What if there is no Hell?

         Many have explained that the Pope had not said that there is no hell. The issue that we try to address seems to be whether 'there is' hell or not, whether hell ‘exists there’ or not. But this issue emerges as a context that invites us to have a better clarity regarding  many terms we use in our faith; words such as soul, sin, grace, heaven and hell, and even person itself. We can be comfortable (we often like to be) in the same way as we have been thinking for years, because it may have been the way traditionally passed on to us. We will have to shake a bit if we are to make a shift into a new understanding.

         Primarily we need to examine, not about whether they exist or not, but what we really mean by them. What we speak of, are supernatural things,and at the same time somehow related to human life and the world. We may be able to understand them better if we could know how in history these concepts have been gradually developing and assuming new meaning. We also need to understand the interpretative tools and the metaphors used in explaining the realities we attempt to express.

         Things that we cannot explain by mere materiality, are understood in the categories of forms. Similar understanding is applied when the concept of 'soul' is introduced to understand the living beings. When we consider about the status of the soul, it is important to ask what we really mean by soul. Intellect, memory, will…were qualities of soul, which face challenges from new researches in the fields of neuroscience. It may be wise from our part to wait for the studies progressing on consciousness rather than keeping us stuck to the philosophical concepts in the Greek/scholastic philosophy. Today, to understand comprehensively the human composition, especially the frailty of the human, we have many tools in psychology and physiology which may be truer than the understanding that the darkened state of the soul due to sin blinds the passions, intellect and will, and consequently remain closed towards grace. Or, rather, it is better to ask, what we mean by saying that the soul is darkened by sin. What happens actually?

         Grace is God’s life in us. Person receives and nourishes grace as one can be open before it. The concept of person became very much an isolated individual after the renaissance, and the vertical dimension of relationship owed responsibility for one’s life of grace. A healthy reception of grace and the presence of wounds that make us unable to receive the grace may be understood better if we realize a collective form of self. This self goes much beyond the concept of self being a mere product of a social construct. Sin remains as a state which calls our attention to our own depths where we need the grace of God. In that sense it can be 'original' (that state from which our powerlessness originate) too, rather than 'original' taking a chronological sense.

         What happens, then, if one receives grace? Since grace is the life of God, when one receives grace one also receives the life of God and begins to know the will of God. As long as one is not able to open up to the grace, or consciously rejects grace, cannot find life, and the absence of life brings that much of death in him/her. It is a life with God that we meant by heaven, and the absence of God’s life, hell. It is a possibility according to whether we accept or reject the possibility of receiving life.

         It is true that there has been an eschatological trend at many points of history emphasizing on end times, and heaven and hell. If we also notice the time when these apocalyptic language was used in religious instructions, we would realize that there have been some crisis moments, either in faith or in the very meaning of human life itself. So the attraction of heaven, and the fear of hell would provide some meaning to the choices given in a human condition (in a context of faith also). It also included a moral renewal whenever eschatological emphasis was brought.  It is wrong to take literally the images Dante, Milton, and a number of mystics and visionaries have given, as they were using their language and figures to convey a truth that they wanted to convey. Neither we conceive nor we are able to express supernatural realities without the aid of human language and symbols. So the 'realities' they speak of are symbolically narrated.

         Pope John Paul II announced that hell was “the ultimate consequence of sin itself … rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy”. Is it a state that we enter into only after death? At every life choice we have a choice for or against grace, for or against Christ. Death makes a definite point after which we are not able to make a choice. If we have begun our life of grace there is already heaven that we have entered into - the life, the presence of God. Perhaps there is state of hell too in us (that separated state) since we have not been completely filled by grace. Actually when Christ ‘bears’ or ‘taking away’ our ‘sins’ (I don’t know whether we can number them since it is to be understood a state, and one is related to the other) he is filling our life with grace wherever we are devoid of divine life. Since both possibilities are there to keep away from grace, consciously and due to inability, it necessitates the community dimension of the reception of grace. Others facilitates one to be open for grace. I would extend this community even to nature.

         What if hell is not there? It is not an ontological necessity that hell should be there, it is not even a logical necessity that without it our faith cannot stand. If we can have a clear understanding of God, grace and humankind we can explain anything in the gospel. But if hell is not there, is it leading to a lawlessness? Not at all! It further adds extra responsibility to build a filial relationship with God irrespective of the fear of punishment. That will check how important and valuable God/Christ is in our lives.

[The alleged report stated that the wicked ceases to exist once they die. This too, we can understand, but with a different anthropology. One who receives grace is also growing in one’s interconnected reality of self. One who denies grace cuts oneself off from the total reality, and that is only emptiness. We speak of eternal death and eternal darkness, similarly  we can imagine of the possibility of nothingness and emptiness.]

It is not a theological explanation, but an attempt to place it before questions in context. Still one question remains: can we not understand the message of the gospel without introducing ‘satan’ ?

Please have some extra reading to understand better the above:

J. Edward Wright The Early History of Heaven

Alister E. McGrath A Brief History of Heaven

Alice K. Turner The History of Hell

Jeffrey Reid Great Philosophers: A Brief History of the Self and Its World

John Barresi and Martin Raymond The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self : An Intellectual History of Personal

         Identity 

Jean Delumeau Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Centuries

Benedict XVI Spe Salvi   

Joseph Ratzinger Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life 

The same note is available in Malayalam നരകമില്ലെങ്കിൽ ..