so that the relationship with God is real and human rather than automatic and pre-programmed—which would cause us to be puppets or robots, not human beings. This is why our Lord says:
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. (Revelation 3:20)
And it is why the Lord says:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. . . . I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days. (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19–20a)
God’s will is not fully described by any single statement or verse in the Bible, but by the entire Bible.
God’s will is more complex than simply wanting to save everyone. God’s will is to have a freely chosen, mutual relationship with beings whom God has created. This means that God’s will is that we be free to accept or reject a relationship with God.
Giving us that freedom requires that God accept and respect our choice if we choose not to have a loving relationship with God. This also is a part of God’s will. Yes, when we choose evil instead of good it invokes God’s “permissive” rather than “ordaining” will, to use your terms. (Swedenborg discusses these concepts under the terms “divine permission” and “divine providence.”) Yet both are part of God’s will and God’s purpose for creation.
In short, God both loves us and respects us enough to give us a choice about whether or not to return God’s love. Giving us that choice and respecting the choice we make is part of God’s will.
Yes, we are children of God. But God wants us to grow up from spiritual infancy to spiritual adulthood. We do not remain infants as your parent/child analysis assumes.
After raising their children from infancy to emancipation, parents must let go of control of their adult children. They must allow their adult children to live their own lives, even if it is not the life that the parent wanted for his or her child. Not doing so causes major problems in the lives of their adult children, often extending to a complete rupture of the relationship.
I have three adult children. And I don’t intervene in their lives to prevent them from doing things I don’t think they should do and that could actually harm them. They are responsible for their own lives now. I give them my love, and I give them my perspective and my counsel if they ask for it. But I let them live their own lives and make heir own choices.
Just as parents must let go of control of their adult children, so God lets go of control of God’s adult children. God wants to be our eternal friend, not our eternal dictator, just as Jesus says:
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15:15)
God’s will includes a will not to control us, but to give us the freedom to live our lives as we wish to live them, and to be in loving relationship with God, or not, according to our own freely made choice.
True omnipotence is not rigidly controlling everything. Nor is it being able to do just any old thing, including self-contradictory things like creating a stone that God cannot lift. A desire to control everything is psychological and spiritual weakness, not strength. Doing contradictory and self-cancelling things is weakness, not strength. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
True omnipotence involves accomplishing things. True omnipotence is God having the ability to do everything God wants to do, pursuant to God’s purpose for creation. And true omnipotence includes the ability to step back enough to allow others to have and use power as they wish to use it, though still within the realities of eternal divine law.
On the nature of God’s omnipotence in relation to the created universe in general, and in relation to human beings in particular, please see my article:
God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
3. How do the people in Heaven feel about the people in Hell? Do they feel sad?
The people in heaven do feel sad about the state of people in hell. However, like God their Father, they recognize that they must allow the people in hell to live the life of enjoyment of evil that they have chosen.
Jesus said that there is a great chasm between heaven and hell (Luke 16:26). Due to that chasm, most people in heaven do not live in daily awareness of the state of people in hell. Some people in heaven, however, do serve as what might today be called “peace officers” in hell, moderating the worst excesses of the evil spirits there, and carrying out God’s will of not allowing the evil spirits in hell to fall into even lower and worse levels of hell than they chose through their life and decisions here on earth.
In short, the people in heaven also love the people in hell, and have mercy on them, but will not violate their free will as human beings, and will therefore leave them in freedom to engage in the type of life and pleasures they have chosen to the extent that that is possible, even if the people in heaven find that life very sad and distressing. (But the evil spirits in hell find it intensely pleasurable, even if they have to suffer the painful consequences.)
The people in heaven are also realistic in recognizing that the people in hell have no interest in hearing the good news of Jesus Christ and salvation, and will violently reject it if they attempt to preach that good news to them. This is what Jesus was saying metaphorically when he taught:
Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you. (Matthew 7:6)
I have the same problem with Western universalism as I have with the Eastern belief in reincarnation. Both posit that eventually, all people end out in a version of heaven. Both therefore take away our humanity, and make us into mere puppets, and our life and suffering here on earth a mere play and charade, with no real purpose at all. See:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
If eventually all people will inevitably “choose” heaven, then it is really no choice at all, but a predetermined outcome. This would mean that we are not free, not human, and ultimately just an extension of God. And so it would defeat the whole purpose of creation, which is for God to have others to love and to be in mutual loving relationship with.
For a choice to have any ultimate reality, it must be permanent, not temporary. Temporary things are relatively unreal compared to eternal ones.
And if we all end out in heaven anyway, then there is no good reason for God to put us through all this earthly confusion and misery. A truly loving God would simply create us directly in heaven, and skip all the suffering. If universalism were true, then a truly loving God could not stand to subject us to even one second of suffering. It would be utterly incompatible with God’s love and mercy to do so.
If God’s whole will is that there be no evil, then there is absolutely no reason for evil to exist in the first place, and no possibility that evil could exist, since it is contrary to God’s will—and God’s will cannot be defeated.
That is my response to your questions as a non-universalist, non-traditional Christian.
The aftermath
You can read The Iron Knuckle’s antagonistic (his word, not mine) reply to my comment here.
While it did take up some of the points I made in my comment, my general sense was that it contained rather more heat than light. And when he got around to saying that the God I worship is “weak” and “pathetic,” it became pretty clear to me that if he were to accept what I had said in my response to his questions, it would be a mortal threat to his faith.
He confirmed this in the subsequent thread of comments—which he has now deleted (that’s his right; it’s his blog) because of my patronizing (my word, not his) stance toward him, and because I refused to debate him on the substantive issues of his article and my response.
Why did I refuse to debate him?
Because, as he said in one of the deleted comments, if I were to convince him that he was wrong in his understanding of God’s omnipotence and his belief in universal salvation, he would cease to be a Christian altogether.
That’s not a result I want. Winning an argument is not worth destroying someone’s faith.
Besides, I probably wouldn’t have “won the debate” and convinced him anyway. His current faith depends upon his universalist beliefs. He will vigorously defend that belief, even if it is ultimately in error, in order to preserve his faith—which is more critical than the actual truth of the particular doctrines comprising that faith.
False beliefs, when they are held to by someone with a good heart, can still function as truth for them. The goodness in their heart overcomes the falsity of their beliefs and leads them toward living a good life based on those beliefs. That’s why people of good will in all religions can be saved even if many of their beliefs are mistaken. As it says in 1 Samuel 16:7, “The Lord looks on the heart.”
Further, debates and arguments almost always have the opposite effect of what the people engaging in them intended. When people’s closely held beliefs are attacked, they will staunchly defend them, actively seeking out and clasping tightly to themselves everything they can find that supports their beliefs, and minimizing or brushing aside anything that doesn’t. As a result, at the end of the argument they believe even more strongly in their original position, even if it happens to be false.
That’s not a result I want, either.
I’ve been where The Iron Knuckle is (minus the drugs and related crises that he describes in his personal history and testimonials). When I was a twenty-something as he is now, I wouldn’t have listened to my present self either. And I probably would have laced my rebuttals with just as many personal attacks and insults as he does.
In fact, I know I would have, because that’s exactly what my younger self did.
I look back with embarrassment on several instances when my father, who was an eminent Swedenborgian theologian, scholar, and professor, attempted to explain to my teenage self one of the finer points of Swedenborgian doctrine . . . and I informed him in very absolute and not particularly polite terms that his explanation made no logical sense, was entirely unworthy of belief, and could not possibly be what the Bible or Swedenborg said and meant. My views, I thought, were logically airtight, comprehensive, and impregnable. And he was obviously wrong!
My father responded to my youthful onslaughts with the same bemused smile with which I responded to The Iron Knuckle’s onslaught on me.
Of course, my father was right.
My understanding of the Bible and church doctrine, of which I was inordinately proud, (I’d spent many, many hours . . . gosh, several years . . . intensively studying and developing it!) was limited, immature, and faulty. I was not ready to hear and understand some of the more advanced and nuanced things he was attempting to teach me. That took another twenty or thirty years of learning and personal experience in life.
So although my response to The Iron Knuckle’s fists-flying critique of my points may indeed be patronizing, here we are. As they say, “What goes around, comes around.”
Does this mean I think The Iron Knuckle will eventually come around to my point of view? Not necessarily. For one thing, I’m connected with Swedenborgian doctrine and tradition, whereas he’s connected with Catholic doctrine and tradition. Different inputs result in different outcomes.
Beyond that, I have no idea where his spiritual journey will take him in the future. But I do predict that in another thirty years, he’ll think differently even about his own church and religion than he does now. That’s part of growing in faith.
And given the hurricane of a journey that he’s been on so far in life, it seems likely that the hurricane will continue for a few more years at least, until his life settles down into a more regular pattern. Who knows where those winds of constant, rapid change will finally drop him off? My own twenty-something self did not correctly envision or predict where I would be today.
“Bible-alone Christian”
The Iron Knuckle’s comment contained several inaccurate statements about my beliefs. For now, I’ll correct only the one that I corrected in the deleted comment thread. It is a critical one to understand about my Swedenborgian Christian theology and about the articles here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life, which are based on that theology.
The Iron Knuckle said in his response to my comment:
you claim to be a “bible alone” christian
In fact, I have never claimed to be a “Bible-alone Christian.”
I am not a Protestant. I don’t subscribe to the Protestants’ “five solas,” including sola scriptura: the idea that scripture (the Bible) is the sole source of reliable doctrine, and is generally self-interpreting. (I should mention that the Iron Knuckle is Catholic.)
What I do believe is that for a particular doctrine to be considered fundamental or essential Christian doctrine, it must be stated in the Bible’s own plain words.
I believe that God is perfectly competent to tell us clearly in God’s own Word what we must believe and do in order to be saved, in language that requires only basic reading comprehension, not theological interpretation and exegesis by human theologians. See “Christian Beliefs that the Bible Does Teach.” In general, I view essential Christian doctrine as doctrine that is required for our salvation.
And I believe that the key tenets that both Protestantism and Catholicism have set up as essential Christian doctrine fail this basic biblical test. See “‘Christian Beliefs’ that the Bible Doesn’t Teach.”
Meanwhile, I also believe that there are many non-essential Christian doctrines that are not stated plainly in the Bible, and do require interpretation and outside sources, such as the writings of various theologians, philosophers, and scientists, to understand and accept. While I would not insist that all people must believe and live according to these doctrines in order to be considered genuine Christians, I nevertheless believe that they are true.
There are many articles on here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life expanding upon such beliefs that I do not consider essential Christian doctrine, and that I do not claim to be able to demonstrate solely by quotes from the Bible.
That’s why I feel perfectly comfortable using the writings of my favorite theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), as a touchstone for spiritual and doctrinal understanding.
However, Swedenborg himself stated:
The Church’s body of teaching [traditionally, “doctrine”] is to be drawn from the literal meaning of the Word and is to be supported by it. (Sacred Scripture #50)
Swedenborg followed this principle in his doctrinal writings, quoting extensively from the Bible to support the key teachings that he promulgated as genuine Christian doctrine. The standard index of his scripture quotations fills a book of over 300 pages (over 400 pages in the most recent edition).
For my part, if I can’t point to a place where the Bible itself, in its plain, literal meaning, states a particular teaching, even if I may believe that teaching is true, I do not insist that all Christians must believe it and live by it in order to be genuine Christians.
My objection to the great mass of supposedly “essential” Christian doctrine according to the main body of traditional Christian denominations is that the Bible simply doesn’t say it. In fact, the Bible often flatly contradicts it. And I simply don’t go for the idea that human theologians are more competent at articulating key Christian teachings than the Lord himself is in the Bible. If the religion is Christianity, then its primary authority should be Jesus Christ, not Athanasius or Anselm or Aquinas or Luther or Calvin, or even Swedenborg (see: “Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?”).
Nor do I go for the idea that the primary authority on Christian doctrine is the Catholic Magisterium—the reigning body of the Catholic Church, consisting of the Pope and the bishops. The doctrines this body has formulated and promulgated have so often been so completely wrong and false from a biblical, rational, and compassionate standpoint that the Catholic Church’s claim to have authority to define doctrine by apostolic succession all the way back to Peter rings very hollow. Historians have extensively documented how corrupt and riven with conflict this body has been at various times in Catholic Church history. This ever-changing group of men does not seem to have any special inspiration from God. It is just as error-prone as any other collection of human clerics and theologians.
However, the foundational Catholic error that Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven for all people on earth, and that Peter then passed them on to the Catholic hierarchy by apostolic succession, thus making the Catholic Pope and his bishops “the vicar of Christ,” wielding much of Christ’s power over the people of the earth, including the authority to determine their eternal salvation or damnation, will have to wait for a future article.
The Bible and God’s omnipotence
Finally, let’s look at why so many Christians have a rather simplistic understanding of God’s omnipotence.
The Bible states or strongly implies in many places that God is in complete control of everything in the spiritual realms, in the universe of nature, in human history, and in individual human souls, so that every single thing that happens, both good and bad, is an act of God even if someone else (such as Satan) is the one actually carrying out God’s will. Here is just one example:
I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things. (Isaiah 45:5–7)
That is the New International Version. In the more traditional and generally more literal King James Version, the last verse reads:
I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the Lord do all these things.
Yes, it says in the Bible that God creates both light and darkness (metaphorically, both truth and falsity), and creates and does both good and evil. God is presented a being who has absolute control over everything in the universe. God is presented as a being who brings blessings or curses, war or peace, good or evil upon whomever he chooses—and no puny human has any right or standing to question what God does.
Does God really do evil as well as good? Does God really punish and destroy God’s enemies? Is God both a God of love and creation and a God of wrath and destruction?
I don’t think so.
I believe that God is a God of pure love and wisdom, and that anger, wrath, cursing, and destruction are not part of God’s character and actions.
But I also think there’s a very good reason the Bible presents God as also being a God of wrath, punishment, and destruction against all evildoers.
If the Bible didn’t present God in this way, many people, including many Christians, would consider the Bible’s God to be a “weak and pathetic” God. As a result, they would have no respect for God, they wouldn’t listen to God, and they wouldn’t obey God’s commandments.
For people just starting out on the religious and Christian journey, who are often coming fresh out of lives ensnared in various types of evil and destructive behavior, evil looks very powerful. These neophytes to religious life feel in their gut that any God who didn’t get angry at wicked people, cursing them, punishing them, and wreaking all sorts of havoc upon them, is a weak God, and not at all worthy of belief.
In short, many people must believe that God has absolute power both for good and for evil, and absolutely controls everything in the universe, or they will ignore God altogether. And without the fear of God to restrain them, they will feel free to keep right on living evil, selfish, greedy, and destructive lives, free from the fear of any consequences.
These early-stage Christians need to believe, for the sake of their salvation, that if they do evil things, God will burn with wrath against them and miserably punish them. And many Christians (and people of other religions as well) never make it beyond that stage fear of punishment and hope for reward as the primary basis and motivator for their religious life.
Here is how Swedenborg puts it while explaining the Lord’s words to the serpent in Genesis 3:14, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!”:
Jehovah God—the Lord—never curses anyone, is never angry at anyone, never leads anyone into crisis. He does not even punish us, let alone curse us. It is the Devil’s crew that does such things. Nothing of the sort could ever come from the fountain of mercy, peace, and goodness.
This passage and many others in the Word describe Jehovah God as not only turning his face away, being angry, punishing, and testing, but even killing—and, yes, cursing. This was in order to foster the belief that the Lord controls and arranges every last detail in the universe, including evil itself, punishments, and times of trial. After accepting this very general idea, people would learn just how he controls and arranges things. They would see that he transforms the evil involved in punishment and in our ordeals into good.
All scriptural teaching and learning begins with the most general things; for this reason the literal meaning abounds in broad ideas. (Secrets of Heaven #245)
In other places, Swedenborg explains that these “general things” and “broad ideas” are necessary for new Christians and for simple-minded people generally so that they will respect God and listen to God, repenting from their sins and living a good life as commanded by God.
Christian universalists take this rather broad and simplistic understanding of God’s omnipotence in a different direction. They believe that if God is omnipotent, this means that God is able to and will save all people, and will ultimately put an end to hell and all evil, raising everyone up into heaven. Those who adopt this belief vehemently reject as unloving, unmerciful, weak, and ineffective any God who would not save everyone.
For more on God’s omnipotence versus human free will, and on how for the sake of our salvation the Bible as a whole is accommodated to human ways of thinking, and often veils divine realities in human appearances, please see these articles:
- God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
- Why does God Harden our Hearts, and Why are We Held Responsible?
- How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
All of this is why, when I encounter relatively new Christians such as The Iron Knuckle, and also non-intellectual Christians, who believe in simplicity that God’s omnipotence means being able to do anything at all, both good and evil, and that God has absolute control over everything that happens in the universe, including the ability to save every single human being and eliminate hell, I don’t argue with them about it. It is necessary for them to first adopt this “broad idea” of God as all-powerful so that they will respect God and listen to God instead of thinking of God as a “weak and pathetic” God.
However, if you are ready for a more philosophically and theologically sound understanding of God’s omnipotence, I recommend that you read Swedenborg’s True Christianity, #56, 57, & 58.
All of this is yet another reason I declined to debate The Iron Knuckle on his beliefs about divine omnipotence and universal salvation. I do not want to be in the position of attacking his relatively newfound Christian faith before it has a chance to strengthen and mature to the point of being ready for a more in-depth and realistic understanding of the ways of God and spirit.
Besides, his soul is in God’s hands, not mine. As long as he has a heart to follow God, God will lead him where he needs to go, both in his beliefs and in his life.
For further reading:
- God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
- Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
- Pain, Punishment, Prison, and Hell
- The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
- How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
- Why does God Harden our Hearts, and Why are We Held Responsible?
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
I appreciate the post and your comment, and I remain completely exasperated at your patronising tone about how I’m young and naive and therefore my theological views are incorrect and invalid whereas you are mature and have thought things through and are obviously in the right.
This is nothing but an ad hominim fallacy. I wish you would actually respond to the issues raised. Furthermore I’m not convinced that you actually read and understood the original post (instead of only paying attention to the headings), because your arguments are all already adequately dealt with there. Your comments about freedom and God’s will not being completely described by the parts of scripture which clearly state he is going to save everyone were all dealt with in the original post, for example. Your answers to the questions posed are inadequate, as the original post demonstrates. I do not mean to personally attack you by calling your God “false”, “weak” and “pathetic”; I am instead merely stating the reality of the situation. My God is more powerful than your god. My God is more loving than your god.
I am more than willing to listen to you, (and your comments stating that I’m not are incredibly offensive) but why on earth would I want to trade the one true gospel of universal salvation for your depressing, watered down message where many people end up stuck in Hell forever?
Also, you are a protestant. Your view of the bible as outlined in this post is indistinguishable from that of every protestant ever. You believe in sola scriptura. Stop denying it. XD
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Well, aside from the fact that:
. . . aside from all that, by golly, maybe I am a Protestant! 😛
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Thanks for coming over here and commenting.
Sorry for the patronizing. But I read your post, your response to my answer to your questions and the ensuing (now deleted) comment thread, your About page, and your entire long four-part personal history and testimony. And though there are, of course, many differences in our respective experiences (my younger years were nowhere near as turbulent as yours have been so far), in tone and approach you are so much like me when I was a little younger than you currently are (at the age of 25 I had just gotten married) that it’s hard not to see my own headstrong, self-assured, cocksure, and often very wrong younger self in your writings and your general approach to religion and life.
And incidentally, I’ve also spent an awful lot of time watching Star Trek. 🙂
Plus, as I alluded to in my commentary here, you’ve been going through rapid changes in your fairly short Christian journey so far. It’s not at all clear to me where you’ll end out, and whether you won’t go through yet another major change in your views in a couple more years, just as you have at least every couple of years so far.
When I was a little younger than you are today, I lived for the argument! I knew I could take on all comers and win every time. Yes, I was intelligent and all that. Second highest SAT score in my well-educated, suburban, largely Jewish high school class. But I was also young and foolish, and didn’t know very much about life. Three or four decades later, with a lot more life experience over the dam, I generally pick my battles carefully, and engage in argumentation only when I think it may accomplish some good.
In your case, the combination of your caustic tone and your assuring me that if I were actually to convince you that you are mistaken, you would abandon Christianity altogether, suggested that this was not going to be a fruitful battle to fight. I wouldn’t bother arguing with my own younger self. And the usefulness of a debate with you similarly looks rather meager.
On the other side of the coin, there is a zero percent chance that you will convince me that you’re right about universal salvation and the nature of God’s omnipotence. I’ve already considered your basic arguments long before you ever made them, and have found them seriously lacking in depth, breadth, philosophical and theological rigor, and coherence with human reality.
My basic theology has been settled for decades. Though I am continually learning more, I am both fully convinced of and fully comfortable with that theology. I’m not looking for anything else, nor do I expect that I ever will be. So if you think you’re going to level your jousting stick at me and knock me off my horse, that’s just not going to happen. I would encourage you not to waste your time trying.
If you are interested in a more in-depth explanation of my specific beliefs about divine omnipotence and eschatology in contrast to yours, I would be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
However, I have no interest at all in engaging you in a debate that you think one of us is going to win and the other is going to lose. That’s not what I’m here to do.
And my apologies, but I’m simply not interested in spending a lot of time examining your beliefs and your rationale for them. My only purpose for doing so would be to equip myself more effectively to refute them for my readers here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
For the most part, I find examining the common fallacies of other religious beliefs to be a sad and tedious undertaking. I find them so riddled with falsity, and find it so depressing that so many people are stuck in those fallacies and half-truths, that I do it only to make myself better able to help extricate people who are tangled in their web and want to break free.
Last year I forced myself to read two books on faith alone by leading Protestant theologians, recommended to me by an online Protestant contact. I found it so teeth-gratingly unpleasant that I finally had to stop midway through the second book. I just couldn’t handle any more of that rank fallacy and falsity all dressed up as as biblical truth. It almost felt like it was going to make me physically ill.
In four decades of examining the beliefs and practices of other churches and religions, though I’ve gained many fine insights along the way, it has never happened that I’ve thought, “Wow, I like this belief system better than my own!” The beliefs I hold to are so far beyond anything that I’ve ever found in any other church or religion—by whole orders of magnitude—that none of those others have even the slightest attraction for me.
Having said that, I do find many of their adherents to be fine and wonderful people. During my decade as a pastor I cultivated friendly relations with all of the local churches, pastors, and spiritual leaders—Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, general liberal and evangelical Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, Muslim, and any other religious flavor that existed in the town where my church was located. I did my best to bring them all into harmonious and constructive relationships with one another as much as possible, and enjoyed the whole process immensely. I even invited in spiritual leaders from traditions that weren’t represented in that town—Hindu, Buddhist, Native American—to address my congregation and any interested townspeople. Though I’m not a universalist, I do believe that God, and more specifically Jesus Christ, is present in all religions with saving power.
Meanwhile, I myself am a Swedenborgian Christian. I am a cradle Swedenborgian. My first stirrings toward the Swedenborgian ministry came when I was only eight or ten years old. I saw my father in the pulpit, and knew that I would be a Swedenborgian minister myself. The route to get there was more extended and circuitous than I expected. And my ministry today is very different from what I thought it would be at this time of my life when I first entered seminary twenty-five years ago. But I will always be a Swedenborgian minister, scholar, counselor, author, and evangelist. That’s what God put me on earth to do. My primary purpose in life is to spread and teach this belief system to anyone who might find it enlightening, and to give people spiritual insights that help them through their personal and spiritual crises and in their daily spiritual walk.
If you’re interested in learning from me, I’ll give you as much time and attention as you want. If you want to argue and debate with me and attempt to prove to me that I’m wrong, that would be a waste of both your time and mine, and is not something that I have the slightest interest in spending my time at. I regularly delete comments from people who come here just to tell me how terribly wrong I am. They’re a waste of my time. It’s right in my comments policy.
As arrogant and off-putting and patronizing as all of this may sound to you, I’m not in the habit of sugar-coating things. My policy is that it’s better to state plainly where I stand and what my approach and interests are. Then anyone who comes my way can either take it or leave it—100% their choice.
If, with all of this in mind, you still want to continue the conversation, I’m here.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
A few more responses in the cold, hard light of day:
I did indeed read your article and its questions. In fact, I read it through several times before and during the writing of my response. You will notice that even though I reproduced only your main questions here, the structure of my response generally follows the structure of your original post. However, I was also aware that I was writing a comment on your blog, not a full-blown article. I kept it as brief as I could while still providing a minimally adequate response to the big questions you are asking. The linked articles provide more depth on each subject, and are available for you to read, contemplate, and comment on.
The reality is that I do think you’re young and naive, just as I was at your age. I’m not going to sugar coat that, even if it’s not “polite.” Some social conventions are good. Some social conventions get in the way of necessary truth. And the reality is that for those seeking wisdom, it requires a certain amount of life experience to gain that wisdom.
I delayed my entrance into seminary by a decade because I realized that I was too young, foolish, and immature to be a pastor and give spiritual guidance and advice to people who actually had some experience in life and were facing real life issues and struggles. So instead of going into seminary right out of college as I had originally planned, I went out into the secular world, traveling, working, and supporting myself. After a decade had gone by, and I’d gotten married and had my first child, I finally felt ready to return to my youthful plans for seminary and parish ministry. Though I’ve done some very stupid things in the course of my life, delaying the start of my ordained ministry and learning a bit about life first, so that I went into the ministry as a thirty-something rather than as a twenty-something, was one of the smartest things I ever did.
To dip into the substance of your views just a bit in relation to naiveté vs. experience:
The idea that all people will be saved, I believe, demonstrates a naiveté about the realities of human life and character.
All actual experience demonstrates that some people do make choices for evil instead of good, and that for some of the people who make that choice, no amount of love, truth, therapy, punishment, or anything else budges them from it. They enjoy engaging in evil. They have no interest in living any other way. Even if we gave them eternity to change their minds, they simply wouldn’t change their minds.
So yes, I do think you’re naive for believing that all people will eventually choose the good and be saved. It’s endearing to see young, idealistic people believing that eventually we’ll all do a big group hug and sing kum ba yah together. Unfortunately, real life just doesn’t work that way. We’re human beings with free will. And some of us use that free will to persistently choose evil over good.
I hate poking holes in youthful idealism. It feels just a bit mean. But more life experience tends to do a very good job of that anyway for people who aren’t so stuck on their own idealistic theories that they are unwilling to pay any attention to any reality that doesn’t support their idealistic notions. Better to pay attention to reality and be prepared for it.
Raising children, for those who are actually paying attention and have a spiritual and moral focus in life, also provides a reality check for youthful idealism. Fortunately, all three of my children have turned into fine young adults. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t done some extremely stupid and dangerous things along the way, any of which could easily have gone south and ruined their adult lives. And like most young adults, they’re still doing a few things here and there that I don’t think are the best idea. But I have to let them live their own lives.
Being a parent of growing and then adult children gives far greater perspective on God’s role as a parent to humanity. It’s just not as simple as young people and people who have never had children of their own commonly think it is. People who don’t have children commonly think that they would raise the perfect children. It’s difficult for people who are not parents themselves (either biological or foster/adoptive) to have a realistic understanding of God’s role as parent.
The flat, one-dimensional concept of God’s omnipotence that you articulate goes hand-in-hand with this general naiveté about human life, human free will, and parent / child –> parent / adult child relationships. For a better understanding of the realities of divine omnipotence from a philosophical and theological perspective, I encourage you to read the three sections from Swedenborg’s book True Christianity that I linked toward the end of the above post.
I might be young and naive, but you come across as a prideful, bitter, cranky old man who’s been brainwashed by a false prophet. Not that I’m saying swedenborg is actually a false prophet, as I haven’t read him. But you definitely are. You are spreading pessimism about the nature of God and unbelief. You are peddling a God who is not powerful enough to fulfil his stated plans, and I confidently predict that if you take the time to respond to this comment with some sort of apologetic you will just end up peddling a God who is not loving enough to save the people in Hell.
You are an enemy of the Gospel. Your God is neither powerful nor loving. You think that you are being “realistic” and “wise” while I’m being “young” and “idealistic”, but in reality you simply lack faith and joy while I am overflowing with both.
I can’t possibly imagine how your worldview, in which most people end up damning themselves to hell forever and never escaping, could possibly be more rewarding and fufilling than my worldview, which is centred around the good news and glorious gospel promise that God guarantees the salvation of the entire cosmos and everything in it.
I’m not really in the business of debating, I prefer discussion, and I am sincerely open to reading anything you care to recommend about this swedenborg fella. However I draw the line at the gospel: you cannot take the gospel away from me, nothing else matters. And if push comes to shove and we simply must debate, it may turn out that you are just the stubborn old pharisee, so blinded by his religious framework that he is unable to perceive the truth, but I would be happy to engage you for the benefit of the spectators who are not so hard-hearted, and in doing so perhaps spread my invincible joy further into the world.
God will save everyone. Everyone will be won over by his love. Everyone will repent. God promises it, and his promise cannot fail. To say otherwise is a denial of the divine goodness and sovereignty: The highest of blasphemies and the most grave of mortal sins.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Normally I delete insulting and antagonistic comments such as this one, per my comments policy. However, since this post was a reply and rebuttal to one of yours, I’ll let you have your say. As for the substance of this particular comment, it is all covered already in the above article, so there’s no need to respond further here.
You say you haven’t read any Swedenborg, but then that you are sincerely open to reading anything I care to recommend about him. I would suggest starting with the selections from Swedenborg’s book True Christianity that I linked toward the end of the above article. These cover a more philosophically and theologically sound understanding of omnipotence than the common notion that “God can do anything.” It may take a few readings to wrap your head around what he is saying, but it will be worth the effort.
For my overall view on Swedenborg, please see this post—which is also liked in the above article:
Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?
“Bleeding heart liberals think that if we could just love hardened criminals enough, and give them intensive therapy for what their evil parents and this evil society did to them, they would all become fine, upstanding citizens and we could let them out of jail. Experience simply doesn’t bear that out.”
But doesn’t God have an eternity to work on people? I don’t think the analogy stands up. He has eternity and infinite wisdom. I hope the universalists are right, or I am in for a bad eternity. Some of us can’t be good, we can’t love our neighbors. Some of us are just not a good fit in this world, so all that comes back from us is anger and resentment. I’m in my 50th year now, and I am no closer to improvement than when I began at 12.
Hi Rob,
I continue to think that when you enter the spiritual world at the end of your life here on this earth, you will be pleasantly surprised. Loving our neighbor is not primarily a feeling, but an action. People with a naturally grumpy and solitary personality who still act rightly toward other people and contribute in some practical way to the wellbeing of society will be in heaven, not hell. And heaven has room for all different personality types.
What about my other point, that God has an eternity to work on a person? Is anything to hard for the Lord? Or, “with God all things are possible.” Are you saying that given enough time (and there’s infinite time) that God can’t bring a person to loving Him and others through their free will? If it’s not impossible (and why would it be impossible?), then what reason could God have for not spending eternity seeking His lost coins? I guess that’s the question, is it impossible.
Hi Rob,
If we humans cannot make a permanent, eternal choice about who we wish to be and where we wish to live, then our free will is not real. If we all end out where God wants us to be, then it is God making the choice, not us, and we are neither free nor human. For more on this, please read the sections starting with the heading, “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” in my article, “The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation.”
Rob speaks the truth and as usual, Lee peddles a naive understanding of freedom.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
This is a sudden and unexpected onslaught of comments from you. What prompted you to come back here a year later and re-engage?
what is the main difference between universalist and swedenborg christians. I think both make sense and they both talk of Gods all inclusive love. However the belief in eternal hell isn’t something i want to belief. By the knowledge that some can never be good is like saying people are born bad. Its the whole nature v nurture thing but i think everyone has a choice of good and evil – free will – otherwise people wouldn’t be evil if they had no choice but to be that way. No one who lives in the dark not the light is very happy that way and i think everyone deserves to see the light. I don’t think there are evil babies but people can turn at some point but usually for a reason. A reason i hope that God takes away in time. If gods love is unconditional for all of us wouldn’t he do everything he can to take away the hurt that caused an individuals hate. Some humans don’t fit into life. Some its not their fault at all. People often suffer from mental health problems and can’t fit in. some commit suicide. I choose to believe that God guides the ones who couldn’t cope in life for whatever reason and his light takes away the hatred. The end of all things is a state of blessed reunion with God, the Creator — not eternal separation, misery, or destruction (John 12:32, Rom. 5:18, 1 Cor. 15:22,28, Col. 1:20, 1 Tim. 2:4-6). Since no human being is totally bad, no human should perish eternally. I believe God’s grace extends to everyone and, as we read in the Parable of the Lost Sheep, God is not satisfied with even ninety nine percent of people being saved, but keeps searching until the last lost sheep (person) is saved (Luke 15:3-7). Souls that leave this life on earth without experiencing salvation will have other opportunities for conversion, learning and growth after death (1 Pet. 3:18-20, 4:6). No one will ever run out of chances to return home to their Creator. Even the most evil beings who have ever lived can still be saved — and will be, in the fullness of time (Phil. 2:10). That is God’s promise! john 1:29 – “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! However there are some like Hitler that perhaps were simply evil but it would be better if he couldn’t change to kill him eternally than have him burn forever. And hell in the afterlife keeps the evil in that world as much as in this world.
I’m interested in your beliefs on what swedenborg christians think happens if a person has potential to be kind but has hate in them. where does god put them?. is there a limbo. And if a person in hell suddenly becomes better does God realise or has he just abandoned his children to their fate. if your adult child becomes a murderer or rapist the parents while they are disappointed in their child usually still go to see them. And surely peoples goodness is based often on the life they lived. if you are raised in abuse and are neglected by parents or you are raised in a loving home and have everything you could want the adults you become will be quite different. even if you have a really hard life you can still choose love not hate and it can make people more determined but they are still likely to carry around the hurt. When people die they haven’t neccessarily left their demons to rest. no ones perfect and they might still need to work on some things. especially with temptation but things that arent their fault like self esteem issues. making a choice for heaven or hell is very black and white something that humans aren’t. we are messy, complicated, imperfect, loving and kind but with things like jealousy and greed in us that however much we try to stop has a way of coming out sometimes. I believe that God knows us and wants the best for us. If someone feels unable to cope then Jesus would never turn their back on them but would support them. I don’t want an environment where the nazis can persecute their victims in the afterlife or the racist still go on attacking blacks but I believe that these atrocities were man made and people will be in gods love and light and will stop the hatred.
its weird how compared to all other religions how much christians fight each other. you have the muslims, the jews, buddhists and while some are a lot stricter than the others the wars that have gone on with the christians – people of the same religion is absurd. And christians seem the least unchrist like so much of the time. Like gandhi said i like your christ but not your christians. loving your neighbours and enemies isn’t something a lot of christians do. But with the religions of christ everyone seems to be at war with each other over different variations of the same belief while jesus was a pacifist who said turn the other cheek and preached love and kindness to all.
Hi Annie,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your thoughts and questions. There’s a lot to cover here—too much for a comment. So I’ll refer you to some articles along the way that cover these subjects in more detail.
To take up your last point first:
Christians aren’t the only ones who bitterly fight each other. The Muslim world today is rife with internal conflict and power struggles. Similar things are happening within other world religions as well. But to focus on Christianity, I believe that the reason Christians are so unChristian is that the “Christian” Church of today is, in fact, non-Christian. It has long since abandoned the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible for human-invented doctrines that are diametrically opposed to what Jesus and the Bible teach. For more on this, please see:
And there are plenty more where those came from!
But to your main point and question:
The difference between Swedenborgian Christians and Universalist Christians is that Swedenborgians believe that God gives us a true choice between good and evil, and that if we choose evil over good, God respects that choice, and will not keep badgering us to change it until we accede to God’s wishes.
Hell, from a Swedenborgian perspective, is not so much a place of punishment for sins as a place where people who have chosen to enjoy evil and destructive pleasures can engage in those pleasures as much as possible, even though it inevitably results in pain and punishment inflicted upon them, not by God or by devils with pitchforks, but by one another as they seek revenge upon each other. For more on what hell is really like, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
And on why there must be an eternal hell for our freedom to be real, and for us to be human beings rather than mere robots, please read the sections starting with, “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” in the article, “The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation.”
God’s love is unconditional for all the beings God has created, including the worst demons in hell. God continues to love God’s enemies. God continues to “make his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and send rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). God never withdraws God’s love from anyone.
However, those who choose evil over good turn their backs on God and reject God’s love. And God will not force God’s love upon us. Doing so would be disrespecting us as people. It would be like that person whom we have told we do not love, but who continues to send flowers and make proposals anyway, causing us pain and anguish instead of pleasure and joy.
God continues to love the people who have chosen hell, but the best God can do is to hold them back from plunging into behavior even worse than the evil behavior they have chosen to enjoy during their lifetime on earth. That is as far as God’s mercy upon the the evil spirits in hell can go without disrespecting them as people and taking away their humanity. Without the ability to choose who we will be and how we will live, we are not human beings.
However, no one goes to hell due to external circumstances. People born into poverty, abuse, criminal culture, and so on do not go to hell because of that. Only what we have freely chosen, having the ability to choose something else, remains with us in the afterlife. Parental and social influences over which we have no control are not held against us. Also, people with mental illnesses do not go to hell because of things they have done under the influence of their illness.
For more on how environmental influences do not cause us to go to hell, please see:
I realize this doesn’t answer all your questions, but I hope it’s enough to give you some sense of where Swedenborgians stand on these issues. If you have further thoughts or questions, please feel free to continue the conversation.
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
I am baffled by where you got the foolish idea that Universalists deny that God gives us true freedom and a real choice. Where in the original article did I ever say that? All that I am insisting on is that our freedom is not more powerful than God’s freedom, and ultimately his love is so seductive that it is guaranteed to ultimately win us over. Whether we are on earth or in hell, at some point we are guaranteed to repent. Also your caricature of God forcing himself on us and badgering us for all eternity is highly uncharitable. It’s more like God just never revokes his offer of salvation: it has no time limit or expiry date. All he has to do is gently woo us over and eventually we will cave to his romantic overtures. God is the perfect lover and all of us are his bride to be. God is not a creepy stalker who tracks us down and forces us to love him.
I am also baffled by your inaccurate assumption that Universalists deny eternal hell. We don’t. Hell is infinite, eternal, timeless, everlasting, and completely horrible, even in universalism.
“God continues to love the people who have chosen hell, but the best God can do is to hold them back from plunging into behavior even worse than the evil behavior they have chosen to enjoy during their lifetime on earth. That is as far as God’s mercy upon the the evil spirits in hell can go without disrespecting them as people and taking away their humanity. Without the ability to choose who we will be and how we will live, we are not human beings.”
“The best God can do” is not to save these people? It’s just to hold them in their misery and tortures for all eternity? What a weak and pathetic god you worship. It should be obvious to everyone that you are worshiping a lifeless idol, rather than the one true living God who loves the universe into existence and drives all things to their perfect destiny. You have essentially described a “god” who is fundamentally _limited_ and subject to arbitrary restrictions on his sovereignty and power, whereas I worship a God who can do all things, including winning over those who reject him.
Your construal of freedom is _incredibly_ naive. Sincere question: Do your views on freedom come straight out of swedenborg? Because I highly recommend you read aquinas, herbet mccabe, and the classical theists. They have a far less anthropomorphic construal of freedom than the one you are pushing. The purpose of freedom is to love God, not to choose Hell. God gave us freedom so that we could love him, not so that we could damn ourselves. To refuse to love God is *not* a free choice, it is an enslaved one. God is in the business of rescuing captives from slavery, just as he did with israel and egypt in the exodus story. And that is exactly what he’s going to do for the entire world. All of us are already in Hell, and the only way to escape is to trust the prophets (such as myself) who speak God’s promise on his behalf. Everyone will be saved. Stop rebelling against it. It’s not too good to be true. God really is that good. The gospel really is that wonderful.
Everything you write seems to indicate that you think a choice for evil is equally as valid and admirable as a choice for good. as if God just gives us two options and doesn’t particular care which one we choose just so long as we make a choice for _something_. In reality there is only one valid choice: God himself, and God will not rest until we all make it.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Most of this is already covered in the above article. I won’t repeat myself here.
However, I’ll respond to a few points.
You say:
All of these are just different ways of saying that ultimately, we do not have real freedom, because ultimately, there is only one choice: God’s way. And if that is the case, a) we are not truly human, and b) God is a sadist for putting us through all this pain and misery when ultimately, we’ll all end out in heaven anyway. Why not skip the pain and misery, and just create us all directly in heaven?
You say:
If everyone is ultimately saved, what’s the use of an eternal hell? Who would live there?
You say:
First, God does not hold anyone in hell. The evil spirits hold themselves there.
Second, as I said to you in response to a recent comment on a different article, much of the problem is an inaccurate view of hell in traditional Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, and their offshoots) due to a literal interpretation of statements about hell in the Bible that are meant to be read metaphorically. There is no literal fire searing the flesh of evil spirits in hell. Hellfire is not physical fire, but spiritual fire, which, in a negative sense, is the rage and anger of evil spirits against one another. No one is literally roasting in flames in hell. To evil spirits in hell, their lives seem quite normal, even if not always comfortable. For more on this, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
Despite appearances to the contrary, evil spirits choose to be in hell because that is where they can live the evil life that they enjoy, even if they also have to suffer the inevitable backlash and punishment from those they have harmed—meaning the other evil spirits in hell. They are not allowed to attack or harm angels and good spirits.
The idea that “God can do all things,” while common, is inaccurate, because it is not understood properly.
For example, God does not do anything evil. For God to do evil would be to undo the good that God does. And as Jesus tells us, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matthew 12:25; Mark 3:24–25; Luke 11:17). God does not contradict and stymie God’s own actions by doing opposite things. That would be weakness, not strength. Once again, I recommend that you read (and re-read) the three sections from True Christianity linked at the end of the above article, which go into more detail about what omnipotence is and isn’t.
I’ll respond in a separate comment about where my view of freedom comes from, even though that, too, is already covered in the above article.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
You ask:
Swedenborg does inform my view of freedom. However, Swedenborg’s views on freedom came primarily from the Bible itself, and secondarily from his experience in the spiritual world.
I won’t repeat the Bible passages I already quoted in the above article establishing that God gives us freedom to choose between good and evil. But here are a few more, focusing on those showing that the Bible does indeed state that we can choose eternal hell (emphasis added in all quotations):
Yes, I know, universalists read the Greek word commonly translated “eternal” as meaning “for an age.” I think that is a mistaken understanding. Besides, Mark 9:48 makes it clear that it is talking about eternal fire, that is never quenched, not just fire that lasts until the end of an age.
The common and ordinary meanings of the words used in the Bible itself make it clear that for those who enter there, hell is eternal, not temporary. Other interpretations stretch the meanings of those words beyond all recognition and common sense.
This is where Swedenborg got his view that hell is eternal, and this is where I get my view that hell is eternal, for those who choose to enter there.
And once again, if hell is not eternal, than God is a sadist for allowing anyone to experience even one second of it. If God does not ultimately allow us to choose evil, but in the end causes all of us to choose good, then there is absolutely no justification for the existence of a hell at all, nor, indeed, for any of our suffering here on earth.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Here is the first article in a four-part series that takes up some of these issues in more detail:
God, Forgiveness, Freedom, and Hell – Part 1
And for a more philosophical look at the big picture of how God runs the universe see also:
God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
One more response for now. You say:
I actually agree with you that the purpose of freedom is to love God, not to choose hell. But in order for that to actually be a free choice, and our choice, God must allow us to choose hell instead of God if we so desire. Otherwise it is not a choice, there is no freedom, and we are robots, not humans.
God created human beings uniquely with free will so that we could be in a freely chosen relationship with God, which is the only way we can be in a real relationship with God, and not just a pre-programmed one. If I program my computer to say, “I love you,” it means nothing. But if God gives human beings the ability to choose to love God, and they do make that choice, then it does mean something. That, and not the programmed computer or robot, is a real, mutual relationship of love.
However, if we ultimately do not have any choice not to choose God, then our supposed freedom is only an illusion. The time scale makes no difference. If ultimately all people “choose” God, then it is actually not a choice, but something that is programmed into us. If there is real choice, some will choose one thing, and others will choose another thing.
In response to your final statement, this involves confusion between two different kinds of freedom:
Here on earth, God gives us freedom of choice between good and evil, even though we don’t always have freedom to live the way we have chosen due to earthly political regimes and restrictions. Each choice has its pleasures, and each has its attractions. God leads, guides, and urges us to choose the good (see Deuteronomy 30:15–20). But God allows us to choose the evil if we so desire.
In the afterlife in the spiritual world, God gives us the freedom to live the life we have chosen here on earth. If we have chosen good, God lifts us up to heaven and gives us an eternally joyful life there. If we have chosen evil, God allows us to “make our bed in hell” (Psalm 139:8), where we can eternally indulge in the twisted pleasures of our evil desires, while inevitably feeling the pain and retribution that comes from those desires—not at the hand of God, but at the hands of our fellow evil spirits in hell.
Both those who choose good and those who choose evil prefer the life they have chosen. That is why they chose it in the first place.
And yes, the life of evil in an enslaved life. It is slavery to our evil desires. But it is a slavery that those who live there have chosen.
Be aware that not all people choose freedom:
Yes, some people choose slavery over freedom, forever. That is what the evil spirits in hell have done.
Your responses betray a severe lack of understanding of the greek language and relevant issues, as well as an obvious unfamiliarity with universalist theology and the gospel.
Firstly, αιωνιον is “age” in the genitive case. This literally translates to “of the age”. If you disagree with the brute fact that everlasting/eternal damnation is nowhere to be found in the greek NT. Your head is buried deep in the sand.
Secondly, despite the lack of scriptural support for everlasting/eternal damnation in the original manuscripts, there is strong traditional precedent for the notion alongside an undeniable presence in the broader scriptural traditions (vulgate, Pretty much every english translation apart from the DBHNT, etc). As such, i cannot deny everlasting/eternal damnation. However you have to ask the question: which is more eternal? Hell or God? Does Hell ultimately thwart Gods plans to save us? Or is he powerful and patient enough to work with our freedom and win us over even while we are stuck in the infinite torments and rejection of Hell? I say “yes, of course!” But you say no, and i therefore rightfully accuse you of the sin of idolatry because you are clearly worshipping a weak and pathetic “god” who is unable to achieve his purposes, plans and goals, and would rather that we damn ourselves than that we love him, thus making him evil and not loving. You are in fact worshipping satan by the name of yahweh. I exhort you to repent of your blasphemy at once, lest you be cast into the lake of fire.
Thirdly. What you have described sounds nothing whatsoever like freedom; it sounds like clinical insanity. If what you have described is freedom, then I don’t want it, and i sincerely hope that I don’t have it.
What a strange God it is, who just stands by while we commit spiritual suicide, claiming that his respect for our “freedom” is more important than his desire that we experience his love to the full. Surely you’ve got kids. Would you just “respect their freedom” when they express a desire to kill themselves? NO! You help them with all your strength to choose life, as a good father should. So it is with God. He never forces us, but he never needs to. He can guarantee that we will make the right choice, without ever forcing us to do it. Your insistence on this perversion of “freedom” compromises the gospel.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
And your responses show a basic misunderstanding of how language works.
There is a common misconception among people who haven’t actually worked with language or done translation that you can take a word from one language and just replace it with a word from another language and you’ve “translated” it. But in every language, words do not have a single point-like meaning, but a range of meanings fanning out from an original root meaning. We can usually tell which particular meaning of the word is intended by considering the context in which it is used.
In the case of the Greek word αἰώνιος (aiōnios), the meanings given in Thayer’s Greek Lexicon are:
This word is derived from the word αἰών (aiōn), whose basic meanings are:
It has various other meanings derived from these, one of which is “the worlds, the universe.”
It, in turn, is derived from the word ἀεί (aei), whose meanings are:
And which itself is derived “from an obsolete primary noun (apparently meaning continued duration); “ever,” by qualification regularly; by implication, earnestly:—always, ever.”
In short, αἰώνιος can mean “for an age,” but it can also mean (and most often means) “eternal.” This meaning is well-attested in both classical and New Testament Greek, as you will see if you follow the links to its definition, and to the definitions of the words from which it is derived.
What I have presented here is, in fact, a very compact version of the meanings of a very complex word with quite broad usage and meanings. The idea that you can just flatten and compact all of that broad usage and meaning into the single English word “age” shows, as I said above, a complete lack of understanding of how language works.
Yes, in some instances αἰώνιος means “for an age.” But in other instances—and much more commonly, in New Testament usage—it means “eternal.” Further, the original root doesn’t even mean “age,” or a time of limited duration. It means perpetually, always. “Age” is not the root meaning of the word. Perpetuity is. The meaning of “age” was a shortening of the original meaning of perpetuity to denote a very long time whose precise ending is unknown, an eon.
Ironically, if you go with the narrow and unsupported notion that αἰώνιος means only “an age,” you have to reject eternal life also. The very same word is used in the New Testament to speak of eternal life, eternal salvation, and so on. By the illogical verbal “logic” that is used to deny eternal death, one would logically have to deny eternal life also.
No, my friend, you have been mesmerized by a false and narrow notion of how language works, and of the meaning and derivation of the word αἰώνιος. Its meaning of “to eternity” is well-attested both in the classical Greek language used before the New Testament was written and in the many translations that have been made of the Greek New Testament ever since it was written—as even you seem to admit in this very comment of yours.
If you choose to ignore and deny the root meaning of the word, the various usages of the word, and the long history of what the word means and how it is used that stretches from long before the New Testament was written right up to the present, then it is you, my friend, who are “burying your head in the sand,” and refusing to accept any facts or realities that conflict with the opinions you have adopted.
As for the rest of your points, I’ve already dealt with them repeatedly in the above article and in my previous responses.
I know you feel very strongly about this, as shown in all the charged language that you keep using. But there simply is no sound biblical, linguistic, or historical basis for your rejection of an eternal hell.
And once again, I recommend that you gain a more realistic and less literalistic understanding of hell. Hell is not “eternal conscious torment” as so many fundamentalists, evangelicals, and other traditional Christians wrongly believe. This is based on reading the Bible according to the letter that kills instead of according to the spirit that gives life.
I know this is really late but Universalism just doesn’t make sense. I wish it did. But if it were true, there would be no reason for choice. Lee is right. Swedenborgian theology, if anything, teaches us that our actions have severe consequences. I do believe God’s mercy and forgiveness is extremely encompassing but He also can’t force someone to love Him or others. It makes sense to me, that someone or some people can become so dull or “evil” in their heart, that they can reject love, or that it would become extremely painful to even feel love. “Hell is a choice, it could not exist otherwise.” – C.S. Lewis
I can offer you dinner and home to stay an infinite amount of times but if free will exists, you can always reject it as many times too.
Hi Moore,
Thanks for your good thoughts.
when god created us he said we were very good but on earth without his loving constant presence we made mistakes. however with jesus in heaven we are all much likely to be better with Jesus’ guidance around us. some people here have no guidance whatsoever, feel bitter towards other because of this. but its because of their life situations. people who are surrounded by kindness and love are often kinder and more loving themselves while those who have never known happiness or a kind life can’t be expected to be judged by God on the life they lived on earth without looking at the type of life they lived on earth.
Hi Annie,
Yes, God created everything, including us, very good in the beginning (Genesis 1:31).
But God did not then withdraw into heaven and leave us to our own devices. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree God had commanded them not to eat from, the next thing that happened was that they saw God walking in the garden. And this is presented as if it was something that happened regularly. When Adam and Eve hid themselves, God called out to them, asking where they were (Genesis 3:8–9).
Adam and Eve had a direct, personal relationship with God. They didn’t disobey God because God wasn’t around to talk to them and have a relationship with them and give them guidance. They disobeyed God because they chose to pay attention to their senses, and follow sensory information and pleasure, rather than listening to God. Eve ate from the tree of knowledge when she saw it as desirable and pleasurable (Genesis 3:6), knowing full well that God had said not to eat from it (Genesis 3:2–3).
In short, the choice for disobedience over obedience, and for evil over good, was made with their eyes open, under God’s direct care and guidance. It was a choice, pure and simple, not something they did because they weren’t getting proper care and guidance from God.
There is nothing God could have done for them in the spiritual world after they died that God didn’t do for them in the Garden of Eden, where God walked with them and talked with them and gave them all the guidance they needed to choose good over evil.
Yes, for many of us here on earth today things are much murkier. We’re not always sure what’s right and wrong. But God doesn’t hold us responsible for things we couldn’t know or didn’t do out of our own free choice. God doesn’t hold us responsible for our upbringing, or for faulty genetics, or for anything we’re pushed into by outside influences and pressures. God holds us responsible only for things we freely choose. On the evil side of the ledger, God holds us responsible only for wrong attitudes and bad behavior that we freely choose of our own accord when we could very well have corrected our attitudes and done the right thing instead.
Everything that has been imposed upon us from the outside will fall away in the spiritual world after we die. Only what we have freely chosen as self-responsible adults will remain as a permanent part of our character. And people who never became self-responsible adults either because they died as children or teens or because a birth defect or illness compromised their mental capacity will all go to heaven, not hell, in the afterlife.
I hope this helps.
Amazing article, and decision to not respond any further to allow Iron Knuckle´s faith to continue it’s natural path and potentially mature in the future.. I’m tuning into your blog more often; I find in your writing and way of explaining a further interest in christianity that I’ve begun adopting recently.
Waiting eagerly for the future article when Jesus gave the Keys to the kingdom of heaven to Peter.
Thank you very much for this insightful, faithful blog. 🙂
Hi Yulian,
Thanks for your comment, and for your kind words. I’m glad you’re finding our blog so helpful! If any thoughts or questions come up as you read, please don’t hesitate to comment further. Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
“If we all end out where God wants us to be, then it is God making the choice, not us, and we are neither free nor human.”
So the damnation of some or many is baked into the cake, so to speak. If it’s an impossibility that all will be saved, then it has always been a certainty from eternity past that many will not be saved.
Hi Rob,
No, nothing is baked into the cake. Everyone could be saved if they wanted to. Salvation is freely available to everyone. No one is created for damnation. Everyone is created for heaven.
The only people who aren’t saved are those who choose not to be saved.
Why does a person choose one way or the other? What makes one choose the good and another the evil? Is the person who chooses the good smarter, wiser or inherently more virtuous? I used to ask this of Arminians on a Christian board and I couldn’t get an answer other than a re-assertion that everyone has a choice. Myself, I think people act whichever way because they think it will bring them happiness or at least freedom from pain. I think all our actions are based on those two things. I find it easier to forgive others too when I see them as like me, trapped in a hostile universe. But getting back to free will, I think it’s a horrible thing to create creatures knowing that some or most will experience misery forever, and I can’t fathom how people who believe in hell can choose to have children, knowing there’s a possibility that the child will experience that eternal misery. It just blows my mind.
Hi Rob,
The thing is, people who go to hell don’t experience misery forever. Rather, for the most part they have a life that seems fairly ordinary to them. Sometimes they feel pleasure, and other times they feel pain. Just like a lot of people here on earth. They get to do a lot of the things they like to do, and they intensely enjoy it. Unfortunately, their destructive types of pleasures inevitably result in painful consequences. But for them, that’s just part of life.
Hi Rob,
People do choose evil because of the pleasure it gives them. If evil wasn’t pleasurable, why would anyone bother with it? The problem is that evil pleasures bring pain as well.
Good also has its pleasures, which may seem more subtle at first, but which in the long run are far greater. And though it may require some sacrifices, doing good does not inevitably bring pain, as doing evil does.
So people make a choice between getting their pleasure or happiness from good things or from evil things. Either way has its attractions. But good brings greater joy, and doesn’t have the negative side effects that evil does.
Renaissance drama abonds with examples of characters that enjoy being evil, the so called villains, who do evil consciously and are even proud of this. There are others who are just weak and are drawn to it, like in some of the paintings of Toulouse-Luotreck of Moulin Rouge dancers, or in Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovari, where Flaubert traces all the steps of the elicit love affairs of the heroine with all the thrill and attraction but ultimately leading to her downfall. Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment is a truly insightful journey into the intricacies of vice and crime. Crime, vice and evil, we learn, do exert enormous power on some people. They are very attractive, otherwise people will not be drawn to them so powerfully. Look at the terrorists that abduct and kill innocent people for ransom or because of some political “cause”. Today, we are taught to believe all people are basically good. But there is ample evidence that people are still very different in the sense that each single person makes their own choices which can be either good or destructive even to themselves. There is a book by psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck, called People of the Lie, that gives lots of examples of exactly this type of human beings. Such people may not be fully conscious when they commit evil deeds, especially if they have been raised in a bad family or are living in a bad neighbourhood, but they can at least repent, which they choose not to do. Some do repent, while others are drawn to evil because of some kind of pleasure it seems to offer. The choices we make are only partly determined by our environment or by the examples we see every day, our upbringing and education. In the long run we all do what we choose to do. We are free. And with freedom come consequences. What goes around, comes around. You reap what you sow.
Hi Magnolia,
Thanks so much for your insightful mini-essay on human good, evil, and freedom. I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Revisiting this post, I’m reminded of this quote from Martin Luther King Jr.:
“Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.”
That said, generally speaking, I do much prefer universalists to those who believe in sola fide, because the latter has unfathomably horrific implications at face value, and, I think, tends to come from a less well-meaning place than the belief that everyone is destined for salvation, wrong though that belief may be. To put it another way, I think it’s naïve to think that everyone will turn out good in the end, but I think it’s frightening that some people are okay with the idea of their non-Christian neighbors burning forever.
Hi Griffin,
Great MLK quote! I couldn’t agree more, both with his words and with yours.
Hell as I had been taught and believed for so many years terrified me. I could not conceive of people being damned to punishment for all eternity for limited or temporal deeds, yet I understood the need for justice. Does eternal hell fit the crime? After reading some Swedenborg I preferred his view of Hell over my previous view that people suffer in flames of real fire forever. What kind of God is it that would do that? We find human beings who burn others alive most grotesque and evil.
However, I have been reading several works on Christian Universalism and find the arguments persuasive. Thomas Talbott’s book THE INESCAPABLE LOVE OF GOD challenged me and the author makes a good effort in one of his chapters on how we can still have free choice and yet in the end (in another age for some people) choose God. Hell will have its place in that process and hell is a place that is not fun. Another challenging book against the standard view on hell is THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED by David Bentley Hart (better have a dictionary with you if you read it-lots of big words 🙂 ),
I find Swedenborg’s view the only possible view in the light of God’s love and justice if Hell continues through all eternity. However, if Hell is meant to purge and cleanse like a refiner’s fire ridding the dross and impurities from tainted gold and silver then universalism seems plausible. Either way is preferable to me than the teaching I was raised in which only terrified me and made me afraid of God. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” roasting eternally in the fires of Hell is offensive to me now. The Iron Knuckle’s postings seem most uncharitable for a person who espouses universalism. I thank you, Lee, for having remained as charitable as was possible.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your comments, and for your kind words. I sympathize with The Iron Knuckle. There was a time when I was as young and headstrong as he is. I confess to having at times engaged in a similar pattern of bloodying my knuckles on people’s faces (not literally) in order to preach the Gospel of Love. I work on doing better now.
Yes, the universalists have some very tempting arguments. Two basic points keep me from accepting them:
The second one, especially, I find inescapable. If our eternal state is ultimately going to be heaven, there is no justification for putting us through all this hell. If all people are destined for heaven, then even allowing us a single second of struggle, pain, and agony is cruel. If ultimately evil is overcome in every one of us, a truly loving God would skip the evil altogether, and create us directly for heaven.
God didn’t do that. And the only possible justification for God not doing that is that God has allowed us true freedom of choice, in which, if we wish, we can actually choose to reject God, goodness, and truth.
Without God giving us that choice, our “freedom” isn’t real. If ultimately, God and goodness is our only choice, then what is actually happening is that God has designed and programmed us to ultimately choose the good. This means that God is making the choice for us, and that the freedom we feel we have is mere illusion.
I agree with you that freedom of choice is a really big part of God’s plan for the world. He didn’t make us to be puppets on a string; we have free will, which means we can choose to follow God and goodness, or choose to do evil and end up with some serious problems. I can understand why some people want to believe that God saves everyone, because it really does sound nice. But let’s face it, there’s evil in this world, and some people will not change their evil ways even if they know there’s a better way.
I hope most people choose to do good, even if they don’t quite understand how much God loves them. He still loves even the people who do wrong, but He can’t force them into heaven. It’s up to them to come to Love and Truth.
Hi Autumn,
I couldn’t have said it better myself! Unfortunately, some people just don’t want to change. They enjoy their favorite evil behavior, and will keep at it no matter how many opportunities God gives them to live in a better way.
That’s true, that’s life’s reality. But the good thing is that we all have the choice to change. No one has to stay evil. That’s probably why God gives everyone those opportunities to change their lives.
Hello Lee, I hope you can answer some questions for me.
I know that the pleasure of hell and the happiness of heaven are opposite to one another however it seems to me that you are saying that the pleasure of sin that the people in hell experience is as good as the joy that the people in heaven experience. It sounds like you’re saying one isn’t any better than the other, it’s just a matter of preference. Such as me liking the color blue and you liking the color red. If that is the case then it sounds like the only reason for choosing heaven is to avoid the pain which is hell not because it’s actually any more enjoyable than hell.
If the above is true then it seems like the people in hell like their sinful pleasure more than the people in heaven like their heavenly joy. I say this because the people in hell experience pain along with their pleasure. So the people in hell must consider the pleasure of evil to be worth the pain that they experience otherwise I would think that they would stop doing evil and therefore stop the pain. I assume that people in hell understand that pain will come with their pleasure sooner or later and yet they continue to do evil anyways and this goes on forever. So in effect they are willing to suffer for all of eternity to get their sinful pleasure. If that is the case they must really value and love their sinful pleasure! However on the other hand the people in heaven don’t have to suffer forever in order to get their heavenly joy. They may have to suffer and struggle in various ways on earth but once they go to heaven all that is over.
I think what I’m trying to say is that if the people in hell are willing to choose hell forever they must not know about heavenly happiness. But if the people in hell did know about heavenly happiness and chose to reject it in favour of sinful pleasure that would really call into question the value of going to heaven. In other words if there was even one person who chose hell over heaven forever, the people in heaven might think to themselves “why is that person choosing the pleasure of sin forever? does he have something I don’t? am I missing out on something etc.”
Also another question I have is whether it is possible for a person to change their mind after death or is their will fixed forever. And if we no longer have free will after death to accept the Lord and change our ways how are we still human? Because I think you said before that our free will is what makes us human and if we don’t have free will we are no longer human.
Also you say, “If all people are eventually saved, then God is a sadist for allowing us to experience any evil at all.” I am hoping you can explain this more as I’m not sure what you mean. If everyone went to heaven eventually why would God be a sadist for allowing any evil or pain?
Also you say, “any choice that is only temporary is ultimately an unreal choice.” I agree with that statement but I’m failing to see why it matters. I hope you can explain why it matters if our choice is permanent and therefore real.
Thanks.
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. These are all very good questions.
First, none of what I have said in this article or anywhere else on this website is meant to imply that there’s no difference between the pleasures of heaven and the pleasures of hell, and that one is just as good as the other.
There is a distinct difference between the pleasures of heaven and the pleasures of hell.
In heaven, everyone’s pleasures add to everyone else’s pleasures. In hell, everyone’s pleasures subtract from everyone else’s pleasures.
In heaven, my joy is to serve you and give you joy, and yours is to serve me and give me joy. Everyone loves and does good deeds for everyone else. This means that the joy and happiness of the people living in heaven continually builds to all eternity.
In hell, my joy is to do something that hurts you, and your joy is to do something that hurts me. Everyone hates everyone else and is always trying to get their own pleasure at the expense of everyone else. This means that the pleasures of the people who are living hell are always curtailing and limiting themselves.
Also, in hell pain always follows pleasure because the pain of retribution and punishment is inherent in the destructive pleasures. Think of an alcoholic who continually hits the bottle even though s/he knows that there will be a splitting headache once it wears off. You can’t separate the hangover from the alcohol. The alcohol causes the hangover by the very nature of its destructive effects upon the body.
So no, one isn’t just as good as the other. The pleasure, joy, and bliss of heaven is far greater than the destructive and self-destructive pleasures of hell. Angels do not look at evil spirits in hell wondering if they are missing something. They look with a mixture of sorrow and disgust. Sorrow because the people in hell have chosen such a self-defeating and painful life, and disgust because the things that the evil spirits in hell enjoy are indeed disgusting.
It is true that the evil spirits in hell love their particular pleasures so much that they are willing to endure the pain that inevitably follows.
But it is not true that they don’t know what the pleasure of heaven is like. During their lifetime on earth they saw how good people live, and what sort of life they have, and they chose to live an evil life anyway. Even after they die they can go to heaven if they want to. But those who do find it excruciatingly painful because the atmosphere of love for God and for other people conflicts with their own exclusive self-love and love of money.
Those who are specially prepared by God to see what heaven is like without having to feel it as pain do admit that the pleasures of heaven are much greater than their own pleasures in hell. But they can’t maintain that for long. Pretty soon they start wanting to be back at their own home in hell, where they can enjoy their own types of pleasure—which is not possible in heaven. And once they’re back at their home in hell, they deny everything they had briefly realized about how much greater heaven’s joy is than hell’s pleasure.
Can people who have chosen a life of hell change and go to heaven instead after they die?
As much as good and thoughtful people want the answer to that question to be yes, the real answer to is no.
At the time of our death the pot is fired, so to speak. Unlike during our time on earth, when the clay is still soft and can be re-shaped into something different, that is not possible once we die.
If you try to change the shape of a fired pot, all that will happen is that it will shatter into pieces. The same thing would happen if anyone tried to change the character of a person in either heaven or hell. It would only result in destroying the person entirely. That’s why God doesn’t do it, and doesn’t allow anyone else to do it either.
Does this mean that people in heaven and in hell are no longer human, because they no longer have free will?
No, it doesn’t.
There are two distinct types of freedom. One we enjoy fully while here on earth, but not in the other life. The other we enjoy partially here on earth, but fully in the spiritual world—with the caveat that we enjoy it fully only if we choose heaven.
These two types of freedom are:
Here on earth we have spiritual freedom of choice to decide what sort of person we want to be in our heart. That choice will determine what we are like as a person.
More specifically, we have freedom to choose our “ruling love,” which is the core love and motivation of our life. Whatever we decide here to love most of all, that will determine who we are forever. The general choices are to put God first, to put other people first, to put worldly wealth and pleasure first, and to put ourselves and our own power and influence first. Every human ruling love falls into one of these four categories. People who who chose the first two will make their eternal home in heaven. People who choose the second two will make their eternal home in hell.
What we don’t always have here is the freedom to live as we have chosen. Some people do, and some people don’t, depending upon what choices they have made and what the social and legal environment is like in the part of the world where they live.
When we move on to the spiritual world, we have already exercised the first kind of freedom. We have exercised our freedom to choose what kind of person we want to be. We then move fully (or as fully as possible) into the second kind of freedom, which is the freedom to live as we have chosen.
People who have chosen heaven are fully able to live the way they have chosen because they have chosen to love and live what is good, and there are no limits on that in heaven. No external social or legal pressures exist in heaven to prevent them from fully expressing their love of doing the particular type of good they have chosen to devote their lives to.
People who have chosen hell are able to live the way they have chosen. They can engage in their favorite criminal activity or self-centered pursuits. However, as discussed above, that freedom is self-limiting and self-punishing. The pain of the consequences of evil actions always follows the pleasure (for them) of those actions. So they do have freedom to engage in their evil desires, but they cannot do so with abandon. There are inherent limits in how far they can go, and how much they can get away with before the inevitable reaction and retribution of pain and suffering crashes in upon them.
But back to the main issue, we are still human because we still have the capabilities of will, understanding, freedom, and rationality. It’s just that the freedom of choice that we had here on earth changes into the freedom to live the way we have chosen.
And this is actually a far greater freedom.
Which is greater, learning to ride a bicycle or riding a bicycle?
Which is greater, choosing to start a company, or running that company successfully after you’ve started it up?
Which is greater, getting married to the one you love, or being married to the one you love?
Yes, freedom of choice is a wonderful thing. But the freedom to live the way we have chosen is far greater. And that is the freedom that people in heaven enjoy fully, and people in hell enjoy as much as is possible for them given the self-limiting nature of their choice of ruling love.
This also leads into your last question, about why it matters that any choice that is only temporary is ultimately an unreal choice.
Consider the mutual choice to pursue a marriage relationship with another person, to get married, and to live together as “one flesh,” to use the biblical metaphor. This is inherently a relationship that has no end. There is no end to the amount of love and understanding that can grow over time in a mutually loving and faithful marriage relationship. No matter how old the two get, they are always happy to be with each other, and the relationship is always growing.
When one of them dies, the other pines to resume the relationship. So much so that I continually get questions and comments from people whose husband or wife has died, and they’ve been taught by their so-called Christian churches that there is no marriage in heaven, and they come here looking for some hope and assurance that they can resume their marriage relationship with their husband or wife after they die. Much of the joy in a relationship of love is in the feeling that it is forever.
What if I had to say “no” to these bereaved husbands and wives? What if their choice to love someone and live with them in loving, faithful, monogamous marriage came to an end? How real was their choice then? All of a sudden it doesn’t exist anymore. Their choice was only temporary. Now it means nothing but wistful memories of something that is forever out of their reach. It is worse than if they had never had that beautiful relationship in the first place, because they can never have it again. They would have a few years of joy, then an eternity of pain in never being able to have that joy again.
This is just one example of why any choice that is only temporary is ultimately an unreal choice. If we choose something, and we can spend a certain amount of time living out that choice, but then it comes to an inevitable end and we have to spend all the rest of eternity not being able to live as we have chosen, how real is that choice? It’s not real at all.
What is even seventy years of happily married life compared to an eternity of no marriage in heaven, as the so-called Christian churches teach?
Now to wrap up with your second-to-last question about why, if all people are eventually saved, God would be a sadist for allowing us to experience any evil at all.
What would be the point of that? If everyone is eventually going to experience bliss in heaven anyway, why wouldn’t God just start us out in heaven, and have us remain there, and never experience evil at all? If everyone is going to have eternal bliss anyway, allowing us to experience even the slightest bit of evil and pain would be sadistic on God’s part because it would be completely unnecessary.
The whole point of evil is that it gives us a choice as to whether we want to live God’s way or our way. Whether we want to have a mutually free loving relationship with God and with our fellow human beings or whether we do not want to have that kind of relationship with them. If we have no choice but to have that relationship, then it is not a real relationship. It is just something we are programmed to do, and we are robots, not people.
Since everything good is God and is from God, if the only “choice” is good, then the only choice is God. And if there is only one choice, is that really a choice at all? This is why God had to allow (not create) evil.
If everyone ends out “choosing” the good, then the practical reality is that there was no choice at all.
If a game show had two doors, Door A and Door B, behind which there were two different prizes, but everyone always chose Door A, and nobody ever chose Door B, how many people would believe that there is a real choice? Something would be causing everyone to “choose” one and not the other. In reality, it would be a “choice” caused by some factor other than the people’s own free will. I.e., it would not really be a choice.
In order to be human, we must be able to make that choice. We can’t spend forever making that choice. In that case, there would also be no choice, because the choice would never be made. We make that choice during a certain period of time, which is our lifetime on earth.
Without the ability to make that choice, we would be human neither in this world nor in the next. We would be robots that God had programmed to say “I love you.” It would mean no more than if you programmed your computer to display the words “I love you” on the screen. If you thought at that point that you now have a “relationship” with your computer, you would be living in a fantasy land.
God allows evil because it is the only way we can be truly human and have a choice of whether or not we want to love God and be in a loving relationship with God and with our fellow human beings. If, in the end, we all “choose” heaven, that “choice” isn’t any more real than if the contestants on a game show for some reason always chose Door A, and never chose Door B.
In that case, why even have a Door B?
Why would God allow us to experience even a single moment of pain if we will all inevitably end out experiencing the joy and bliss of heaven to all eternity? There would be no purpose for it whatsoever! For God to do so would mean that God is a sadist who enjoys seeing people suffer pain even though it is completely unnecessary.
I hope this sufficiently answers your questions. Of course, these are big questions. Please feel free to continue the conversation if you’re not quite satisfied or if I’ve missed something that you’re particularly wondering about.
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey.
Hello Lee, I hope you can answer some questions for me. If you have already answered these questions somewhere else like in an article or something I would be happy to read it.
I know this sounds like a silly question but what exactly is free will and how does it work? There is obviously something I’m not understanding about it.
For example a question I have is if the people in heaven/hell could relive their life on earth a million times over would they make the same choice for heaven/hell every time?
Also you mention that there have been people brought up into heaven from hell I assume, and they felt the pleasure of heaven and admitted that it was better than sinful pleasure. If that is the case then how could that person ever choose to go back to hell? That person must not have really believed that the pleasure of heaven was better than that of hell otherwise they wouldn’t have wanted to go back to hell. This ties into my lack of understanding of free will. It seems to me that if heaven is better then hell no one would choose to reject heaven forever. It doesn’t make sense to me that a person would choose a lesser pleasure mixed with pain over a greater pleasure with no pain. The only way I can wrap my head around that is that the people choosing hell over heaven must not know what happiness they are losing.
Also how good/enjoyable is heaven and what’s it worth ?
How much better is the happiness/pleasure of heaven compared to that of hell? Is it a little bit better or is it a lot better?
You said that our ruling love is fixed after death, kind of like a pot being fired. I’m wondering, is this the mechanism by which God keeps people in heaven and hell for all eternity? If it is, why would God need to have a mechanism by which he keeps people in heaven and why would he want to keep people in hell? I know you said that people keep themselves in hell because that’s where they want to be, but didn’t God create the human heart so that it can’t be changed after death? So these people freely chose to go to hell but God has made it so they can never change their mind. What would be his motivation for doing that? I think you said something about how our choice for heaven or hell has to be permanent so that it is real because temporary things are relatively unreal compared to eternal things. Maybe I’m the odd one out but I think I would like to retain my ability to change my heart/mind. It seems more free to me even if I never wanted to use it, after all if I was in heaven why would I choose to go to hell?.. Another question I have is if God didn’t fix our ruling love after death would it be possible for angels to fall from heaven and go to hell?
Does Swedenborg ever mention anywhere what percentage of the human race is in heaven and hell, for example is it 50/50 or is there 70% of people in heaven and 30% in hell or what? Also does he ever mention the ratio of men to women in heaven and hell? In other words, are there more men than women in heaven/hell or are the numbers equal?
Does God consider it a problem that there are people in hell or is that just a part of creation? In other words, are people going to hell a problem that needs to be fixed or not? And if it’s not something to be fixed then what is salvation all about? What if hypothetically from the beginning of the human race until now no human ever chose heaven and therefore every member of the human race went to hell? Would God do anything about that?
Thank you for your answers.
Hi Nathan,
These are all very good questions. Ultimately, you’ll have to ponder them for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Meanwhile, I can offer some thoughts and responses that might be helpful in your ruminations.
First, in response to your questions about free will:
Fundamentally, free will is the ability of our heart to decide what it loves. Our head only serves as a travel agent and tour guide, presenting various options to the heart and describing them. The heart, not the head, is what makes the decision. The head then carries out the decision that the heart has made.
The heart makes this decision based on the pleasures or joys it wants to experience. If the heart decides that it wants to experience the joy of mutually loving, respectful relationships, then it will send the head and the hands in that direction. But if it decides it wants to experience the pleasures of dominating other people and making them into slaves, then it will send the head and the hands in that direction. Either way there will be pleasures. But the pleasures of the first will rise up to joy, whereas the pleasures of the second will remain merely pleasures, and will be mixed in with pain.
When the heart chooses evil, it doesn’t choose the pain associated with evil. It chooses the pleasures of evil. The pain comes along with the pleasure as an unwanted but inevitable guest.
You ask:
This is a mere hypothetical. It is not possible to relive our life even two times, let alone a million times. Our life is formed not only by our intrinsic character and by our choices, but by the circumstances of our birth and upbringing, and the circumstances of our adult life. If we were born another time, in another place, we would be a different person. And it is not possible to rewind the clock and start over again. Time just keeps on moving forward, never backward.
Each one of us is unique in our essential character—our inmost soul—and also in the circumstances of our birth and life. There are infinite possibilities of people who could exist. Not all of those infinite possible people actually will exist. The reality of human beings and human communities is that they consist of the people who do exist, not the ones who don’t exist. And each one of those human beings will make a choice for good or evil within the particular circumstances of his or her life. Each one of them could have made the opposite choice, but didn’t.
This is one of the wonders and mysteries of human life: what actually happens vs. what could have happened. But life consists of what actually happens, not what could have happened.
The preciousness of our time on earth, together with our rationality and free will, is that God has given us the ability to choose what sort of life we want—and this lifetime is our opportunity to make that choice.
You ask:
This is why it’s important to understand that it is our heart that makes the choice, not our head. Evil spirits don’t actually feel the pleasures of heaven. They only see them.
Evil spirits who are allowed to rise up from hell to heaven come to understand intellectually that the angels have a far better and happier life than they do. But their heart isn’t in it.
In order to be lifted up to heaven, evil spirits’ heart’s desires must become temporarily quiescent. Otherwise they could not stand the atmosphere of heaven because it is diametrically opposed to what their heart desires. However, as soon as their heart’s desires begin to reassert themselves, no matter how much their head has become convinced that the angels are far happier, wiser, and so on, than they are, they start to hate the atmosphere of heaven, and intensely desire to return to their own pleasures in hell.
We humans do have the ability to lift our mind up above where our heart and our life are. We can intellectually see things that go far beyond the desires of our heart. But sooner or later, the heart will reassert itself. If the heart doesn’t decide to rise up with the mind, then before long, it will drag the mind back down to its own level.
This is what is happening when evil spirits get a glimpse of heaven and its wonders, but soon return to their own home in hell. And when they do, they forget all about the understanding they gained in heaven. They once again believe that angels are crazy for enjoying all that love stuff, and that real pleasure comes from attacking other people and gaining power over them—or whatever the particular selfish and greedy pleasures they have chosen might be.
For another account of the pleasures of evil spirits in hell, scroll down to the section titled, “A conversation with some inhabitants of hell” in this article:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
You ask:
The happiness of heaven is orders of magnitude greater than the pleasures of hell. But for people in hell, the joys of heaven are torture, not joy.
People in hell have as much pleasure as is possible, given the nature of their desires and pleasures. It is squalid, sad, and gross to angels. But to evil spirits, it is intensely pleasurable. Even thinking about engaging in theft or adultery or murder gives them intense pleasure. They get tingles down their spine when they think about these things and are about to do them. And when they are doing them, they feel intensely alive.
Consider the pleasure felt by a serial rapist when he is on the hunt, when he has gotten a woman under his control, when he actually rapes her. For someone who is in a mutually loving marriage, the very thought of it is intensely horrific and disgusting. But to the rapist, it is the greatest pleasure of his life. He glories in his past rapes, and eagerly plots his next one. The only thing that restrains his pleasure is if he gets caught and incarcerated, so that he can no longer commit rape. If he is a hardened rapist, whenever he is let out of prison, he will go right back to it, until he is caught again. Or if he doesn’t, it will be out of pure fear, and he will spend his days getting pleasure from the rapes he did commit. This person will continue to desire the same evil pleasures just as intensely after death as before.
Objectively, we can compare the joys of heaven with the pleasures of hell. But our joys and pleasures are not objective, and we don’t compare them with other types of joys. Someone whose pleasure is in getting money and becoming rich does not compare his pleasure with someone whose joy is in helping sick people regain their health. No, he thinks only in terms of people who have more money than he does, whom he is jealous of and desires to be in their position, and of people who have less money than he does, whom he holds in contempt as losers. For him, all pleasure and pain, greater or lesser, is about getting or losing money. No other joys or pleasures mean anything to him at all compared to that one.
This is why, although we can objectively compare who has greater joy, in actual people’s lives it doesn’t matter. All that matters is how much or how little of their particular pleasure or joy they have. That’s why evil spirits can see the wonders of heaven and the transcendent beauties and joys that exist there, and still have no interest whatsoever in living in heaven, but go right back to their own hell, where they can pursue their heart’s pleasures.
Hi Nathan,
In response to your questions about the “pot” of our ruling love being “fired” at death so that it can no longer change:
This is not the right way to think about it. It is not God keeping us in heaven or hell. It is our choice that keeps us in heaven or hell.
God always wants to lift us up to heaven, even if we have made our bed in hell. In fact, God always wants to lift people in the lower levels of heaven up to the highest level of heaven. If God were making the choice for us, then we would all be living in the highest heaven.
But God doesn’t make the choice for us. God gives us the freedom to choose what kind of life we want. If God didn’t give us this freedom, we would not be human, and nothing about our life or relationships would be real. It would all just be an extension of God. It would be like a programmer programming a computer to say “I love you.” It would be meaningless.
For our relationships with one another and with God to be real, they must be freely chosen both by us and by the others in those relationships. If they are not mutually chosen, then they are not real. God is eternally the same, and always chooses to love us. But we may or may not decide to love God in return. If we do decide to love God in return, we will make our eternal bed in heaven. If we decide not to love God in return, we will make our eternal bed in hell.
Either way, it is not God keeping us there. It is us keeping ourselves there.
God only keeps people in heaven, not in hell. And even in heaven, God keeps people in the heaven they have chosen for themselves rather than in the heaven God would choose for them if it were up to God.
God does not want to keep anyone in hell. God eternally wants to lift everyone in hell up to heaven. But they eternally reject God’s will to do that, and God respects their decision to reject God. God does not force anyone into relationship with God. Once again, to do so would be to destroy both their humanity and the relationship.
Then why is the pot fired at death? Continuing with your questions:
I realize that this is something that many people just can’t accept. The person I am responding to in the above article is one who cannot accept it. Swedenborg himself, during his first few years in the spiritual world, apparently believed that everyone would eventually end out in heaven—even the ones who were currently living in hell. But after more experience in the spiritual world, he came to the conclusion that this is not the case—that the people who go to hell stay there forever, and never rise up to heaven to live there instead.
Ultimately, you will have to make up your own mind what to believe about this. For my own take on it, and why I do think it is necessary for there to be a deadline on our choice, please see the sections starting with the one “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” in the same article I linked for you in my previous reply:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
Continuing on:
Your final question gets to the heart of the matter.
If there were no deadline when our decision is final, there would also be no security. We would always be in danger of losing the life we now have, just as we are always in danger of losing our life, both physically and spiritually, here on earth.
There are two basic types of freedom:
The first type is the primary type of freedom we have during our lifetime on earth.
Here, we can choose what sort of person we want to be, and what sort of life we want to live. Unfortunately, due to the realities of life on earth, and the nature of the material world of having a life of its own that is not very responsive to spiritual life, we are often very limited in how much of the life we have chosen we can actually live.
For example, we may choose to believe in and live a life of being happily married in a mutually loving and faithful relationship. However, the person we marry may change their mind, or may have deceived us, and we end out being in a broken relationship instead. Or we may achieve all our dreams of being happily married, but then our partner gets chronically ill or dies. Now we are unable to live the life we have chosen.
The second type of freedom is the primary type we have during our eternal life in the spiritual world, especially if we have chosen heaven.
We still do have quite a bit of freedom of choice even in heaven. We can decide what we want to do that day. We can even decide to take on something new in our life, start a new job, or take up a new type of sports or hobby. In that respect, it is very much like our life on earth.
However, when it comes to the basic choice of what our ruling love will be—meaning what we will put at the center of our life as the thing we love the most, and that gives us our primary motivation in life—that is something we cannot choose to change after we die. We have full freedom of choice only during our lifetime on earth.
However, what we do have in heaven, and in a more limited fashion in hell, is the freedom to live the life we have chosen.
To use the earlier example, if we have chosen to live in a mutually loving, faithful, and monogamous marriage, God will bring us together with the partner who is perfect for us, and we will stay happily married to her or him forever. There is no possibility that we or our partner will get chronically ill or die, making the continuation of a full marriage difficult or impossible. The type of married life we chose on earth we are now free to live to eternity, without fear of ever having it damaged or lost.
This, I would suggest, is a far greater freedom than the freedom of choice that we have during our lifetime on earth.
If there were no deadline, and the pot were never fired, we could not have this freedom. We would always have to live in fear that the life we have chosen will be lost. This would mean that our happy life would always be marred by insecurity and fear. And that’s no way to live forever.
What about people who choose hell? Wouldn’t it be better for them if there were no deadline?
Perhaps. Bot not if you ask them. Swedenborg’s conversations with evil spirits from hell made it very clear that they have no desire whatsoever to change and be different people. They have no desire to go to heaven. They enjoy their evil pleasures, and they want to continue to indulge in them as much as possible—which is not possible in heaven.
Consider people who have a favorite vice, such as smoking or gambling or promiscuous sex. Do these people appreciate it if someone is always dogging them about it, trying to get them to stop engaging in their favorite vice? Not at all! They wish those annoying do-gooders would get out of their face and let them enjoy themselves and live their own life.
That’s how it is for people in hell. They have no interest whatsoever in becoming someone else. They like themselves exactly as they are, thank you very much!
That’s the personal and practical side. More abstractly, having the possibility of change would be like always having those do-gooders nagging around the edges. It would mean never being able to just fully immerse themselves in the pleasures they have chosen.
Rather than do-gooders, it would be conscience always nagging at the edges of their mind, never letting them fully enjoy their evil pleasures.
There is a mistaken idea in some traditional Christian circles that the torments of hell are always having pangs of conscience about everything evil spirits in hell are doing. That is false. People in hell have no conscience. They have completely banished from their mind any possibility that what they are doing is wrong.
God allows them to banish conscience from their mind precisely so that they can simply enjoy their pleasures—as much as that is possible given their self-punishing nature. If they still had conscience, they could never whole-heartedly enjoy their pleasures.
And yet, it is only the naggings of conscience that get us to reconsider our evil desires and actions, and change for the better.
Yes, bad consequences and punishments can bring us up short, and restrain us from acting on our evil desires. But they can never take away the evil desires themselves. That is something we must freely choose to change. And we can make that choice only if we have a sense of right and wrong, otherwise known as conscience.
The bottom line is that even in hell, if there were the possibility of the evil spirits changing their mind, given what’s necessary for that to happen (i.e., having conscience, and a sense of right and wrong), evil spirits could not be in full freedom to live the way they have chosen. Those spiritual do-gooders would never leave them alone.
That, also, is no way to live to eternity.
As it is, the evil spirits in hell are fully committed to the life they have chosen, heart, mind, and hands. The only thing that holds them back at all is punishments and resistance from other evil spirits. But even when they are restrained from acting, they can still take pleasure in their fantasies of world domination or sexual domination or endless wealth. So they can still have some of their pleasures. And when they are engaged in those fantasies, they are living their pleasures in their minds.
In summary: if we still had full freedom of choice between good and evil in the spiritual world, we could never have full freedom to live the life we have chosen—which is the greater of the two freedoms.
If some nation on earth were to decree in its laws that its citizens can think whatever they want, but they can only live the way the government decides they must live, would that nation be considered free? Not at all. True freedom is the freedom to live the way we want to live. That is the freedom we have fully in heaven, and as much as is possible in hell.
Hi Nathan,
You ask:
No, Swedenborg never gives any ratio between heaven and hell. But there is reason to believe that there are many more in heaven than in hell. That reason is that all children who die before reaching self-responsible adulthood grow up in heaven and remain there forever. And there are a lot of children and teenagers who die before reaching adulthood. Also, anyone who is brain-damaged or mentally ill from childhood in a way that prevents even a minimum of adult rationality and self-responsibility will go to heaven even if they have physically reached adulthood during their lifetime on earth.
Even if the ratio of choosing heaven to choosing hell were 50/50 among adults, this means that there would be many more people in heaven than in hell. And I have a hard time believing that more than half the population has chosen hell. In my experience, most people are good. Only a few are really bad people. Perhaps there is evil lurking in the hearts of many people that are outwardly good. But I still don’t think that’s true of more than half the adult population of the world.
As for the male/female ratio, there’s no reason to believe it is anything other than 50/50. Both men and women are human beings who have the same freedom and rationality when it comes to choosing good over evil. Despite some modern ideologies, there is no reason to believe that one sex leans any more toward evil than the other.
God doesn’t like the fact that there are people in hell. However, it is not a flaw to be fixed. Rather, it is a necessary evil if we are to be human—which requires that we must be rational and free beings. And freedom means freedom to reject the life that God wants for us. If we didn’t have that ability, we would be robots, not human beings.
In other words, people going to hell is a problem, but it’s not something that can be fixed without creating a far worse problem: the destruction of our humanity, and along with it our ability to be in mutual relationship with one another and with God.
Salvation, in a nutshell, is all about giving us the ability and the guidance to choose good over evil.
We are not born naturally good, as many people think. We are born naturally self-centered. This you can easily tell just by watching any toddler, and noticing what he or she is interested in. Basically, it’s love and pleasure and stuff for himself or herself, regardless of the happiness of anyone else.
Fortunately, toddlers are rather small and weak, so they can’t inflict much damage on anyone else. But just imagine everyone in adult bodies but having the mind and desires of a toddler? That would truly be hell on earth!
Also fortunately, toddlers are innocent. They don’t mean to be selfish. They just are selfish. Salvation is all about exchanging that naturally self-centered character for a character that is moved by love for other people and for God. That’s what our lifetime on earth is all about.
As for your hypothetical, it is just that: a hypothetical, not the reality. It is better to draw our conclusions based on the reality of what is actually happening rather than on hypotheticals of things that didn’t happen and aren’t happening.
The reality is that many, if not most, people have chosen heaven, and continue to choose heaven, over hell. And it is a general principle that everyone has the ability to choose heaven. It is also a general principle that the default destination is always heaven, not hell. If we don’t reach the level of adult maturity required to choose between heaven and hell, we will always go to heaven, never to hell.
So the reality is that God’s plan is working just fine. There is a beautiful and happy heaven for those who choose love over selfishness. And there is a hell of limited pleasures for those who choose selfishness over love. This may not be the theoretical “best of all possible worlds,” but it is the realistic best of all possible worlds. Any other arrangement would be worse than the one we have.
Specifically, without the freedom to choose hell and live there forever, we would not be humans, but pre-programmed robots. Nothing we think, feel, or do, and none of our relationships, would be real. It would all just be some computer game controlled by an all-powerful kid for his own pleasure.
I have read this article and most of the comments to it, and I wish to pose a few objections.
First, exegetically, it seems that Paul was a universalist. I am not sure what Paul’s authority in the New Church is (isn’t he supposed to be in hell?) But for me, he is an apostle and his words are pretty authoritative. And he seems to believe that ‘just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive’; that eventually ‘every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord’; that the wicked ‘vessels of wrath’ will be converted into vessels of mercy (all israel will be saved, Romans 11), etc.
Second, I find your notion of free will, or of free will in general, to be deeply confusing. It seems God himself must lack free will. Because God always chooses what is good, and he undergoes no deliberation concerning what sort of person he wants to be, and he is not ‘free’ to do evil.
Evil is bondage and slavery. In what way, then, is the choice for evil really free? On a conventional level, sure, if someone of sound mind murders another person, we say he did it freely. But on a metaphysical level this is very obscure. We switch between talk about freedom and moral responsibility on one hand, and mechanistic talk about causes of people’s actions, depending on whether we are trying to hold them accountable for some procedure of justice, or whether we are trying to rehabilitate them. And it doesn’t seem that either perspective can or should dominate the other. It’s just about what we are trying to do.
It seems that when a person loves something, they are responding to the real good God has put into that thing. If someone has premarital sex, for example, it is because they are responding to the real good God has placed in human sexuality and romantic relationships. And something about their perception of that good is disordered, so they are unable to truly get what they desire from it.
And so it seems to me that only a choice for the good can be a truly free choice.
If a child holds his hand to a hot stove, and doesn’t pull away as he is burned, we would think, “This child has some sort of problem, he has nerve damage or he’s drugged or something, he doesn’t know what he is doing.” That is like Jesus’ prayer for his murderers: “Forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” But we would not look at that child and say, “Oh, he is exercising his free-will.”
It seems that you’re saying the lives of people in hell never reach such a fever pitch of misery that they are, so to speak, compelled to leave their sin.
I have had experiences like this. It did not feel like a free choice but like a compulsion; seeing by the light I was given, I could make no other choice than God.
On the other hand, I know a man who’s entirely turned his back on the good. He embraces a most evil and sick ideology and all of his good personal qualities are filtered through that. And he has somehow rationalized the pain that accompanies his pleasure as right, natural, even good. So maybe it’s possible to get to that point after all, but I can’t really comprehend it, and I can’t imagine that God would just stop trying to reach people like that.
Despite all these words, it’s very much an instinctive thing for me. I can’t imagine giving up on my friend. I can’t imagine God giving up on him either. And if he saw, even for just a moment, the true nature of what he was doing, I can’t imagine that he would stay content with his sin. It wouldn’t FEEL like a choice at all, then, anymore than I have a choice to believe the moon is made of cheese or that England does not exist. Sometimes reality just compels me to acknowledge truth.
Perhaps I don’t understand people as well as I should.
Hi Axis,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and questions. These are very big issues. You, of course, will have to make up your own mind about them. But I will respond as I am able, and refer you to some other articles here that take up some of these issues in more detail.
First, about Paul:
Paul’s writings are not considered to be part of the Word of God in New Church circles. They therefore are not seen as authoritative. (But our understanding of “authority” is generally different from that of traditional Christianity anyway.) However, Swedenborg said that Paul’s writings are “good books for the church,” along with the writings of the other Apostles. And from my perspective, they support New Church beliefs just as much as the Gospels and the rest of the Bible do.
However, Paul’s writings must be read in light of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels, and in light of the Bible as a whole. See:
Jesus Changed Paul’s World
Unfortunately, much of present-day Christianity, especially in its Protestant wing, reads Jesus in light of its complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Paul, rather than reading Paul in light of Jesus’ teachings. See, for example:
Faith Alone Does Not Save . . . No Matter How Many Times Protestants Say It Does
For more on Paul from a New Church point of view, please see:
Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?
Here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life, though I personally accept Swedenborg’s canon of scripture, I make my doctrinal case based on the Protestant canon because that is the minimum canon accepted by all Christians outside the New Church.
Unfortunately, Paul had a wee bit of an ego (he’s always talking about himself!) and as a result wrote in a rather fancy style, as reflected in Peter’s comment about Paul’s writings in 2 Peter 3:15–16. It is therefore rather easy for people to miss Paul’s point, and misunderstand his meaning.
Without a good understanding of Paul’s overall message, and its complete dependency on Jesus’ message, people—including high-powered Christian clerics and scholars—can and do go completely off-course, twisting Paul’s words into all sorts of shapes that are completely foreign to the message he was attempting to promulgate. If Peter, who was taught by the Lord himself, found some things in Paul’s writings hard to understand, it only stands to reason that the same would be true for many later Christian thinkers.
In short, Paul’s letters can be easily misunderstood if they are not read from the perspective of his overall message. Two key elements of that message are:
If we read his writings with these two key points in mind, many things in his writings that have been completely misinterpreted among Christians for many centuries become clear and sensible, and fully in line with Jesus’ teachings.
So yes, I’ll engage based on Paul’s writings. But in my view, the Gospels, and Jesus’ life and teachings, are the cornerstone and heart of the Bible message. Paul is to be read in the light of the Gospels, not the reverse.
It astounds me that many Protestants have given Paul so much authority that they reject Jesus’ teachings if, in their minds, they conflict with Paul’s teachings. They do this by claiming that Jesus was preaching to people of the old covenant, which didn’t end until his death, whereas Paul was preaching to people of the new covenant. But it is utter blasphemy to sideline the Lord Jesus Christ himself in favor of one of his Apostles. Who is wiser, the Apostle, or the Lord himself from whom the Apostle received his message? Should we really pay attention to Paul, but not to Jesus? To believe so is unChristian and blasphemous. And indeed, The Christian Church is Not Christian.
One result of this viewpoint of mine, in answer to your more specific point and question, is that I look first to Jesus’ many statements that both salvation and damnation are eternal, and I read Paul’s statements in light of those, rather than the other way around.
I do not think Paul meant to say that all people are ultimately saved. For example, you refer to Romans 11:26, in which Paul says, “All Israel will be saved.” But just a few verses earlier, he said:
Here the salvation is not universal, but conditional upon their not continuing in unbelief.
So yes, some of Paul’s statements can be read to mean that he was a universalist. But these statements are not crystal clear on that point. If he had wanted to say that all people are ultimately saved, he could have done so. He certainly had the vocabulary and writing ability to say that all people ultimately end out in God’s kingdom, and none will end out in destruction. But he never does say this.
Instead, he makes it clear that those who are faithless and do evil will be condemned, while those who have faith and do good will be saved. What would this distinction even mean if the people who do evil and are condemned are eventually saved anyway? If we read Paul in this way, it takes all the teeth out of his preaching.
But this is not the place for a full exploration of Paul on the subject of universalism. Short version: I do not think such a reading of Paul can stand in the context of his entire surviving body of writing. And I certainly do not think it can stand if we read Paul in light of Jesus’ teachings, rather than the reverse, as is commonly done in the so-called Christian church.
This is getting long, so I’ll continue in another reply.
Hi Axis,
Now about free will:
It is important to understand that there are two key forms of free will:
The first one, though it comes first in time, is a secondary form of free will. The second is the primary form of free will. The first one sets us up for the second one. The first is short-lived. The second is ongoing.
Let’s say a person chooses to be a computer programmer. That choice is made in a relatively short period of time. But the state of being a computer programmer that follows from it lasts for a long time.
Without the freedom to be a computer programmer, the choice to be a computer programmer would have no meaning. For example, if a person lived in such poverty that he or she doesn’t even have access to computers, there would be no meaningful choice to be a computer programmer.
Here on earth, our primary freedom is freedom of choice. Particularly, spiritual freedom of choice. Here, we can make a choice of what sort of person we want to be. That choice happens in a relatively short period of time. Even if it takes us an entire lifetime, that is a mere blip on the screen of our eternal life in the spiritual world once our life in this world is over.
In the spiritual world, our primary freedom is the freedom to live as we have chosen. That freedom is never taken away from us. But as you suggest, it is full freedom only if we have chosen good rather than evil.
For God, freedom of choice is not necessary. God’s character did not develop as ours does. It just is. The primary freedom God has is the freedom to do what God wants to do. This is another way of saying the freedom to live as we choose. So God is free, and God’s freedom is the greater, eternal kind of freedom, in comparison with the temporary freedom of choice that we humans have during our lifetime on earth.
Of course, even in the spiritual world we do have a general freedom of choice in what we want to do today, and what projects we want to work on. Freedom of choice doesn’t disappear entirely. But our fundamental choice, that of the type of person we want to be, has already been made. The pot of our character is fired at death, and does not change to eternity. It only grows in the direction we have already set for ourselves during our lifetime on earth.
If this were not the case, then no one could be secure in their lives, either in heaven or in hell. If the choice we made on earth were changeable in the afterlife, then to all eternity, angels would have to fear the possibility that one day they would choose evil instead of good, their entire beautiful life in heaven would be destroyed, and they would have to endure the horrors of hell. They could never dwell secure, as the Bible promises to those who trust in the Lord.
People in hell, also, would not be secure in their choice of what sort of person they want to be. Take the example of someone who is well aware that smoking is deadly, but chooses to smoke anyway. How would that person feel if some do-gooder constantly hounded him or her to stop smoking? The intention might be good, but the effect would be that the person who enjoys a smoke could never have a moment of peace. All he or she wants is to be left alone to enjoy a smoke and go about his or her day.
Similarly, God does not “give up” on people in hell. Rather, God respects their choice to enjoy evil rather than good. God does not constantly hound them, trying to get them to change their mind. The fundamental reality is that they don’t want to change their mind, and they don’t want anyone trying to convince them to do so. They’ve made their choice. Now they are living it.
But for more on this, please go to this article:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
Then, if you don’t want to read the whole article, scroll down to the heading, “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” and read from there. I have the same problem with universalism that I do with reincarnation: it takes away our humanity by taking away our freedom to choose what sort of person we want to be.
Although I understand that compassionate people don’t want to see anyone going to eternal hell (and neither does God, by the way), practically speaking the reality on the ground is that many people do persistently choose an evil and destructive way of life, even though they are perfectly capable of choosing a good and kind way of life. Experience teaches that as much as it would make much more sense to choose the good over the evil, some people choose evil. And that is the choice they want to make.
Evil does have its pleasures. Otherwise no one would ever choose it. For some people, theft, domination, rape, murder, deceit, and so on are very pleasurable. In fact, they could be pleasurable for any one of us, if we were to make that choice. If you look into you own heart, I am sure you will see things in there that would feel pleasurable to you even if you are well aware that they are very wrong, evil, and destructive. And you could choose to devote your life to those pleasures if you wanted to. Then you would become like your friend who has turned his back on the good.
I should add that no outside forces, or physical and genetic factors, ever cause a person to go to hell instead of heaven. Only choices made freely, when we could have made a different choice, become a permanent part of our character. All physical, genetic, and external factors that influence us here on earth are taken away after death. Then, all that remains is the character we have built for ourselves within the range of possibilities, either good or bad, that we had on earth. For more on this, please see:
Can Gang Members Go to Heaven? (Is Life Fair?)
There is much more that could be said in response to your thoughtful comments and questions. But I’ll leave it at this for now. Feel free to continue the conversation if, after reading these comments and the various linked articles, you still have thoughts or questions.
And once again, ultimately you’ll have to make up your own mind what you will believe. That is part of the freedom of choice that we enjoy as human beings living on this earth.
Thank you for your kind and thorough response.
I can see where you are coming from, and it does line up with and explain some aspects of my experience, like my struggles with my friend.
Exegetically, however, I am still not convinced.
Here is an article by a universalist: https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/1129-2/
He leans on 1 Corinthians 15:22, Colossians 1:19-20, and Romans 5:18.
I’d be grateful if you could say a few words about some or all of these texts.
Regarding eternal punishment, the problem here is that the word translated ‘eternal’ can mean ‘eternal’ or it can mean ‘for a period of time.’
Personally, I find the strongest text against universalism to be Jesus’ words on blasphemy against the Spirit. This seems like a real warning, and interpreting aionios as ‘a very long time’ doesn’t get us off the hook, since Jesus says this sin won’t be forgiven in THIS aeon OR the aeon to come. Granted, he also doesn’t say any specific person is in this position, but it’s suggestive.
Your words about free choice make a lot of sense to me, but since this is essentially philosophy, I’m gonna have to let it sit in my mind a while and see what grows from it.
Peace and blessings to you.
Hi Axis,
Thanks for the link to the article. It has major problems, biblical, doctrinal, and conceptual. But since you’re asking about the exegetical issues, I’ll stick with those for now.
Exegetically, the author’s argument depends upon:
On that last point, please see:
Faith Alone Does Not Save . . . No Matter How Many Times Protestants Say It Does
Oh, and he seems to have the standard Protestant malady of interpreting Jesus in light of Paul rather than the reverse, as if Paul were somehow greater that Jesus.
I’ll focus mostly on the first point above in taking up the three passages you mention from the article.
1 Corinthians 15:22
The biggest problem with taking this passage as a universalist proof text is that it occurs within an extended discussion of resurrection. Paul is here arguing that there is life after death, and that this applies to all people. To yank this out of context and say that Paul is discussing whether everyone will be saved is to ignore the entire point and flow of Paul’s argument in order to support something that Paul simply never says.
Consider that from a literalist perspective (and the author does seem to be a fairly literalist interpreter of the Bible, to the point that he even sidelines Jesus’ parables as reliable sources of doctrinal understanding), Adam’s sin caused our literal death. Such people believe that if Adam had not sinned, there would be no physical death, and we would all live forever physically on this earth. So from a literalist perspective, since all literally died due to Adam’s sin, therefore all will literally come to life again due to Christ’s saving work.
If the author really wants to be literalist about it, then he should recognize that all Paul is saying here is that since everybody died because of Adam, everybody will be resurrected and keep on living because of Christ. That would be a terribly reductionist reading of Paul’s argument, but it underscores the fact that Paul is here talking primarily about resurrection.
Spiritually, it is not true that all died because of Adam’s sin. Rather, all became subject to death because of Adam’s sin, and died because they themselves sinned. This is stated about as explicitly as Paul says anything in a verse that Protestants tend to conceptually subtract several words from when they are pushing forward their doctrine:
Death spread to all, not because Adam sinned, but because all have sinned.
But back to the point, though it is true that “life” commonly means “being saved” in the Bible, here the general subject is not salvation, but resurrection. It is ignoring the context to read “all” here as meaning that all are saved, when the obvious meaning is that all are resurrected because Christ has defeated death through his resurrection. What happens to people after they are resurrected is the subject of so many passages in the Bible that there should be no question about it.
Even if we do read “made alive” in 1 Corinthians 15:22 as referring to spiritual life, i.e., salvation, the very next verse makes this conditional, not universal:
What does Paul mean by “those who belong to Christ”? Sure, you could argue, as this author probably would, that all people belong to Christ. But that would drain Paul’s entire letter of all meaning. It’s all about accepting Christ and being saved by Christ. The obvious meaning of this verse is that the ones who believe in Christ are the ones who will be saved.
I could go on about the broader context, but I hope this will be enough to show that the author’s reading of 1 Corinthians 15:22 is faulty because he takes that verse right out of its context and gives it an entirely unnatural meaning. Once again, the “all” here is about all being resurrected. What happens next is the subject of other passages, which make it very clear that some are resurrected to eternal life, and others to eternal death.
Colossians 1:19–20
Here the author engages in fancy footwork to argue that “all” doesn’t really mean all, but only humans. The passage here says, not “all people,” but “all things.” But the author tries to argue this away, saying that it doesn’t actually apply to the Devil, who was thrown into the lake of fire, and that even the prophet who was thrown into the lake of fire probably wasn’t a human being.
In other words, “all” means “all” when it suits the author’s doctrinal position, but not when it doesn’t. He can’t have his cake and eat it too.
In general, the author spends enormous time with fancy arguments about the meanings of particular words, while not paying attention to the more important determinant of a word’s meaning, which is its context. It is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
And indeed here, just as in 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul immediately puts the kabosh on the idea that “all” means that everyone is saved—once again in the very next verses:
If Paul’s “all” always means that all are saved, why does he keep on adding provisos right after he has made that statement?
The author very much wants Paul to be a universalist, so much so that he ignores Paul’s clear statements on the subject in favor of rigidly narrow definitions of particular words to the exclusion of their context.
Words commonly have a whole range of meaning. What they mean in any particular place can be understood from the context. Here, the context makes it clear that Paul does not mean to say that all are eventually saved. If he had wanted to say that, he was perfectly capable of doing so plainly and clearly, without leaving us to niggle over the definition of one or two words.
Romans 5:18–19
Here once again the author engages in a lot of verbal gymnastics to argue that “many” really means “all,” or might as well mean “all.” But if Paul meant “all” in verse 19, why did he say “the many,” not “all”?
In reality, this couplet of verses shows that Paul did not have some rigid conception of “all” in mind when he wrote “all,” but was using that word rhetorically. Once again, in the very next verse after verse 18, which is the one the author wants to focus on, Paul makes it clear that he is not using “all” in that way. Hence the author’s need to engage in the aforementioned mental gymnastics to get out of the obvious conclusion that Paul was not a universalist.
I could go on with additional verses that the author quotes, but I hope this will be enough to satisfy you that exegetically, the author is not on solid ground, but is using specific preferred word definitions as daggers to kill the context in which those words are used.
Later in the article the author makes the standard universalist argument that the Greek word translated “eternal” doesn’t really mean “eternal,” but “of an age.” I’ve already dealt with this in the above article, so I won’t repeat all of that here.
However, I do find it very funny that the author tries to argue his way out of the problem that if it means only “for an age” when it refers to damnation, then it must mean only “for an age” when it comes to salvation also.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If you’re going to argue that damnation is not eternal because the word really means “for an age” and not “for eternity,” then what basis is there for arguing that salvation is eternal? Ironically, this argument for universalism based on a rigid and narrow reading of the word commonly translated “eternal” actually weakens the case for universalism by calling into question also whether salvation is eternal. What we’re left with is no clear message on either point.
Why should we assume that if there are “further chances” for salvation after death, there aren’t also “further chances” of damnation after death? All this leaves us with is complete uncertainty and insecurity about our eternal state after death. The only alternative is to deny free will and say that God ultimately forces everyone to be saved, as the author himself conjectures at one point late in the article. But on his confusion as to whether God’s foreknowledge does or doesn’t imply determinism (a classic head-scratcher), please see:
If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?
Even if the Greek word’s root meaning were “of an age,” which it isn’t (as covered in the above article), that still wouldn’t take away from its meaning of “eternal.”
Consider the Greek and Hebrew words commonly translated “heaven.” The root meaning of those words is not “heaven,” but “sky.” In some places they are translated “sky,” and in others they are translated “heaven,” depending upon the context (as always!).
Does the fact that the word “really” means “sky” mean that there is no heaven? That every time the Bible talks about heaven, it really means “sky”?
Will we really, literally, “be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17)? Will we be living with the Lord up in the literal clouds of the literal sky of this literal earth forever? The whole notion is absurd. Paul’s words here do draw on common ideas of the time that heaven is in the sky above our heads while hell is down under the earth beneath our feet. But we read them literally at the peril of falling prey to absurdity.
Just as the relevant Greek and Hebrew words can mean either “sky” or “heaven,” depending on the context, so the Greek word in question here can mean either “for an age” or “to eternity,” depending on the context.
This whole argument that the Bible never really means that there is eternal punishment is based on a fundamental ignorance—by which I mean ignoring—of the basic nature of language. The reason dictionaries have multiple definitions for almost every word in them is that words do have multiple meanings depending upon how they are used.
Arguing that aiōnios means “of an age” whenever it is talking about damnation is a clear-cut case of doctrine driving bible interpretation. The author tries to argue that he is not interpreting the text, just reading it. But really, he is misreading the text because he is not allowing the meanings of words to vary with their context (unless it suits his beliefs), and he is not allowing the context to inform him what the word means in that context.
I do understand that universalists have a soft heart, and very much want everyone to be saved. Unfortunately, their soft-heartedness runs straight into the stubborn fact that not all people are like them. Some people are, in fact, very hard-hearted and stiff-necked, and have no desire to be saved, no matter how many opportunities they are given. Once again, see the later part of this article, starting with the heading “What’s wrong with reincarnation?”:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
There is also the matter of literalist Christians taking the Bible’s description of hell as a place of fire, torture, and punishment far too literally. On that, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
There are many other problems with the author’s arguments—too many to cover in a comment. Some of them are dealt with in the articles I’ve linked here. If there are others that you still have questions about, feel free to ask.
But in summary about the exegetical issues:
It is striking that in each of the three main Bible quotations that the author brings forward to bolster his universalist position, in the very next verses Paul makes it conditional, or at least softens his “all” into something less universal. This illustrates the error of basing one’s doctrine on individual verses yanked out of their context. There are multiple definitions of words for a reason, no matter how much this author would like to ignore and sideline that fact.
And on the first passage, eternal life is just not what Paul is talking about. He’s talking about resurrection.
If children who pass on are invariably saved without their free will being violated, wouldn’t all in hell eventually getting out sooner or later not violate their free will either?
Hi K,
Children who die before reaching adulthood are a special case. They are human beings, but they had not yet developed into full human beings—i.e., adults.
Children who die are always saved because at the time of their death they did not yet have their full as-if-of-self rationality and freedom so that they could make a choice one way or another, and have it be their own choice. They are still under the influence of their parents or whoever raised them. That’s why our courts do not consider children legally liable for acts that if they were adults would be charged to them as crimes. Their parents or guardians are considered liable for their actions because they are responsible for them.
Once people become full adults, meaning human beings all of whose mental capacities have developed to the point that they are responsible for themselves, the situation changes. At that point, the choices we make are our own choices, based on our own freedom and rationality. To reverse those choices would be to violate our free will and our humanity.
Another way of saying this is that the default destination is heaven, and children who die have not yet reached the point at which they can choose hell out of their own free will. Their free will is not violated because they do not yet have the level of free will that makes them responsible for their own choices and actions.
Mentally competent adults, however, do have that level of free will. This means that if their choice about their own ruling love and their own life is abrogated, their free will has been violated.
Didn’t the Rich Man perish in literal fire? Luke 16:19-31, right?
I don’t see how anyone could possibly choose eternal hell over eternal fellowship with God. They would weigh the costs and benefits of each, and see that the benefits of eternal fellowship with God outweigh the costs, and the costs of eternal hell outweigh the benefits. In the context of a lifeboat vs. a sinking ship, I’m sure that there are at least some people that think and say “I don’t like either Heaven or Hell, but if I had to choose one, I would choose heaven”? Like they don’t like Heaven, but at least it’s better than hell.
Don’t the ones in hell want to view things from the perspective of those in Heaven? I want to view things from everyone’s perspective.
Hi World Questioner,
Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable. It is a basic error to take everything in it literally. Nor does it say that the rich man perished in literal fire. Please, don’t add words to the Bible!
As for the rest, I would simply say that there are quite a few people on this earth who could very well have lived a good and honest life, but decided to live an evil and criminal life instead, or at least a self-indulgent one. Why do they do it? Because it feels good to them.
It would just be horrible if I were one of them.
I get troubled by the fact that I could have been born to be one of them. However I explain it. I could have lived the life of one of them. Like my soul could have been born into one of them.
Hi World Questioner,
No one is born to be a citizen of hell. Everyone is born to be a citizen of heaven. If anyone becomes a citizen of hell, it is because he or she knowingly and intentionally chose evil over good as a rational, self-responsible adult.
I don’t think I communicated it right. It’s too hard to explain.
Don’t they want to view things from the perspective of those that go to Heaven? Don’t they “wish I were one of them” (with “them” referring to the people in the highest Heaven)? Don’t they want go to the same point that the people in Heaven are viewing from?
I want to walk to the spot that God is viewing from… Metaphorically speaking.
Hi World Questioner,
If they wanted to view things from the perspective of those who go to heaven, then they themselves would go to heaven. But they don’t want to view things from the perspective of those who go to heaven.
Aren’t characters in parables unnamed?
Hi World Questioner,
Not in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
The rich man is unnamed. His name must have been blotted out because he went to hell. Does that suggest that when people go to hell, their names are cut off and not remembered? Lazarus, on the other hand, is named. That’s only because he didn’t go to hell. I could provide a link to the GotQuestions answer addressing that, but you won’t listen to what it says because it is too materialistic.
Hi World Questioner,
I don’t think that the rich man wasn’t named because he was in hell. Satan is named in the Bible, and presumably he is in hell.
Will our unsaved loved ones be replaced? If I lose an unsaved loved one to death, will he/she be replaced by a person that has all the same good, special qualities, but ends up being redeemed instead, as the unsaved loved one should have been? Will the damned wicked be replaced by righteous twins? “Righteous twin” would be the inverse of “evil twin.”
Does God replace those in hell with “righteous twins”?
Will the damned look up into Heaven and realize they have been replaced? That would make the damned ones’ anguish even worse, wouldn’t it? Have you watched Toy Story 3? Not to spoil it, but Lotso was replaced. And that hurt. Those in hell could be just as hurt by being replaced by “righteous twins.”
I tried https://www.google.com/search?q=unsaved+%22loved+ones+be+replaced%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22replace+our+unsaved%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=hell+%22replace+our+lost+loved%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22unsaved+ones+be+replaced%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Unsaved+be+replaced%22 and https://www.google.com/search?q=%22damned+be+replaced%22, but I couldn’t find anything. How could it not exist? How could no one have published a question and answer related to that?
Hi World Questioner,
Each person is unique. There are no “replacements,” if by that you mean the same person but good rather than evil. There is no “mirror universe” in the manner of the science fiction trope.
Keep in mind that God’s view is eternal. God provides loved ones for us to be with to eternity if that is what we want. They may not be the same people as the ones we thought they would be here on earth. Although if we are very close to someone here on earth who doesn’t go bad, that relationship will continue on the other side.
The anguish of the damned in hell has nothing to do with wishing they were in heaven, wishing they were with former loved ones, an so on. They don’t want to be in heaven, and they don’t care about other people. Their anguish is the inevitable backlash and pain that comes from their own evil actions, and from their inability to achieve all their evil goals, involving getting all the power in the universe and all the wealth in the universe for themselves. So no, even if they were “replaced,” they wouldn’t care at all.
I saw the first two Toy Story movies. I haven’t seen the third.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the previous comment went into spam. The one a few seconds before this one.
Hi World Questioner,
It didn’t go into spam. It was held for moderation because of all the links.
Hi Lee. I had a question for you that I can’t remember asking: What do loved ones in Hell think about their missing loved ones? e.g. if my dad is in hell, is he looking for me? or is he so self-preoccupied he doesnt even think about it? In other words, have you written anything about what those in Hell think about those in heaven?
Hi Duane,
In general, people in hell, and evil people here on earth, think of others only in terms of how those others can benefit them. Even here on earth, there are plenty of examples of parents who view their own children as good only if their children benefit them in some way. For example, parents who think of their children as a future means of supporting them, and who value their adult children only if they provide for them, give them money, and so on. This is exactly how people in hell will think of their “loved ones,” including their own children, parents, and other family members.
I put “loved ones” in quotes, because people in hell don’t really love anyone but themselves. If they make a show of loving anyone else, it is only a front to get benefits for themselves. Or they may “love” someone who loves the same evil things they do, but that love is like the love of thieves for each other when they are working on a criminal job together. If they’re successful, they’ll then set about fighting among themselves about who gets the best of the loot. Each one wants all of the loot for himself. Their “love” is purely self-serving.
As for what those in hell think about those in heaven, in general evil spirits hate angels and want to destroy them. That’s because angels stand for the opposite of what they themselves stand for. Angels stand for loving God and loving the neighbor. Evil spirits stand for loving self and loving worldly things such as wealth and pleasure. Evil spirits hate angels the way a criminal hates the police and the judge. The police and the judge stand for what is good and right. They stand in the way of the criminal’s selfish and greedy schemes. This is why evil spirits throw themselves into hell. They are trying to get as far away as they can from the love and light of God and the angels. Hence the words in the book of Revelation:
To evil spirits, God’s love looks like wrath because it melts away and destroys evil whenever it touches it. And so they hide away in the caverns of hell, so that none of God’s love can reach them and burn away the evil that they love so much. (But enough of God’s love does get through to keep them alive.)
If your father is in hell, the last thing you want is his “love.”
Hi Duane,
While it’s not quite on this topic, here is a somewhat related article:
Can I be Saved if I Hate my Mother?
Lee
I underestand this part theoretically about love; but my question is more so: what is the narrative someone like e.g. my father would tell himself why he doesnt see me? what those people in heaven are all doing? who God is? how do the people in Hell understand their lot? God? how they died and moved to that world? In other words, I’d wonder if someone in hell ever thought “wait what am i doing?” It sounds, the way you and Swedenborg describe it, that they are in some kind of dream like trance from which they can never be awakened?
Hi Duane,
I would say, rather, that they live in an illusory fantasy from which they do not want to get awakened. But they do get awakened from it when their evil actions generate the inevitable painful consequences.
As far as family relationships, in the course of time both angels and evil spirits forget the biological relationships they had on earth. This does not happen instantly. Although there is nothing in Swedenborg that says so, I tend to think that as long as there are still descendants on earth who can remember the person who has died, that memory can be recalled so that people passing over from this life to the next can see and talk with the people they love and care about. But over the equivalent of centuries, those memories will fade entirely. Then, people think of each other as brothers and sisters, and of God as their Father/Mother. (Though Swedenborg, of course, says only “Father.”) It’s not that the earthly memories are gone entirely. They can still be recalled even ten thousand years later if there were some reason to do so. But recalling them plunges angels back into earthly thoughts, which are dark and confining compared to the spiritual and heavenly thoughts they have in heaven.
If this seems strange, consider that very few people have any memories of their experiences in the first one to three years of life, not to mention in the womb. And these are some of the most richly formative times of our lives. Yet we go through our adult lives perfectly well without access to those memories of our early life.
In answer to your questions, then, your father might think about you for a while, and wonder where you are, and why you don’t come to see him. But eventually those thoughts would cease as he immersed himself in his new life, and his memories of his old life on earth faded. And even in those early days, if he did think about you, it would likely be along the lines of, “Why doesn’t that worthless boy come and help me out? Doesn’t he know that I’m struggling here? What an ungrateful #$%@! I put all that time and money into raising him, and this is how he repays me???” There would be no thoughts at all of how you’re doing, whether you’re happy, and so on. It would be all about why you’re not doing for him what he thinks you should.
But as I said, over time he would forget all about you. His whole life would be focused on the people who are now around him, who are his fellow evil spirits in his particular corner of hell.
As far as God, he would want to be as far away from God as possible. And when he did think about God, it would be with nothing but hatred. He would blame God for every bad thing that happens to him, while simultaneously being mad at God for not letting him be fully successful in carrying out his evil schemes. In reality, these things are not God’s fault. But evil spirits in hell are there precisely because they refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. Both here on earth and in hell, evil people always blame others for their own faults and wrong behaviors and the resulting bad consequences. And especially in the spiritual world, the one they blame most is God.
As for how they got to hell, that, too, will be forgotten before long. At first they may think about it. But since they went there of their own accord, it’s not something they particularly want to think about, especially when things aren’t going well for them.
As far as dying and going to the spiritual world, many of them continue to believe that they are in the material world. Especially if they are atheists and materialists, they don’t believe in the existence of a spiritual world, so they convince themselves that they are still living on earth in the material world. After all, the lives of evil spirits are very much like living in a rotten area of the material world. What they see around them is a lot like a blasted slum full of thieves and addicts, or like underground caverns full of bats and cave slime. It is therefore not difficult for them to think that they are still living on earth. Remember, they do their best to live in their own fantasy world. Seeing their surroundings as they really are, and recognizing that they are in hell, is not something they are interested in doing.
Which reminds me of an old joke from the 1970s:
A Catholic priest, a Jewish Rabbi, and a New Age practitioner find themselves together in hell. They ask each other why they’re there.
The priest says, “They called me a whiskey priest. I just couldn’t stay off the bottle! And that’s why I’m in hell.”
The rabbi says, “What can I say? I love pork! And that’s why I’m in hell.”
The New Age practitioner says, “We’re not in hell! And I’m not the least bit hot!”
Your teachings would suggest that people in hell don’t want to do good, because no good is being done to them. Is that right? They think, “What’s the point of doing good to others if no one else will do good to me?”
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, but mainly, they simply don’t enjoy doing good for anyone but themselves. It feels very unpleasant to them. If they do good for anyone else, it is only to get benefits for themselves. Even then, they hate and begrudge having to do anything at all for anyone else. They think they should get good things for themselves without having to do anything at all.
Hey Lee, the bible sometimes seems to say things that sound very universalist and it also talks about people going to hell forever. How would you reconcile this apparent tension? For example the bible talks about all people/nations worshiping God: Psalm 22:27-29, Revelation 15:4, Psalm 65:2, Psalm 66:4, Psalm 86:8-10, Genesis 22:18, Isaiah 11:10, Jeremiah 16:19-21. There is a very interesting verse in Isaiah 66:23-24 which talks about all mankind worshiping God but then in the very next verse it talks about the dead bodies of those who rebelled against God. There is also a prophecy in Isaiah 45:22-24 which says all mankind will bow to God. This prophecy seems to be quoted by Paul several times throughout the epistles with slight changes in the wording: Philippians 2:9-11, Romans 14:11. And then it goes on to say something similar in Revelation 5:13. My question is how would you interpret these bible verses if people are in hell forever? How would you make these verses fit with the doctrine of eternal hell? I’m especially interested in Isaiah 66:23-24 because it seems so contradictory. Also on a side note it wouldn’t destroy my faith if I lost my belief in universal salvation but it would dampen it somewhat. It was discovering universal salvation that made me decide to become a Christian in the first place. A God who was capable of saving the whole human race without using force or coercion of any kind seemed amazing to me and it made me admire and love God. However if it is the case that God is not capable of this I would still be a Christian but it makes me sad because it means that God isn’t the person I thought he was. It means that God isn’t as amazing as I thought he was. It’s kind of like when you marry someone who you are in love with but a year or so into the marriage you begin to see their flaws and realize they are not the person you thought they were. But since you married them you can’t just walk away because you are committed to them so now you have to learn how to live with this new person who turns out to be different from the person you thought you married. That’s kind of like my experience with God. If I do end up losing my belief in universal salvation I would have to find something else about God that is wonderful and amazing so I can continue to love him and grow in my faith. Do you have any suggestions about this? What do you love or admire about God? Thanks.
Hi Bob,
To answer your last question first in good biblical fashion, something to love about God and find amazing about God is that no matter what we do, even if it’s the exact opposite of what God wants us to do, God continues to love us just as much as if we had chosen to live the way God wants us to live.
Further, even if we choose evil and hell, God does not punish us, but rather gives us as much pleasure as is possible given our bad choices. It’s just that our bad choices boomerang back upon ourselves, and cause us pain that God cannot take away because in the very act of doing evil, we are rejecting God’s love and protection.
Related to that, something to love and respect about God is that God loves us and respects our choices even if they aren’t the choices God would have made for us. God does not force us into anything, but respects our decisions about our own life, even if they’re bad ones. God certainly has the power to force us to do good rather than evil. But God chooses not to do that so that we can be human and have free will and live the kind of life we decide we want to live.
Another way of saying this is that God certainly does have the power to save everyone. But doing so against our will would mean destroying our humanity, and therefore destroying us as human beings.
There are many things about God to love and admire. These are some of the ones directly related to the issue of good and evil, and heaven and hell.
Now about the Bible passages you reference:
Notice that most of them say that all the nations will bow down and worship God. Nations are not the same as individuals. Furthermore, that was not such an individualistic age as we live in today. All the nations worshiping Jehovah God, or the Lord God Jesus Christ, does not mean that all the individuals within those nations do. It means that this is the God and religion of that nation. A small, or even somewhat large, number of individuals within that nation may worship another god, or be atheists. The nation itself would still be a Christian nation because that is the main religion of that nation.
Still sticking to the literal meaning of these passages, Isaiah 66:23–24 provides a key to how the original authors would have thought about these things. Not to put too fine a point on it, but even all individuals would eventually worship God because all the individuals who didn’t would be dead, as portrayed in verse 24 of this passage.
In general, in those societies the penalty for breaking God’s commandments, and for defying or denying God, was death. Anyone who persisted in breaking the divine law and blaspheming God would be executed. The practical result of this would be that the ones still living would be the ones who worship God.
This seems brutal and barbaric to people from Christian nations today, but it was how the people of those times thought. This puts a whole different light on the statements scattered throughout the Bible that not just all nations, but all flesh will worship God. That’s because those who don’t will be dead and gone.
If we look at this harsh reality (in those cultures) from the perspective of the Bible’s spiritual meaning, we can gain a deeper understanding of what these passages mean.
In the Bible’s spiritual meaning, being “alive,” as a human being, means being spiritually aware and developed, or in biblical language, reborn. Being “dead” means being engaged in an evil life driven by selfishness and greed. The “second death” mentioned in Revelation 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8 refers, not to physical death, but to spiritual death, which is choosing evil and hell over good and heaven.
Consider the spiritual meaning of the seven days of Creation in Genesis 1:1–2:3. Unlike in the second Creation story, in the first Creation story humans are the very last thing God makes, on the sixth day. Only then is there a seventh day of rest. This is because spiritually, the first Creation story is a summary of our process of regeneration, or spiritual rebirth. After we have gone through all the steps of regeneration, that is when humans first appear because “humans” in the Bible represent spiritually aware, enlightened, and developed people. If we have not reached that stage, we are still human in a general sense, but not in the specific sense of what it means to be truly human.
This is why, for example, when people do terribly cruel things to other people, we say that they are “inhuman.” They are not acting like human beings, who are beings that love God and love the neighbor. This is what it means to be in the image and likeness of God. God is human, and we are human only if we are like God, loving others as much as and even more than we love ourselves.
The deeper meaning of the passages in the Bible saying that all nations, all flesh, all people, and so on will worship God is that all people who are actually people, meaning truly human, will worship God, because that is part of what it means to be truly human. People who do not worship God, and who live evil lives of selfishness, greed, destruction, and oppression of other people, are not really human. They are animals. In fact, they are worse than animals. Even predatory animals eat other animals because that’s what they must do to survive. If they are not hungry, they do not hunt. But evil humans pile up wealth and power far beyond what they need to survive, and they subjugate and oppress other human beings not for any survival need, but because they gain pleasure from making other people into their slaves, and mistreating them.
And yet, even these people have the ability to love God and the neighbor, even if they have suppressed it. They are still human at that base level. The deepest levels of their soul are still good and pristine; they’re just closed off, not destroyed. And because even evil people have humanity at their core, they can never die. But they also cannot live as truly human beings. So God gives them hell as a place where they can engage in and enjoy at least some of their selfish and greedy pleasures, even if they must also suffer their inevitable consequences.
Hell is not a place where God punishes the wicked. It is a place where the wicked are given a certain amount of freedom to live the evil lives that they find pleasure in. There are indeed punishments in hell, but they are not meted out by God. They are meted out by other evil spirits in hell, who take great pleasure in punishing other people (evil spirits) whenever they make themselves vulnerable to it by doing evil things.
However, since evil spirits (meaning evil people) love doing evil things, they do evil anyway, even though they know that they will suffer for it. Over time, this keeps their evil in check. It prevents them from rushing downward into even worse evils, and causes them not to engage in as much evil and destruction as they otherwise would. Punishment is the only thing that can restrain evil people from engaging in evil.
What traditional Christians don’t understand about hell is that hell is 100% voluntary. The people who are in hell are there because that’s where they want to be. They actually can go up to heaven if they want to. But when they get there, instead of feeling joy and bliss, they feel intense pain and agony because the atmosphere of heaven is diametrically opposed to their own evil loves and desires. They therefore quickly throw themselves back down to their own hell, where they can breathe easily again, and engage in at least some of their favorite destructive pleasures.
For more about what hell is, and isn’t, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
I could say more, but I’ll pause for now. If any of this isn’t clear, or if you still have more questions and concerns, feel free to continue the conversation.
Bottom line: God does have the power to save everyone. But God will not force salvation on us. God gives us the freedom to choose how we want to live, and the respect of allowing us to live that way even if it is not God’s way. And God continues to love us fully, infinitely, and eternally no matter what choices we make.
How can the bible say that all nations will worship God if humans have free will? How can God ensure that this will happen if people are free to reject him? Will there be different circumstances in the future that will make sure that all nations and by extension a majority of the human race acknowledge God? How is God able to get all nations to acknowledge him, without taking control of people’s free will, and yet he can’t do this for all people?
Many of the verses I quoted were verses of praise and worship and they are used in the context of praise especially the ones in the Psalms. Praise and worship usually consists of saying good things about the person being praised, in this case God. These verses about all people worshiping God are used in that praising context. So because of this I thought the verses were saying in effect, “God is so great that even the people who hate him will eventually end up worshiping him. “ But according to what you have said these verses don’t actually say that, instead they say in effect, “God is so great that the people who want to worship him will in fact worship him.” That doesn’t sound as praise worthy to me.
There is a theme that runs throughout the bible of God overcoming his enemies for example 1 Corinthians 15:25-26 and Psalm 110. I thought God was going to overcome and destroy his enemies by converting them. If God’s enemies eventually become his friends then they are no longer his enemies, they have been “destroyed”. If I’m not mistaken, traditional Christianity interprets these bible verses as God throwing his enemies into hell and that’s how he defeats them. I’ve even heard theologians say in reference to Philippians 2:9-11 that God is going to force these rebellious people to bow the knee and confess Jesus is Lord before he throws them into hell. So If God doesn’t defeat his enemies by making them his friends and he doesn’t defeat his enemies by throwing them into hell (they choose it themselves) then how does God defeat his enemies?
I’m struggling with this system of heaven, hell and free will that you and Swedenborg describe. I understand how once the process of rejecting God is complete and the person dies and they become their ruling love, how they can’t go to heaven because it contradicts their ruling love etc. There is probably lots I don’t understand about this system of free will that Swedenborg lays out because I haven’t read all of his stuff. But it seems to me that the only way this system would be justified is if either there was no real pain in hell or if hell isn’t eternal. The only way you could have both of those things and still have it be justified is if people made a fully informed choice about what they were actually signing up for if they choose hell. Is this life really a genuine forum for that to take place? An example of the fully informed choice I am talking about might look like this. If people were born into a neutral condition between heaven and hell before their ruling love was formed and then from there they were allowed to go and live in heaven for a day or two and experience the joy and happiness and service and community of heaven. And after that they went back to their neutral position and then went to live a day or two in hell and experience the pleasure of evil but also the pain that comes along with it. And after this they went back to their neutral starting point and from there made their choice for heaven or hell. If after this experiment they still chose hell then so be it. They would have made their choice with their eyes wide open about the joy in heaven that they were losing and about the pleasure/pain they were getting in hell. But as we know life isn’t really like this. In all of this I’m not trying to say that evil people are victims or innocent or anything like that. However it seems to me that in this life on earth we don’t have that kind of fully informed choice that would make this system of free will justified. On earth we only experience the smallest taste of what heavenly happiness is like. On the other hand we feel the pleasure of sin very potently and we usually don’t immediately experience the consequences. So if we base our beliefs on our experiences alone we get a somewhat inaccurate picture of what the afterlife is like. We do have various religions to help us but it’s very easy not to take them seriously when none of our five senses can detect the things they are talking about. I’ve never seen this in Swedenborg’s writings but I am sure that he would say this life is a genuine forum for making the ultimate choice. Can you explain how it is? I hope all of this makes sense. Thanks.
Hi Bob,
God doesn’t force anyone to do anything. God leaves us all in freedom. This is part of God’s love for us. Forcing people to do things is not loving. It is imposing one’s own will on someone else. God won’t do that to us.
However, God does see everything that to us is the future from the eternal present in which God resides. (For a related article, see: “If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?”) If in the Bible God says something about the future, it’s not because God is “predicting” something, still less that God intends to force it to happen. Rather, God simply sees it happening in what to us is the future.
Still, it’s best not to take these passages too literally. As you say, these are mostly passages of praise and worship. They’re not doctrinal or historical statements. They are exclaiming about the greatness of God. When writing them, their authors did not sit down and engage in reasoning about whether, in fact, every single literal knee would bow to God, and every tongue would confess God’s name.
Making poetry and prophecy into science, history, and exposition is not a sound way of reading such passages. It’s like overhearing a man exclaim to his wife, “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world!” and getting into a debate with him about whether his wife is, in fact, more beautiful than every single one of the other four billion or so women currently living on this planet. That would be completely and boneheadedly missing the point of what he was expressing to his wife.
Similarly, getting into debates about whether Philippians 2:9–11 literally means that every single person on the entire planet will kneel down to Jesus, and confess that Jesus is Lord, is missing the point of the passage. It’s not doctrine. It’s poetry intended to express the greatness of Jesus Christ.
Further, bowing down to someone and even recognizing who they are does not require loving or believing in that person. A king can force foreigners to bow down to him and admit that he is a great and powerful king. But that doesn’t mean that they will think of him as their king. They will think of him only as a brutal conqueror who destroyed their land and nation. Instead of loving him, they will hate him and wish destruction upon him. The Bible expresses this reality in various ways. For example:
And:
Here demons recognize who Jesus is, and beg him for mercy. They are figuratively, and almost literally, bending the knee to him and recognizing his name, meaning his reputation and power. But they’re demons. They don’t love him. They are the very definition of evil spirits from hell.
In other words, even if every knee does bow to Jesus and recognize that Jesus is Lord, many of them could still be living in hell, and still hate Jesus rather than loving him.
Still it’s not that Jesus forces them to recognize and worship him. He never said to the demons, “Bow down and beg me for mercy!” They spontaneously recognized who he was, and reacted with fear and an attempt to lessen the effects of his presence on them. Even in this passage, Jesus does not force belief, nor does he force worship. He is going to cast the demons out of the men they are possessing. But in doing so, he listens to their request to be sent into the herd of pigs, and grants it. This is not the action of a tyrant who forces even those who hate him to grovel at his feet and proclaim his greatness and power.
In fact, the demons in hell do recognize who Jesus is, and in their lucid moments they recognize that they are subject to Jesus’ power, because Jesus is God and Lord of everything “in heaven and on earth and under the earth,” as expressed poetically in Philippians 2:10. In other words, Jesus is the God and ruler of hell as well as of heaven.
But once again, this is not a matter of Jesus forcing people to believe in him and worship him. It’s just a matter of fact and reality, which even demons recognize when they are thinking rationally. But most of the time they think irrationally, and reject and deny God altogether.
Would you really consider a tyrant who forces everyone to bow down to him, worship him, and adore him, a great and admirable person? Wouldn’t you consider him to be an insane and power-crazed person? People who admire despots such as Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and so on are borderline insane to do so. Attributing that errant abuse of power to God is not admiration, but blasphemy.
Returning to your questions, we have to ask, “Who or what are God’s enemies?” If God loves everyone with an infinite love, then does God consider any person to be an enemy? Jesus taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us so that we can be like our Father in heaven, who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:44–45).
Just because some of us consider God to be our enemy, that doesn’t mean God considers us to be God’s enemy. The only enemy of God is evil and falsity itself. God fights against the evil and falsity in us because God loves us, and wants to free us from the power of evil and falsity, and the pain, sorrow, destruction, and death it brings upon us.
The “enemy” that God conquers is not people, no matter how evil they are, but evil and falsity itself. People who choose evil and falsity over good and truth make God into their enemy, but God still loves them, does not consider them an enemy, and continues to fight against and restrain the evil and falsity in them to prevent it from destroying them even more than it already has.
When God “defeats his enemies” this means that God successfully overcomes the evil and falsity within people and in human society, freeing us from its power so that we can live in safety, security, and happiness. God does this for us every day, and even every moment, as much as we are willing to have God do it for us. God’s great power is not in forcing people to grovel at his feet. It is in freeing us from the despotic power of evil and falsity, and of those who wield it against us.
But once again, God will not force us to accept that power. Only when we are willing to have the evil and falsity in us, and in our society, routed will God fight for us and overcome those things in us and in our society—all the while we think we are fighting the battle ourselves, from our own power.
Yes, God is a “king” in the metaphorical sense of standing for the truth, as Jesus himself told Pilate in John 18:37. But he is also a “father” in the sense of being a loving parent who does everything possible to give us a good life, including fighting and dying for us when that became necessary in order to overcome the evil power that was dragging the whole world down, and all of humanity with it.
This, and not some despotic bending of every knee to his will, is the great power of God.
Hi Bob,
About this:
People do understand what they are signing up for, because hell is simply a continuation of the same life that evil people have built up for themselves here, only in the spiritual realm, and modified to fit how that realm works.
In some ways, hell is actually better than the life that some people make for themselves here on earth. For example, if a gang member gets into a fight with a member of a rival gang and is blinded in the fight, he’ll be blind for the rest of his life. He’ll just have to live with that from then on, until he dies. That’s not how it works in hell. In hell, no physical injury is permanent. If, as often happens in hell, two people get into a fight, and come out of it with serious injuries, those injuries will heal over time. Each will return to a state of physical soundness in which all his limbs, senses, organs, and so on are all functioning properly.
Another advantage of hell over violent lives on earth is that in hell it is not possible to kill anyone, or to be killed. People there may fear injury, pain, humiliation, loss of possessions and power, and so on. But they don’t have to fear death as people in this life who have chosen a violent way of life do. Every devil in hell knows that whatever happens today, s/he will wake up the next day and continue to live.
Speaking of gangs, when young people join a gang, they have a pretty good idea of what they’re getting themselves into, and they want it. Sure, maybe they don’t understand all the long-term ramifications. But they’re not idiots. They know what gangs do. And knowing that, they willingly join them. Plenty of kids in similar situations do not join gangs.
People make all sorts of excuses for their wrong actions. But the very act of making excuses shows that they know that what they’re doing is wrong. If they didn’t have some awareness that it is wrong, they wouldn’t feel the need to make excuses for it.
Further, along the way there are many off-ramps available to get out of a bad life. If people don’t take those off-ramps, that in itself is a decision to continue in a way of life that they’re aware is not good. God is always keeping us internally in a balance between good and evil. Those who continue to engage in evil do so because that’s what they want to do. Yes, they do become “slaves to sin.” It does become more and more difficult to break away the longer they continue in their evil life. But they can break away if they make a conscious decision to do so.
Many people do make that decision, often when they’ve hit rock bottom. Others continue in their evil ways right to the point of death. It’s not as if they had no awareness that what they’re doing is wrong, and no opportunity to turn their life around. The reality is that they have chosen evil when they had plenty of opportunities to choose good instead.
And if they are so overwhelmed by external events or have such low-functioning mental capabilities that they really didn’t have a choice, then they will have the opportunity to leave their evil ways behind in the spiritual world after they die. No one goes to hell for anything beyond his or her control. Everyone who goes to hell does so because when confronted with choices between good actions and bad actions, between selfless actions and selfish actions, s/he regularly chose the evil and selfish actions over the good and selfless actions.
There is no excuse for anyone who goes to hell. No one goes there by accident or against his/her will. And no one stumbles unknowingly into hell. Everyone who’s in hell is there because s/he chose to be there when s/he could have chosen to be in heaven instead.
Once again, on the practical level, hell is just an extension of the evil and destructive lives that evil people build for themselves here on earth. They can see what this life is like, and they choose it anyway. And if they choose a life of hell here on earth, then they’ll continue to choose it in the other life also.
So yes, this life does provide a genuine forum to make an informed choice between heaven and hell, because both heaven and hell are a continuation of this life. Heaven is a continuation of its good parts, and hell is a continuation of its bad parts. When we choose good or bad ways of life from among the possibilities available to us here on earth, we are choosing heaven or hell for ourselves. When we die, we simply continue the life we have chosen, only evil people cannot hurt good people anymore. They can only hurt each other, and only as much as other people lay themselves open to it by engaging in evil behavior. Meanwhile, good people live a happier life than they ever could have imagined here on this dark and stormy earth.
God does not surprise us in the afterlife with something that is completely different than anything we’ve ever experienced before. All the things we do here, we continue to do there. Everything here is an apprenticeship and practice run for what we’ll be doing in heaven. We have the opportunity here to try out various possibilities for our life, and choose the one we like best. Then, when we die, we can continue to live the life we have chosen in very much the same way we did here, only on a spiritual level instead of on a physical level. And of course, there are certain necessary constraints on people who have chosen evil.
So yes, this earth is not only a genuine forum, but an excellent and even perfect forum for choosing what sort of life we want to live to eternity.
It is true that life after death is a continuation of our life on earth, but it’s not exactly the same. As you described, life after death for people who go to heaven gets a lot better. I imagine for most people who go to hell their life would get worse because the people in hell are no longer restrained by the fear of death or the law etc. There could be exceptions though like you pointed out with your example. In our earthly life however we only experience the smallest taste of what our heavenly life will be like because I think that heaven is not simply a little bit better than earth but unimaginably better than earth.
In order to get an idea, however short it may fall, of the happiness in heaven, what I’ve done is taken a brief look at the evil and suffering that is present on planet earth which results from human beings. And then I’ve tried to imagine what could justify the existence of that evil and pain. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the evil and pain that humans have inflicted on each other and especially upon the innocent is so terrible it defies description. It is demonic and satanic in the worst sense of the word. I don’t
think it’s a stretch to say that if you took all of the evil and pain that has ever existed on earth and put it on a scale to weigh it, it would be heavier than a black hole. And yet it still exists which means that God has allowed it to exist. As far as I understand God has allowed this evil and pain to exist on planet earth for the sake of free will. And we need free will because without it we could not freely choose to have a genuine human relationship with God. If we freely choose to have a relationship with God then we go to heaven when we die. And so the conclusion of this is that life in heaven has to be so good and so valuable that it justifies the existence of the unimaginable evil that is here on earth. And since the magnitude of evil and pain is so vast the happiness of heaven has to be exponentially more vast than all of the pain and evil on earth combined. In other words heaven has to be heavier (in goodness) than the black hole of evil and pain. If it wasn’t then life itself wouldn’t be worth the pain of life.
And so if heaven is that good I would imagine that people would have to be allowed to experience enough of that heavenly happiness to make a true choice as to what they are giving up if they choose a life of hell. I struggle to see how that is the case during our life on earth. Going back to my example of living a day in heaven and then living a day in hell and then choosing which one a person wanted, I imagine under those circumstances most if not everyone would choose heaven. Would that be tantamount to God forcing people into heaven in your eyes?
Another thing that I am trying to understand, although I’ll probably never know, is why people make the choices they do. In the example you gave about the young person joining a gang, the very same evil cravings that motivated him to join a gang live in me also. There is not much difference between me and a person who has chosen to live a life that leads to hell. The only difference seems to be that I have chosen with God’s help to resist that kind of life and try to live a proper one instead. I don’t really know why I did that and I don’t know why people choose an evil life either. I know sin feels good, but that can’t be the only reason people choose an evil life because sin feels good to everyone and yet not everyone chooses a sinful life. There is some deep inner reason that people choose the life they do and I can’t see what it is. Maybe one of the reasons people choose good is that they don’t want to be the kind of person who hurts other people because hurting other people is involved with an evil life. But that same motivation doesn’t seem to be present in people who choose evil. Or they may have felt it at one time but choose to ignore and reject it and do evil anyways. Why does one person choose to go with that motivation and why does another choose to reject it? The reason why I’m saying this is because I’m trying really hard to see what you are saying that this life is an excellent forum for making the ultimate choice, but I’m struggling to see it. Is there nothing that God can offer these people that is better to them than evil and sin? I’ve sometimes thought that in this life God is making his “offer” towards us and the devil is also making his “offer” and for a great many people the devil’s offer is more appealing than God’s offer. How can this be? Sorry for rambling on like this but do you have any thoughts on this and do you see any flaws in my thinking? Thanks
Hi Bob,
The happiness of heaven is immeasurably greater than all the evil of this world combined. For one thing, all the evil of this world is temporary. We experience it for a few decades, and then it is over. The happiness of heaven, however, is eternal. There is no end to it. But also, in the afterlife we are living in the spiritual world, in our spiritual body, which is a world and a body that has far greater capabilities for happiness and bliss than are possible here. Our physical body, as wonderful as it is, is also like a straitjacket binding our spirit and dampening its ability to fully express itself and fully experience its thoughts and emotions in action.
However, the spiritual world is also a continuation of our experience in the physical world in that our daily activities are the same types of things that we do here. We get up, eat breakfast, go to work, see our friends, engage in our favorite sports and recreation, read books, relax in the evening, and then go to bed with our wife or husband and enjoy lovemaking just as we do here. The only difference is that there, we see, hear, and feel things with much more vibrancy and intensity than we do here, and our happiness is not tinged with internal sadness and struggle as it is here. It’s not that we never have any awareness of evil. Some angels have as their job governing and controlling evil spirits in hell. But there is no internal struggle about it. There is no temptation to engage in those things ourselves.
Hell is in some ways worse than life on earth. In hell you can’t dominate, control, oppress, and steal from good and innocent people the way you can here. Also, even wealthy and powerful people from this earth who go to hell end up living like poverty-stricken slaves. Also, there actually are laws in hell, and punishments for breaking them. This is necessary for the same reason it’s necessary here: to keep selfish and greedy people from getting completely out-of-hand in their pursuit of their evil pleasures. Even that aspect of life is similar to life on earth.
On the other hand, in hell there are no more pesky pangs of conscience, and no more do-gooders trying to get you to stop being who you are, and be someone better. People in hell are of one mind, and are focused entirely on pursuing their own pleasures, without the slightest conscience or remorse about it. The only thing that restrains them is the inevitable punishment, meted out by their fellow evil spirits, whenever they do act on their evil desires. Of course, they hate being punished. But they continue to love acting on their evil desires, and see nothing at all wrong with them. Hell is not the constant pangs of conscience, as some traditional Christians believe. It is also not “separation from God” in the sense of wishing to have a relationship with God, and being cut off from it. People in hell are there specifically to get away from God, because they hate God.
In hell people are also required to do useful labor, which they don’t want to do at all. But even that is similar to life on earth. Here on earth, in a well-ordered society, if people don’t work they don’t eat. Even in hell, no one stands over evil spirits with a whip forcing them to work. It’s just that if they don’t work, they don’t get food and clothes. If they continue to resist, and refuse to work, they will very quickly get very hungry, and before long they’ll be naked as well. So they work for food and clothes, and for access to other perks. But once their daily quota of work is done, they are free to roam around and do whatever they want to do. It is, in short, very similar to the lives of people on earth who don’t want to do anything for anyone, but they get a job so that they can make money for food, clothes, housing, and to pay for their particular pleasures.
So yes, life heaven and hell is different from life on this earth, but it is also very much the same. We’re still the very same people, having the same thoughts, ideas, loves, and desires, and we still like to do the same sorts of things we do here on earth. It’s just that in heaven, we can do them far more fully and happily than we can here on earth, and in hell there is no getting away with anything and no targeting good and innocent people.
Still, heaven and hell are not reward or payback for what we do on earth. But I’ll take that up in my next reply.
Hi Bob,
About this:
It is common for people on earth to think of heaven and hell as being a quid pro quo for what we do on earth. If we’re good, we get rewarded with heaven. If we’re bad, we get punished with hell. Even the Bible speaks of heaven and hell in this way. But that’s in order to speak to people where their head is at, so to speak. In reality, this language is metaphorical, not literal. Heaven is not a reward for good behavior, and hell is not a punishment for evil behavior. Both are simply the expression of the kind of life we have chosen here on earth.
Heaven, in particular, is a place where God can give us all the pleasure, happiness, and joy that we are capable of based on the level of love we have put at the center of our motivation and the level of good we have expressed from that inner love. Heaven is not a reward for good behavior. It is a free gift from God for those who are willing to accept it.
Even hell is the best God can do to give as much pleasure as possible to selfish and greedy people given the destructive and self-limiting nature of their love. Hell is not where God punishes people who have done evil. Hell is where God gives evil people as much of the life that they want as is possible given the realities of reality.
This also means that heaven is not at all about compensating us for the good we have done, and more to your point, for the evil we have suffered here on earth. Heaven is not like the result of a civil suit in which we are given compensatory and punitive damages for the pain and suffering we have experienced at the hands of an evil system. We don’t get blessed in proportion to the suffering we have suffered here on earth.
Instead, if we have focused our heart and our life on good, then in heaven the evil, pain, and suffering of this world are removed, and we are free to live the kind of life we love to live, and experience the full joy and happiness of that life. There is no more evil system oppressing us, and no more petty criminals trying to steal our wallet. We can walk about freely and in safety, enjoying the good life we have chosen together with our friends and loved ones.
In fact, in heaven, after a while we completely forget about the pain and struggles of this life. It’s not that the memory of them is no longer in existence. It’s that we’re so much enjoying the life we’re now living that those things fade into insignificance by comparison. We don’t even bother thinking about them anymore. They’re no longer an active part of our life and experience. If you asked an angel whether the life they have now is worth the pain they suffered, most likely they would think it is a very strange and irrelevant question. That’s not how they think of their life at all. Rather, they think of it as a beautiful and loving gift from God, and they thank God for that gift every day.
People in hell also don’t think about or even remember their life on earth. They are entirely absorbed in the life they are living right now. That is their reality, and it is the reality they have chosen for themselves. Of course, they don’t want the punishment and pain that inevitably follows their bad behavior. But just as here on earth, they understand that actions have consequences. They are not blindsided by the pain that follows their pleasure. Like a drunk who knows he’ll be hung over in the morning, but drinks anyway, they know very well what the punishment for their actions will be, but they do it anyway because it is the delight and pleasure of their life. In their mind, the pain is worth it because the pleasure feels so good.
Your understanding expressed before you made this statement is sound:
However, free will is not the only reason God allows evil and pain to exist on this earth. God also allows it because it is necessary for us to feel pain and suffering in order to do the work of overcoming the evil and turning toward good instead. In other words, God permits evil for a purpose, which is our salvation.
There is a popular misconception these days that everyone is born good. It’s not true. Everyone is born innocent, meaning having no conscious intention of engaging in evil. Everyone who dies before reaching self-responsible adulthood therefore goes to heaven, not to hell. But the reality is that we are born entirely wrapped up in our own pleasure and pain, without any thought of the happiness of other people.
Babies are entirely innocent, but they also are all about their own comfort or discomfort. They don’t think about whether crying right now will make their parents unhappy. If they are hungry or wet or tired, they’ll cry until someone takes care of their needs. Since they are innocent, this kind of behavior is fine. But as we get older, this same type of entirely self-centered behavior becomes not fine. As we grow beyond infancy into our toddlerhood and childhood, we begin to learn right from wrong, and good from evil. We begin to be guided through rewards and punishments to choose good over evil. But doing good is not our natural path. If we were not taught and guided externally, we would all choose a life of complete selfishness and greed, because that’s the character we’re born with.
Reward and punishment is one mechanism that starts the process of turning us away from our own self-centeredness and toward caring about other people and about God. But it’s not enough. The reason we engage in evil behavior is because it is pleasurable to us when we are in our natural state. We enjoy taking a favorite toy from our younger sibling, or from some other little boy our girl who is over for a visit, because now I get to play with it and you don’t! We enjoy hitting another kid who has done something we don’t like. It feels good to make him whimper and cry!
Why do people take drugs and drink alcohol? Because it makes us feel good! Why do people commit adultery? Because it feels fantastically intense! Why do people engage in white collar crime, when they have marketable skills and are perfectly capable of making a good living? Because it feels like a coup to get all that money without having to work for it! Why do dictators crush their own people under their feet and make them miserable? Because it feels fantastic to have all that wealth and power, and feel vastly superior to everyone else! It also feels good to make other people suffer and die while laughing at their pain. There is a sense of ultimate power in being able to injure and kill other people. It’s like holding the power of life and death in our own hand. It makes us feel like gods.
The only problem is, evil is intrinsically destructive, and that destruction inevitably returns back upon ourselves. Study the tyrants of history. Very few of them came to a good end. Often they had very violent deaths. It’s the same for people who engage in organized crime. Most often their life is violent and short. Even those who do live to old age usually become increasingly isolated and insane, fearful of everyone around them because they know the laws of cause and effect, and they know that their own powers are declining. They become intensely fearful that what they have done to others, others will do to them. Rarely if ever do tyrants and organized crime figures have a pleasant life as life goes on.
And of course, in the afterlife, this kind of life leads to the type of work-bondage and slavery that I talked about in my previous comment. It leads to a life of alternating pleasure and pain, which is really quite miserable compared to the life that the same person could have had in heaven if s/he had chosen good over evil.
But if punishment and reward aren’t enough to induce such people to change their ways, what will be enough?
The primary answer is: The inevitable terrible effects of their own actions. Alcoholics aren’t being punished by someone else. They’re reaping the inevitable rewards of their own alcoholism. It is usually only when they have lost everything as a result, and are literally lying in the gutter in their own vomit, that some of them come to their senses and decide to change their ways and make a better life for themselves. It’s not easy. But it is possible once the decision is made. And that decision won’t be made until the full consequences of their own wrong and destructive behavior comes to fruition in their own life.
Even the most terrible chapters in human history are examples of this. For Germans of the early 20th century, thinking that they were racially superior to all other people on earth was highly attractive. The result was the bloodiest and most destructive war ever fought on this earth. As a result, the German people learned their lesson, as did the others who fought in that war: Racism is a horrendous evil that leads to nothing but war and destruction. The German people set about to root it out of their laws and their society. Other nations did the same—but not all of them.
Unfortunately, today that lesson is fading. It looks like we’re going to have to learn it all over again. But for the generations of people who experienced WWII, it was a massive object lesson in the objective evil of racism and a desire to suppress and rule over all other races.
Would anything else have brought so many people to that conclusion?
Clearly the answer to that question is “no,” precisely because that’s what it did take for so many people to finally recognize that racism itself is evil. Even today, much of the world’s population considers racism to be evil, even though in earlier centuries, the idea that our people are better than your people was the common attitude of humanity. The only thing that got us to start reconsidering this false and evil belief was seeing what happens when it is put into practice, complete with powerful weapons and tools to use in enforcing it.
God allows evil, not just because it is necessary for freedom, but because seeing the results of our own evil desires and false ideas is the only thing that can finally induce us to fight against and reject those evil desires and false ideas, and base our individual lives and our society on better loves and better ideals.
In other words, God allows evil because allowing it to express itself is the only way to get us to the point where we will repent from it and choose a better life. And the more deep-seated and terrible the evil, the more horribly destructive the results of it will be until we finally recognize its true evil nature, and commit ourselves to better motives and a better path.
None of this is “punishment” for our evil. It is simply seeing the true nature of evil by its effects, so that we can make an informed decision about what kind of life we want to live, both as individuals and as a society.
Speaking of which, the reason the Bible can say that nations will believe in and worship the Lord is that we do make decisions collectively as well as individually.
Yes, each person must make his or her own decision about whether to live a good or an evil life. But we also face evil as a culture and a world, and we make a collective decision, based on all of our individual decisions, about whether we want to live in a good or an evil society. When whole nations decide, as the Germans did after WWII, that they no longer want to be that kind of society, but want to be better, then the whole nation can turn itself around and walk a path toward God and heaven instead of a path toward evil and hell.
That’s because, as Swedenborg says, whole groups and nations of people are like larger versions of an individual. And heaven as a whole, he says, is a “universal human” form that is a macrocosm of the microcosm of an individual human being.
Just as an individual human being goes through a process of “regeneration,” or spiritual rebirth, so the whole of humanity is going through that same process. And though it is perfectly possible for an entire planet to choose evil, which will lead to its own destruction, I don’t think that’s what’s happening in our world. Yes, there is much chaos. But I believe this is all part of the process of our deeper evils finally coming out so that we can see them for what they are, fight against them, and overcome them. But that’s a subject for an entirely different essay of its own.
For now, the point is that according to Swedenborg, we are now entering into a new spiritual era which will be greater than any of the ones that have come before, because we will finally face and overcome all the deepest evils of our own nature, both individually and collectively, resulting in the good, just, and loving society represented by the New Jerusalem in the final chapters of the Bible. If we continue on our current course of facing, rejecting, and overcoming old evils, then all nations will indeed worship the true God, even if some individuals in them do not.
Hi Bob,
In response to this:
And this:
And in response to everything you said in between:
Here in this life we do experience high points that are very heavenly, and low points that are awfully hellish. God does allow us to experience a taste of each so that we can decide which one we want.
Take as an example falling in love, and how it unfolds.
The experience of falling in love has been acclaimed as a taste of heaven for thousands of years. Poetry and drama going all the way back to the beginnings of human history attest to this. Even today, romances and love stories are one of the most popular genres for movies and novels. Why? Because most of us have had some taste of the beauties and joys of falling in love, and we want more of it!
But we’ve also experienced the terrible pain and anguish of love falling into conflict, mutual attacks, pain, suffering, and divorce, not to mention the relationship and sexual violence that is all too common. The very thing that gives us the most heavenly feelings of bliss also gives us our most hellish experiences of pain and suffering.
In other words, in this powerful area of human experience, we commonly do experience both the bliss of heaven and the terrors of hell.
Given our individual and societal experiences of heaven and hell in this area of life, which one will we choose?
It is tempting to think that after experiencing the initial bliss of falling in love, everyone will choose the happiness of a faithful, loving, monogamous marriage relationship with the person they have fallen in love with.
Alas! Many people decide that the pleasure of dominating their partner, or using their partner for their own financial gain, or any of a number of other selfish and greedy motives, feels better than choosing the path of mutual love.
Why do so many people make that choice even after they’ve had a taste of the beauties of true love when they first fell in love, and everything was wonderful?
Because for some people, the pleasure of engaging in their own selfish desires for dominance or easy money or feelings of superiority seems very attractive, and is very pleasurable, even though it always results in the destruction of the relationship that feeds it.
Also, beating back our natural selfishness and greed requires hard work. Many people just don’t want to put out the effort required to build a really good and healthy relationship with another person. They’d rather be lazy and self-indulgent, and get their short-term pleasure even if they know it will probably lead to divorce and worse. There is the easy path that leads to destruction, and the hard path that leads to life. Some people take a look at each path, and decide, “Nah, that one is too much work. I’m going to call her a slut, and treat her like one!” or, “I’m going to get as much money and stuff as I can out of him, and do as little as possible for him in return.”
The reality is that both the path of good and the path of selfishness have their pleasures. Treating ones s/o badly does have its pleasures. It makes me feel good to make her or him feel bad. I’m better than s/he is, and I’m going to prove it! We get pleasure from that effort, and from the triumphs we achieve along the way. That’s true even though ultimately it eats out the marrow of the relationship itself, and in the long run we end out miserable and alone.
Meanwhile, choosing to chase after that initial fleeting experience of bliss when first falling in love involves a long, difficult process of seeing and confronting our own selfishness and greed, and overcoming it. It is possible to achieve the kind of love and bliss we felt only fleetingly at first, and make it the regular experience of our daily life with the person we love. But only by a lifelong process of facing our own evils, repenting from them, and committing ourselves to loving our partner as much as or even more than we love ourselves. Many people have achieved this, and live every day in a happy and even blissful relationship with their husband or wife. These are people who are willing to do the work every day of committing themselves to loving God above all, and their neighbor (in this case, their spouse) as they love themselves.
Why do some people choose evil over good? Because evil does have its pleasures, including very intense pleasures, and it’s a lot less work than good. Many people just don’t want to put out the effort required to choose the good. They look at the evil, say, “That looks fun!” and they go for it. It’s not that they couldn’t have chosen the good. It’s that on balance, they decided that the good isn’t worth it, and they’d prefer to have the pleasures of evil for themselves.
Nothing worth having is easy to get. In this life, people who want to succeed must work hard day after day and year after year to achieve the big goals they have set for themselves. Along the way, it often seems like a thankless and even futile task. Some people get discouraged and give up, choosing the easy path that goes downhill instead of the hard path that goes uphill. But the easy path leads to hell, whereas the hard path leads to heaven.
It’s not as though people don’t have plenty of examples to look at. Since time immemorial there have been great works of literature that explore the human experience of good and evil in all its glorious and excruciating details. Today the movie theaters and the streaming services are full of dramas that depict in living color the whole gamut of human good and evil. Only people who have mental disabilities so severe that they cannot think freely and rationally can fail to have huge amounts of experience and material about the true nature of good and evil when they face their own choices between good and evil.
Some still choose evil.
Why? Because it’s easy and pleasurable. And that’s what they want.
Unfortunately, it also carries inevitable destructive consequences, both for themselves and for the people around them. But for these people, the pleasure of engaging in their favorite selfish and greedy pleasures outweighs the consequences of their actions. So they choose evil, and ultimately commit themselves to it so fully that it becomes their core and settled character.
These are the people who make their bed in hell.
Those who make the other choice will make their bed in heaven.
As long as we are still living and breathing on this earth, we can always change our mind, and go in the other direction. Once our life on earth is over, and we enter the spiritual world, our decision has been made. From then on, we will live the life we have chosen: in heaven if we have chosen to put love for God and the neighbor first, and in hell if we have chosen to put love for self and the world first.