Reflection: The Four Last Things - Hell
By Fr. Wesley Walker
“Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.” -Abraham to the Rich Man in St. Luke 16:26
“Hell” in “The Last Judgment” by Fra Angelica (c. 1425)
The existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once remarked that “Hell is other people.” From a Christian perspective, this couldn’t be more backwards. Hell isn’t other people; it’s isolation from community and a rejection of God’s continual offer of love. Today, we are talking about the third of the four last things: Hell. Much like last week’s topic of judgment, Hell is certainly not a popular doctrine in our modern context, but faithful Christians must grapple with its reality since it’s a common topic in Our Lord’s teachings. Hell is the ultimate deprivation that results from turning inward away from God and others. The fact that hell is real provides us an opportunity for reflection and prayer.
We often think of Heaven and Hell as eternal destinations. They are those; however, they’re also present realities. Being separated from God through sin is Hell, albeit in a foreshadowing of an ultimate reality that will be fully unveiled after the final judgment. What this means is that Hell as an eternal destination is the culmination of a present trajectory that refuses God’s love now. It’s true that people who aren’t Christians can often appear happy—they may have loving families, good jobs, lots of money, they might be productive members of society, etc.—but in the end those things will fall away and the misery that’s shrouded under a thin veneer of temporal success, materialism, and hedonistic indulgence will be experienced in full force. Still, when we see people who reject the Gospel—explicitly or implicitly—there is a sense in which they are experiencing Hell now. We experience Hell now when we reject God through sin.
What this means is that CS Lewis was right when he said that “the doors of Hell are locked on the inside.” God doesn’t arbitrarily send one group of his creatures to Hell while allowing the other group into Heaven; we choose Hell when we persist in rebellion and reject his love. God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). He “will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). At the same time, God gives us what we want. Rejection of him calcifies our hearts and makes us increasingly resistant to the Truth. We choose Hell when we turn inward, away from God and away from others.
Ultimately, Hell is the anguish of rejecting God’s love. In Scripture, God’s presence is often depicted as a fire. In a positive sense, the fire of his presence burns away our impurities. He is the refiner’s fire. In a negative sense, however, this fire is a torment for those who spurn God’s love. There can be no greater torment than knowing than the intentional rejection of what is True, Good, and Beautiful.
As I mentioned above, the doctrine of Hell usually doesn’t play well in our modern context. For us, however, Hell offers a chance to reflect on our lives and to pray for others. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar explains that the Church’s teaching on Hell “is to be contemplated strictly as a matter which concerns me alone.” In other words, our job is not to decide whether other people are going to Heaven or Hell. We should hope that the Gospel reaches and saves every soul. Still, we should heed St. Paul and “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). So the reality of Hell should be the ultimate impetus for us to reflect on our own lives by which we assess what trajectory we are traveling. Even more, the doctrine of Hell gives us a reason to pray by interceding for souls, recognizing that the sacrifice of Christ is “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world” (BCP 80).