Review
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52 (2002)
Charles Seymour, A Theodicy of Hell (Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 20).
Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. viii and 208 pages. $92.00.
With this study, Charles Seymour adds to the growing body of literature supporting a free will theodicy of hell. It is a work of great honesty, great thoroughness in its review of previous discussion, and thoughtful argumentation. It will definitely reward careful attention.
Seymour divides his book into seven chapters. In Chapter 1, he sets forth two basic assumptions: that sinners are justly punished only if free in the libertarian sense, and that God has middle knowledge. He also defines “the generic doctrine of hell as the belief that it is logically and epistemically possible that some persons will experience eternal unhappiness” (p. 5). And finally, he explains clearly how epistemic possibilities differ from logical possibilities: Whereas the latter are absolute and independent of context, the former are always relative to a set of beliefs held at a particular time. So “it is not enough,” Seymour wisely points out, “to say that hell is epistemically possible. We must say for whom the idea is epistemically possible” (p. 6).
After reviewing the history of hell in Chapter 2, Seymour then takes up an important argument from justice in Chapter 3: the argument that no specific sin deserves eternal punishment, and neither does any finite combination of sins; hence, it is not possible that a just God would punish anyone eternally. Though he concedes the premise of this argument, Seymour also points out, correctly, that the inference is a non sequitur. For the premise in no way excludes the possibility of someone continuing to sin forever; and if someone did continue sinning forever, then God might also seem just in continuing to punish this person forever.
In Chapter 4, Seymour takes up, among other things, Marilyn Adams’ argument that we are not competent to choose an eternal destiny, the suggestion (again attributed to Adams) that a God with middle knowledge would never create anyone “whom he foresaw would suffer eternal unhappiness” (p. 103), and my own contention that the damnation of a single soul would undermine the blessedness of the redeemed. Against Adams and in defense of William Craig, Seymour writes: It “is epistemically possible, as Craig says, that God can only arrange a world with a sizeable number of saved if he creates some souls who are damned as well” (p. 132). But here he seems to forget his own point about the necessity of asking: Epistemically possible for whom? Not every reasonable person, after all, will find Craig’s proposition epistemically possible; indeed, as Seymour himself acknowledges, one might concede the logical possibility of this proposition and still insist that authoritative religious texts guarantee its falsehood (see p. 5). And if, alternatively, Seymour’s point is merely that the relevant proposition is consistent with his own basic convictions, then this is an interesting autobiographical claim, but not a particularly interesting philosophical claim.
Nor do I see any need to concede the logical possibility of Craig’s proposition. If the damnation of a single soul must undermine blessedness in all others, as I have argued, then it is logically impossible for God to increase the number of blessed by increasing the number of the damned. As a counter to this, Seymour challenges my assumption that “to feel compassion for the suffering is an essential trait of the virtuous” (p. 129). In the face of tragedy, he insists, we have every right “to forget about the pains of others on occasion and focus upon our own enjoyment”; and furthermore, “since there is no action the blessed can take to bring back the damned, pity is useless and the blessed are right not to feel it” (pp. 129-130). But even if this were relevant, I doubt that Ted Bundy’s mother, who declared so agonizingly her continuing love for a son who had become a monster, would find much comfort in Seymour’s words; and in any event, Seymour himself holds that the damned remain free both to repent and to continue sinning forever. If this is true, then it is quite possible that the blessed can yet do a lot to bring the damned back into the fold.
We get to the heart of the matter in Chapter 5, where Seymour defends his free will approach and argues against my own contention that a free and fully informed decision to reject God forever is logically impossible. Here Seymour appeals to the indisputable “empirical fact that a person may continue to pursue bad habits even after experiencing their painful consequences” (p. 140), cites “cowardice, love of pleasure, pride, etc.” as “motives which prompt us to choose damnation” (p. 142), and defends the value of peccability or the freedom to sin. As I see it, however, he fails to distinguish clearly enough between a temporary and an everlasting peccability. Why suppose the latter to be even possible? According to Seymour, “it is possible that some remain perpetually stubborn. This is clearly a logical possibility” (p. 141). But why is this clear? - and how could it become clear in the absence of a complete analysis of freedom, something that Seymour nowhere provides? Even if an absence of sufficient causal conditions is a necessary condition of free moral choice, as Seymour holds, it hardly follows that this is the only necessary condition; and until one examines all of the necessary conditions, one is in no position to pontificate about what “is clearly a logical possibility.” Too often, free choice figures into the abstract calculations of theistic philosophers no differently than sheer randomness would, and therefore too few explore with any care the limits of possible free choice.
Suppose that a minimal degree of rationality and an ability to learn from experience is also, as I believe, a necessary condition of free moral choice and the power to sin. If so, then here is an argument that
(P) Some persons will continue to sin forever,
is not even logically possible: Sin is not possible outside a context of ambiguity, faulty judgment, and deception; neither is it possible that someone should continue to sin forever without continuing to act upon the deceptions that make sin possible in the first place; and neither is it possible that anyone rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent should continue to act upon the relevant illusions forever without eventually shattering them to pieces. Therefore, (P) is logically impossible.
Stated so briefly, this argument will not, and should not, persuade anyone. I present it merely to illustrate rather sketchily how it might be logically possible to sin for a while without it being logically possible to sin forever. But since this is no place for detailed discussion, I shall simply point out that Seymour’s final two chapters compare rival views of hell and explore some of the broader implications of his view. I gladly recommend the book as a rich source of intriguing philosophical arguments; and even though I personally disagree with many of Seymour’s conclusions, his willingness to countenance the “heresy” of repentance after death strikes me as an important step in the right direction.