Heaven And Hell - Live And Let Die PC
Charise Scrivner
It is hardly surprising, then, that a belief in an afterlife should bean important part of the Christian tradition. Even if our lives doextend beyond the grave, however, the question remains concerning thenature of the future in store for us on the other side, and thevarious Christian views about heaven and hell are proposed answers tothis question. According to a relatively common view in the widerChristian culture, heaven and hell are essentially deservedcompensations for the kind of earthly lives we live. Good people go toheaven as a deserved reward for a virtuous life, and bad people go tohell as a just punishment for an immoral life; in that way, the scalesof justice are sometimes thought to balance. But virtually allChristian theologians regard such a view, however common it may be inthe popular culture, as overly simplistic and unsophisticated; thebiblical perspective, as they see it, is far more subtly nuanced thanthat.
is fairly unspecific concerning the fate of the wicked and the importof separation from God. For if we think of such separation as a stateof being estranged or alienated from God, or if we think of it assimply the absence of a loving union with God, then (3) is equallyconsistent with many different conceptions of hell, some arguablymilder than others. It is equally consistent, for example, with theidea that hell is a realm where the wicked receive retribution in theform of everlasting torment, with the idea that they will simply beannihilated in the end, with the idea that they create their own hellby rejecting God, and with the idea that God will simply make them ascomfortable as possible in hell even as God graciously limits the harmthey can do to each other (see Stump 1986). This lack of specificityis by design. For however one understands the fate of those whosupposedly remain separated from God forever, such a fatewill entail something like (3). Alternatively, anyone who rejects (3)will likewise reject the idea of everlasting torment as well as any ofthe supposedly milder conceptions of an everlasting separation fromGod.
Although this Augustinian rationale for the justice of hell has had aprofound influence on the Western theological tradition, particularlyin the past, critics of Augustinian theology, both ancient andcontemporary, have raised a number of powerful objections to it.
All of which brings one to what Marilyn McCord Adams and many otherssee as the most crucial question of all. How could any sinthat a finite being commits in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, andillusion deserve an infinite penalty as a just recompense? (See Adams1993, 313).
But why suppose it even possible that a free creature should freelyreject forever the redemptive will of a perfectly loving andinfinitely resourceful God? In the relevant literature over the pastseveral decades, advocates of a free-will theodicy of hell haveoffered at least three quite different answers to this question:
In any case, how one assesses each of the three answers above willdepend upon how one understands the idea of moral freedom and the roleit plays, if any, in someone landing in either heaven or hell. Thefirst two answers also represent a fundamental disagreement concerningthe existence of free will in hell and perhaps even the nature of freewill itself. According to the first answer, the inhabitants of hellare those who have freely acquired a consistently evil will and anirreversibly bad moral character. So for the rest of eternity, theseinhabitants of hell do not even continue rejecting God freelyin any sense that requires the psychological possibility of choosingotherwise. But is such an irreversibly bad moral character evencoherent or metaphysically possible? Not according to the secondanswer, which implies that a morally perfect God would never ceaseproviding those in hell with opportunities for repentance andproviding these opportunities in contexts where such repentanceremains a genuine psychological possibility. All of which points onceagain to the need for a clearer understanding of the nature andpurpose of moral freedom. (See section 5.1 below for some additionalissues that arise in connection with freedom in heaven and hell.)
If that is true, then not just any causally undetermined choice, orjust any agent caused choice, or just any randomly generated selectionbetween alternatives will qualify as a free choice for which thechoosing agent is morally responsible. Moral freedom also requires aminimal degree of rationality on the part of the choosing agent,including an ability to learn from experience, an ability to discernnormal reasons for acting, and a capacity for moral improvement. Withgood reason, therefore, do we exclude lower animals, small children,the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even paranoid schizophrenicsfrom the class of free moral agents. For, however causallyundetermined some of their behaviors might be, they all lack some partof the rationality required to qualify as free moral agents.[9]
One argument in support of proposition (1) contends that love(especially in the form of willing the very best for another) isinclusive in this sense: even where it is logically possible for aloving relationship to come to an end, two persons are bound togetherin love only when their purposes and interests, even the conditions oftheir happiness, are so logically intertwined as to be inseparable. Ifa mother should love her child even as she loves herself, for example,then any evil that befalls the child is likewise an evil that befallsthe mother and any good that befalls the child is likewise a good thatbefalls the mother; hence, it is simply not possible, according tothis argument, for God to will the best for the mother without alsowilling the best for the child as well.
Rarely, if ever, are Christian theologians very specific about whatheaven will supposedly be like, and there are no doubt good reasonsfor this. For most of them would deny that the primary sources of theChristian faith, such as the Bible, provide much information on thisparticular matter. But three issues have typically arisen in therelevant philosophical literature: first, because so many of therecent Christian philosophers have focused upon free will theodiciesof hell, it is hardly surprising that the issue of freedom in heavenshould likewise have arisen; a second issue is whether the misery ofloved ones in hell would undermine the blessedness of those in heaven;and a third issue is whether immortality of any kind would ultimatelylead to tedium, boredom, and an insipid life.
Like the arguments over universalism and human freedom, as brieflysummarized in section 4.2 above, the issue of freedom in heaven onceagain illustrates the need for a reasonably clear and complete accountof free will. It also illustrates how easily a purely verbal dispute,which is an apparent dispute that arises from different uses of thesame term, can sometimes disguise itself as a genuine disagreementover some matter of substance. With respect to the issue of freedom inheaven, here are a couple of additional examples to consider: (a) thehonest banker whose deeply-rooted moral and religious convictions makeit psychologically impossible for him to accept a bribe in a givensituation, and (b) the mother whose great love for her newborn babymakes it psychologically impossible for her knowingly to harm herbeloved child physically. The question of whether there is freedom inheaven seems relevantly similar to the question of whether our honestbanker freely refuses the bribe and whether our loving motherfreely refuses to do anything she knows would harm her babyphysically.
But what if there were more to it than that? What if we had more control over our own experiences in the afterlife. According to Swedenborg, our experience of the afterlife, heaven and hell, depends on who we are, at our core. The values we embrace, the communities we create, the way we see ourselves working with others, and how we interact with the world around us have a far greater role in our experience of the afterlife.
According to Emanuel Swedenborg, heaven and hell are both places as well as states of being. Where we end up is largely determined by who we are at our very core (selfless or selfish) and among which people we find ourselves most at home.
We are, essentially, always in the presence of two worlds, the natural world and the spiritual world. The spiritual world is made up of heaven, hell, and the spirit world between the two, where we all first arrive after passing; this spiritual world is populated by spirits, angels, and demons.
Once we have determined where we belong, through significant soul searching and guidance, free from external pressures, we move onward in our journey. Swedenborg alternates between referring to this as upward and downward or inward. Largely, the two are interchangeable in this theology as our searching inward determines our path moving forward. Do we find our true selves closer to God and his love or more aligned with ourselves and our own desires and needs?
While Swedenborg seems to suggest that many of our ideas about the afterlife are intuitive, innately known as spiritual beings, he does clarify that we do not immediately go to heaven or hell. Instead, Swedenborg identifies the area we enter immediately after passing as The Spirit World. This entrance is what many hope for in that it is a time of reunions with family, friends, and loved ones who have passed before us. They are, indeed, there to greet us, to welcome us and to help us feel at peace.
The essence is that, here, upon arrival, we are greeted by a heart-centered friendly group of angels who ensure all that enters our minds is love-focused. This allows our souls to travel inward, exploring who we are at our core.
In short, the afterlife is all about your spirit going where your heart feels it belongs. It is an intense period of self-discovery which allows us to discover and see our path forward. There is a process of separation, of leaving all the negative behind for us to see if what we seek is heaven, which is about love and communal selfless love, or hell, which is about love of self. Only then do we meet with similar travelers who are in many ways soulmates.
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