A ghastly horrid notion !
And, as I say, I do in fact—and quite intentionally—use very strong language about certain teachings I find abominable.
I will not feign contrition on that score. Nor should I. My characterizations of the teaching of eternal conscious torment are perfectly apt and fair, and they are directed as much at me as at any other Christian.
I know how coarsened our consciences can become when trying to justify to ourselves what we think is required of us by faith and tradition. But, frankly, the burden of proof—and of a certain seemly reticence—falls quite on the other side of the room in this debate.
After all, why should anyone feel the need to apologize for denouncing an idea that looks fairly monstrous from any angle, one whose principal use down the centuries has arguably been the psychological abuse and terrorization of children?
Who, after all, is saying something more objectively atrocious, or more aggressively perverse?
The person who claims that every newborn infant enters the world justly under the threat of eternal dereliction, and that a good God imposes or permits the imposition of a state of eternal agony on finite, created rational beings as part of the mystery of his love or sovereignty or justice?
Or the person who observes that such ideas are cruel and barbarous and depraved?
Which of these two should really be, if not ashamed of his or her words, at least hesitant, ambivalent, and even a little penitent in uttering them?
And which has a better right to moral indignation at what the other has said? And, really, don’t these questions answer themselves?
A belief does not merit unconditional reverence just because it is old, nor should it be immune to being challenged in terms commensurate to the scandal it seems to pose.
And the belief that a God of infinite intellect, justice, love, and power would condemn rational beings to a state of perpetual torment, or would allow them to condemn themselves on account of their own delusion, pain, and anger, is probably worse than merely scandalous.
It may be the single most horrid notion the religious imagination has ever conceived, and the most irrational and spiritually corrosive picture of existence possible.
And anyone who thinks that such claims are too strong or caustic, while at the same time finding the traditional notion of a hell of everlasting suffering perfectly unobjectionable, needs to consider whether he or she is really thinking clearly about it at all. If anything, my rhetoric may be far, far too mild. -David B. Hart-
And, as I say, I do in fact—and quite intentionally—use very strong language about certain teachings I find abominable.
I will not feign contrition on that score. Nor should I. My characterizations of the teaching of eternal conscious torment are perfectly apt and fair, and they are directed as much at me as at any other Christian.
I know how coarsened our consciences can become when trying to justify to ourselves what we think is required of us by faith and tradition. But, frankly, the burden of proof—and of a certain seemly reticence—falls quite on the other side of the room in this debate.
After all, why should anyone feel the need to apologize for denouncing an idea that looks fairly monstrous from any angle, one whose principal use down the centuries has arguably been the psychological abuse and terrorization of children?
Who, after all, is saying something more objectively atrocious, or more aggressively perverse?
The person who claims that every newborn infant enters the world justly under the threat of eternal dereliction, and that a good God imposes or permits the imposition of a state of eternal agony on finite, created rational beings as part of the mystery of his love or sovereignty or justice?
Or the person who observes that such ideas are cruel and barbarous and depraved?
Which of these two should really be, if not ashamed of his or her words, at least hesitant, ambivalent, and even a little penitent in uttering them?
And which has a better right to moral indignation at what the other has said? And, really, don’t these questions answer themselves?
A belief does not merit unconditional reverence just because it is old, nor should it be immune to being challenged in terms commensurate to the scandal it seems to pose.
And the belief that a God of infinite intellect, justice, love, and power would condemn rational beings to a state of perpetual torment, or would allow them to condemn themselves on account of their own delusion, pain, and anger, is probably worse than merely scandalous.
It may be the single most horrid notion the religious imagination has ever conceived, and the most irrational and spiritually corrosive picture of existence possible.
And anyone who thinks that such claims are too strong or caustic, while at the same time finding the traditional notion of a hell of everlasting suffering perfectly unobjectionable, needs to consider whether he or she is really thinking clearly about it at all. If anything, my rhetoric may be far, far too mild. -David B. Hart-
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