Keith DeRose: December 2008 Archives

I'm hoping to get more substantial posts on the pragmatics of hell up soon, but for now, a--somewhat dated, and quite brief--report, based on her pastoral experience, from Marilyn McCord Adams (author of Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God and of Christ and Horrors, both of which should be of great interest to many readers of this blog).  This is from a section of Marilyn's essay, "The Problem of Hell" entitled "The Pragmatics of Universalism," but what she's really up to is comparing the pragmatics of universalism with my current topic, the pragmatics of fairly nasty doctrines of hell:

Surprisingly many religiously serious people reject the doctrine of universal salvation on the pragmatic ground that it leads to moral and religious laxity. Withdraw the threat, and they doubt whether others--perhaps even themselves--would sustain the motivation for moral diligence and religious observance. My pastoral experience suggests, on the contrary, that the disproportionate threat of hell (see sections 2.2 and 2.3) produces despair that masquerades as skepticism, rebellion, and unbelief. If your father threatens to kill you if you disobey him, you may cower in terrorized submission, but may also (reasonably) run away from home. -Marilyn Adams, "The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians," in E. Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 325

This post will be a quick explanation of what originally got me thinking about the pragmatics of belief in traditional doctrines of hell and also of why I think it's valuable to discuss the issue.

I'm Keith DeRose. I'm a philosopher who blogs a bit on the side. Rather than giving any more introduction to myself here, I'll just send those who are interested in reading about me to my web page, where I have a good deal of information posted, including links to some of my previous blog posts.

Tony thought it would be interesting for me to post some of my thoughts about the pragmatics of believing in what we might as well call traditional Christian doctrines of hell, so that's what I'll be doing in the next few days. I should say right upfront that I have little idea of what Tony thinks about such matters, or even whether he has very specific views here. I'll just be speaking for myself here.

By the "pragmatics" of the belief, I mean the effects of holding the belief -- what holding such a belief can do to and through the one who holds it.  So I don't foresee myself discussing whether such a belief is true, or discussing Scriptural grounds for and against such a doctrine in this series of posts. I've engaged in such discussions in the past, and no doubt will again in the future. And I suspect I'll have occasion in this series of posts to refer to some of my past engagements in the debate over the truth of such doctrines, as background for the current discussion, which, again, will be about the pragmatics of the belief.

Why even bother with the pragmatics of hell? I'll take that up in a subsequent post.  (Sorry for the teaser.) But to hopefully forestall certain misguided comments: My current focus on the pragmatics of the belief is not due to any general neglect on my part of the issue of the truth of such a doctrine and the Scriptural case for and against it. In fact, I've engaged in scriptural investigaions/discussions/debates of such issues quite extensively in the past, and this will be one of very few times that I've ever gotten around to writing anything about the pragmatics of the issue. It's just that this seems to be the time to finally write out some of my thoughts about the pragmatics of hell. And, again, I hope to have some things to say about why the pragmatics are important.

For those interested in an on-line discussion of the Scriptural case for and against traditional doctrines of hell: I have a reference for you.  This summer, Real Live Preacher announced that he would be taking careful critical Scriptural look at the traditional doctrine of hell, and asked for e-mail input from readers concerning what the relevant texts were, especially any that support the traditional doctrine. That was in this post, which includes a description of what he meant by the "traditional doctrine" -- which is basically how I use that phrase, too. (I was one of the many who wrote him, suggesting what I took to be by far the strongest text for the support of key elements of the traditional doctrine.) He reported the results of his study in a series of video posts in October here, here, here, and here. I certainly don't endorse everything RLP had to say -- in certain ways, I think the case for the traditional doctrine can be made more convincing than is the way he construes it. But I thought it was a very nice study, and well worth recommending.