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Earlier in the year I read St. Augustine's Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love together with some of the men in our church. The book blessed me in many ways, not least through solidifying the impression that Augustine’s theology had more in common with the Protestant reformers than the medieval Catholics, especially in areas of soteriology.
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The book also serves as a good answer, not only to the heretics of Augustine’s day, against which the Enchiridion was written, but to the heretics of our own day. I often say that the history of heresy is so boring, because no one comes up with anything new - it is always the same old heresies repackaged in contemporary dress.
The book is dry and archaic to modern sensibilities and is best taken and digested in small doses.
Having been edified by the blessed brother Augustine, it is only fair to say that the book is not without what seems to be a glaring inconsistency. The problem concerns his doctrine of hell. (And I am writing this to solicit feedback. During our discussion of the book, none of my friends acknowledged any inconsistency, so I may be completely barking up the wrong tree but I would like to be shown how.)
In describing the nature of evil, Augustine develops his famous argument - which was later taken up by everyone from Aquinas to C.S. Lewis and more recently by Norman Geisler - that evil is privation. I won’t rehash the argument here (and beginners would do best to consult Lewis’s more accessible treatment, not Augustine’s), although suffice to say I am convinced that anything less than the privation view of evil leads necessarily to some form of unbiblical dualism. What interests me is the problems this perspective creates for Augustine’s doctrine of the afterlife.
In chapter 12, the blessed brother argued that because evil is not a thing in itself but parasitic on what is good (as rottenness is parasitic on an original substance rather than something which exists on its own), all evil must necessarily be terminus. Evil, by its very nature (Augustine argues) tends towards non-being. This is the implication of his having written as follows, in chapter 12:
"Therefore, so long as a being is in process of corruption, there is in it some good of which it is being deprived; and if a part of the being should remain which cannot be corrupted, this will certainly be an incorruptible being, and accordingly the process of corruption will result in the manifestation of this great good. But if it do not cease to be corrupted, neither can it cease to possess good of which corruption may deprive it. But if it should be thoroughly and completely consumed by corruption, there will then be no good left, because there will be no being. Wherefore corruption can consume the good only by consuming the being. Every being, therefore, is a good; a great good, if it cannot be corrupted; a little good, if it cam: but in any case, only the foolish or ignorant will deny that it is a good. And if it be wholly consumed by corruption, then the corruption itself must cease to exist, as there is no being left in which it can dwell."
This is heavy going, but what the blessed brother seems to be saying is that evil tends towards non-being in the same way that all parasitical substances do since they depend, for their continuation, on the host they are in the process of destroying. This was a popular theme in Augustine because in order to defend Christianity against the heresy of Manichaeism, he must establish that goodness and evil are not equally substantive and that they are not co-eternal. With regard to the latter, in numerous other places in his writings Augustine asserts the eventual abolition of evil, arguing that "evil consists in this very thing, namely in a defection from being, and a tendency to non-being."
The book is dry and archaic to modern sensibilities and is best taken and digested in small doses.
Having been edified by the blessed brother Augustine, it is only fair to say that the book is not without what seems to be a glaring inconsistency. The problem concerns his doctrine of hell. (And I am writing this to solicit feedback. During our discussion of the book, none of my friends acknowledged any inconsistency, so I may be completely barking up the wrong tree but I would like to be shown how.)
In describing the nature of evil, Augustine develops his famous argument - which was later taken up by everyone from Aquinas to C.S. Lewis and more recently by Norman Geisler - that evil is privation. I won’t rehash the argument here (and beginners would do best to consult Lewis’s more accessible treatment, not Augustine’s), although suffice to say I am convinced that anything less than the privation view of evil leads necessarily to some form of unbiblical dualism. What interests me is the problems this perspective creates for Augustine’s doctrine of the afterlife.
In chapter 12, the blessed brother argued that because evil is not a thing in itself but parasitic on what is good (as rottenness is parasitic on an original substance rather than something which exists on its own), all evil must necessarily be terminus. Evil, by its very nature (Augustine argues) tends towards non-being. This is the implication of his having written as follows, in chapter 12:
"Therefore, so long as a being is in process of corruption, there is in it some good of which it is being deprived; and if a part of the being should remain which cannot be corrupted, this will certainly be an incorruptible being, and accordingly the process of corruption will result in the manifestation of this great good. But if it do not cease to be corrupted, neither can it cease to possess good of which corruption may deprive it. But if it should be thoroughly and completely consumed by corruption, there will then be no good left, because there will be no being. Wherefore corruption can consume the good only by consuming the being. Every being, therefore, is a good; a great good, if it cannot be corrupted; a little good, if it cam: but in any case, only the foolish or ignorant will deny that it is a good. And if it be wholly consumed by corruption, then the corruption itself must cease to exist, as there is no being left in which it can dwell."
This is heavy going, but what the blessed brother seems to be saying is that evil tends towards non-being in the same way that all parasitical substances do since they depend, for their continuation, on the host they are in the process of destroying. This was a popular theme in Augustine because in order to defend Christianity against the heresy of Manichaeism, he must establish that goodness and evil are not equally substantive and that they are not co-eternal. With regard to the latter, in numerous other places in his writings Augustine asserts the eventual abolition of evil, arguing that "evil consists in this very thing, namely in a defection from being, and a tendency to non-being."
The problem that arises is that towards the end of the Enchiridion Augustine asserts the unending existence of evil, saying that “the devil’s [citizen’s]...shall drag a miserable existence in eternal death without the power of dying... This perpetual death of the wicked, then...shall abide for ever, and shall be common to them all...” Augustine’s argument against the universalists rests on a very questionable interpretation of Jesus’s parable of the sheep and the goats, but what is of interests at the moment is that this idea of perpetual death and perpetual wickedness seems at odds with Augustine’s conviction that evil tends towards non-being.
Augustine seems to be on the horns of a dilemma. His attack of Manichaeism compels him to argue that goodness and evil are not of equal duration (since evil, by its nature, tends towards non-being and will eventually be destroyed), while his critique of universalism compels him to imply the unending existence of evil (death, wicked beings, pain, etc.,) as a corollary of eternal hell.
Augustine seems to have realized this problem, and so he tried to resolve it by suggesting (elsewhere) that sin is only evil when it goes unpunished, whereas sin properly punished ceases to be evil but actually becomes good. Augustine was thus able to maintain, as one commentator puts it, a "bland assurance that the universe is no less admirable and beautiful a place for having a chamber of horrors eternally present within it, so long only as each horror of pain perfectly matches and balances each horror of sin". The obvious problem here is that such an idea of evil (that it can be neutralized of its negative moral quality by appropriate punishment) contradicts the privation view set forth in the Enchiridion. This is because the idea that evil is privation leads to the broadest possible understanding of evil which certainly includes any agent that is sinning, regardless of whether that sin is being equally matched with punishment. Moreover, in order for ongoing sin to cease being evil it would have to cease being in opposition to the nature and will of God, which sin by definition is not. Suffice to say that sin is always evil, even if it is punished, and that those sinful souls in hell are evil and that is why they are there. But if they are evil, and if they exist eternally without ever being destroyed, then evil is not tending towards non-being.
The problem is very practical for those who advocate the endless punishment of the wicked. I have known teachers who confidently asserted that rebellion to God would be destroyed, only to turn around the next minute to say that the unrepentant souls in hell will forever persist in rebellion against their maker (which is true by definition of an unrepentant agent). The logic seems hard to escape that in order for rebellion to be destroyed, sinners must stop being sinners (the other solution, to assert that sin against God is not rebellion, creates even more problems and leads to antinomianism). But the only way someone can stop being a sinner is for (A) some form of redemption to occur (B) the person ceases to exist as a moral agent. Option A is
universalism and option B veers towards some form of annihilationism. Both of these were not options for the blessed brother Augustine.
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5 comments:
I'm not so sure Augustine was all that blessed of a brother. The fact that he solidified the idea in Christian theology that God sovreignly decided to create a race of sentient beings with the intention of torturing most of them for eternity indicates that whatever it was going on inside his mind and emotions was nothing at all blessed!
I’ve actully written an entire book on this topic–Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There’s No Such Place As Hell (for any interested, you can download a free Ecopy from my website: http://www.ricklannoye.com), but please let me share one of the many points I make in my book to illustrate why Augustine could not have been more incorrect (along with any other spin) on the idea of Hell.
The majority of Jesus’ teachings in the gospels resound a constant theme: Care for those who are suffering! According to most of what Jesus is said to have taught, God wants to help and heal all people, not abandon and hurt them. This, alone, precludes a deity who could torture people for any length of time, much less forever.
For example, in Luke 9:51-56, Jesus becomes very disappointed with his disciples when they suggest that God rain FIRE on a village of people who had REJECTED him. Jesus tries so hard to explain, “Don’t you know what spirit is inspiring this talk?” Presumably, not the Holy Spirit! He goes on to say he has come to save, to help, to heal, instead. He had no interest in harming the people in that village, even though they had rejected him.
This same Jesus could never turn right around and, not only burn a few people for a few horrific minutes until they’re dead, but burn billions of people for an eternity!
No, the doctrine of Hell made its way into Christianity long after Jesus’ death, when it became mostly a Greek religion. The Greeks imported their Pagan belief in Hades with them when they converted, and their scribes adulterated the gospels here and there to place the belief on Jesus’ lips.
Sounds like your friend is a radical universalist. He doesn´t even believe in hell at all, which is strange because I assumes Rick believes in the authority of scripture. He is probably using the word ¨hell¨ like I did when I was a universalist to mean ¨that which everyone else usually means by it¨, although if you don´t believe in hell at all you have to throw out a lot of scripture.
Its interesting that he throws the blame on the Greeks. I, belonging to a Greek Orthodox Parish, might be able to shed some light on this. The Greeks may be one of the few groups in Christendom who actually don´t believe in an Augustine hell. Greek theology differed so much from that of Augustine that Augustine is not even a saint in the Greek Orthodox church, instead reffered to as ¨the blessed Augustine¨.
But I was left hanging by Robin´s essay. He leaves only two possibilities: aniliationism and universalism. I can think of a third right now, but how does Robin get out of this dellemena left by Augustine and what concept of hell would he put forth that would not be dualistic???
I read this book too a couple of years ago. I liked it.
As for hell, Orthodox Christians have a unique take on it sometimes offensive to conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics and perhaps more acceptable to those Christians attracted to Universal Reconciliation. I mean no offense and will not be offended if you, Robin, find this to be an inappropriate forum for such an explanation.
Simply put, Heaven and Hell are the experience of one and the same reality: the presence of God. Just as the hug of a parent can be painful to a rebellious child, the soul unprepared by being transformed by the Holy Spirit experiences the love of God as pain. As one of the early Church Fathers, St Isaac the Syrian, once said, "hell is the love of God."
Sin is a sickness that builds walls around the soul, transforming us into atomistic individuals, imprisoned and turned in on ourselves. Caught in the morass of our self-sickness our spirit's stagnate and fester and the infection of violence infects everyone around us. God hates sin because it destroys the soul. It is his joy to heal the sin-sick soul and bring us out of individualism and into the life of full personhood. He does this by bringing us into the never-beginning, never-ending, super-abundant giving and receiving that takes place between the Three-Personed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Far from being absorbed into a self-less personality-less oblivion, as Buddhism teaches, by being brought into the Trinitarian relationship we are filled with the light of the ultimate Personality that changes our lives making us even so much more who we really are. Like the saints of a stained glass window, the more light from the one Sun shines through them the more their particular personalities come through. Our destiny is to stand before the presence of God and behold the light of his glory.
If we are healed of the self sickness, the walls around our souls torn down, the light will fill us, enlighten us, and unite us in one great chorus of "turning toward" God and entering into the giving and receiving of Trinitarian Life. If we are not healed of the self-sickness and the walls of festering, atomistic, individualism are not torn down, the love of God will not be a joy at all but a fire.
I suppose it is as if your soul is black and the light of God's love just creates heat that ignites a fire that consumes the remaining personhood leaving behind a lonely individual. (is this a form of annihilation-ism?) But if we can be united to the Life of Christ through grace and be healed of the black-hole of self-love / self-centeredness / self-sickness, then the light of God's love will fill us and enlighten us with true personhood.
Furthermore, there is the (broader) hope that the love of God acts to cure the disease of sin and rebellion of some, but clearly not all, his lost creatures even after death. We can only pray that the Grace of God the avails much can find a way to breach the walls of self-love that destroy communion. Our prayers assist in the constitution of that communion which is Life in Christ.
This doctrine is not in isolation from a balanced and Biblical understanding of sin as rebellion and hell as judgment. But these are not central metaphors for us.
http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html
Ryan, thanks for sharing about the Orthodox concept of hell. I was familiar with that already, thanks to other Orthodox friends and also C.S. Lewis. But how does it help with Augustine's dillema?
First, remoe the retributive theory of punishment. hell can be eternal suffering without punishment. God was just prior to the existence of any wicked agent.
Second, sin is in the personal use and not in the nature, so contra the Manicheans, there is no enduring evil substance.
Third, all are raised in Christ, so are are united to Christ at the level of nature, but not necessairly at the level of personhood. Hence universalism turns on a confusion of person and nature.
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