The Ice-olation of Hell

The dreadfulness of hell is a reality we do not accurately conceive because, to our corporeal-focused minds, the nature of the sufferings there- or, more precisely the nature of the suffering there- does not appear physically harsh at all. Certainly, the threat of demon and flame will make even modern man shutter; but even these physical torments do not approach sufficiently close to the substance of hellish pain. In The Brothers Karamazov, Father Zosima describes hell as "the suffering of no longer being able to love."[1] I think this description identifies the core of that dreadful place and tormented state.

Nevertheless, do we still not hear the echoes of fallen man sigh with relief and try to convince us: "Well, if that is the worst of it, that is not so bad." What ignorance of man's inherent nature is displayed in this pervasive temptation!

The original nature of man is patterned off the reality of the God who made him; and this God is, in His substance, a unity of persons. Conveyed in the very essence of the Godhead is a multiplicity of Persons in eternal union with each other. St. John the Evangelist alludes to this most holy of realities by simply stating: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8). But love must be shared, it can never be stored up selfishly within oneself. Therefore, it is not sufficient for God to be merely one without distinction, as all other monotheistic religions claim He is, for that would mean something else defines the Divine One besides love. For the Jew or Muslim, oneness and simplicity suffice for essential attributes of God for in their theologies there can be no question of love as essentially applying to God, for there is no other within Himself to love. But if it is love that is at God's very essence, as St. John teaches us, then in the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity we find the very nature of God.

Thus, man, who is made in the image of God, is ordered to a like union with the other- not within himself as in God- but outside himself as in communion with fellow beings. He is created for the other and must continually look to the other to share himself with. Even in his biology, he is only brought into this world through the union of two people; likewise, he can bring forth new life in this world only through uniting to another individual. Man is by his very nature never meant to fade into the solipsistic oblivion of his own independence.

How unfortunate then was Sartre when he envisioned hell as other people,[2] for- in the design of God- we find the exact opposite: in others man finds life, hope, and happiness- in others man finds heaven. There is no room for the isolation wrought by man's loneliness within the system God designed. Love is the very reason and cause of man's existence, and so it must be the reason and cause of his own salvation. If he is no longer able to love- as Father Zosima identifies as the very condition of hell- then man enters the greatest torment conceivable.

The means through which love is given in this world is sacrifice- the offering of oneself for the sake of the beloved. Therefore, when man dies, the time to offer his sacrifice is finished and no more opportunities lie ahead of him for that sacrifice to be made. Whatever he has done will go with him for good or for ill. The time for him to choose between living according to his nature or living against it has ended. If he loved, that love (which now defines him into eternity) can only grow. However, if he failed to love, he will then enter into that place where love can no longer reach, for he has shut himself up in isolation.[3] He has not, and does not love, hence, hell has not begun for him, but has merely continued in his willful denial of God’s plan for him.

If, as he lived his life, a man chose not to love and, as a result, found no enjoyment in love, then what value can be placed on any yearning he might have for heaven if heaven is where the love of God reigns supreme? If one desires to live against his nature, it is not anybody else’s place to force him to change. No good, no happiness, no love could come from such compulsion. In Paradise Lost, Milton places on the lips Lucifer this thought-provoking sentiment that expresses Satan’s utter distaste for heaven: "How wearisome eternity so spent in worship paid to Him whom we hate."[4] As if echoing the thought of his fellow Englishman, St. John Henry Newman would preach something similar in the 19^th century: "Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man."[5] Perhaps we could even turn Newman's phrase on its head and say: for the irreligious man, hell would be heaven- whether an irreligious one will enjoy his heaven though is another question.

Therefore, the doctrine of hell is only comprehensible alongside the doctrine of man's free will. If man's fundamental essence is ordered for love and he chooses not to love, heaven would not be a happy place for him. God does not force Himself nor others upon us. Love necessitates but one condition: freedom. If freedom is real, alongside the ability to choose to love God, so too is the ability to reject Him as well. Heaven is for the former, hell is for the latter- but freedom is in both. Even the atheist Albert Camus seems to echo this when he wrote: "Preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part."[6] A radical sort of freedom is provided for us to make the drama of our existence into either a heavenly comedy or a hellish tragedy.

One of the clearest implications of the reality of hell our Lord makes occurs in Matthews's account of the Last Supper (c.f. Mt 26:20-25): "The Son of man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." Better for a man never to have been born? Does such a dark reality really exist? Yet, to show us that it is difficult for one to unknowingly stumble into such a state, the Holy Spirit compelled Judas to ask a question he already knew the answer to: "Is it I, Master?" And to this question was our Lord's loaded reply: "You have said so."

So too will we ask the Lord at our own judgement: Am I also such a man that it would have been better not to have been born? And will we not also receive the same answer as Judas did: "You have said so." For we have said it by the corporal works of mercy we have or have not shown, we have said it by the spiritual works of mercy we have or have not done, we have said it by the love we had or not had for others. But, most especially, we have said it by the trust that we have placed in Christ Jesus or the trust we have placed in ourselves.

I think Dante provides the most illuminating literary image of hell in The Divine Comedy when he describes it as a place progressively getting colder and colder as one approaches its center; and at its center is where one eventually find Satan himself- fixed in an ice cube.[7] For cold seems to express the isolation of willful hate (which is where a choice not to love will eventually lead) and it is fitting that this would be at the heart of hell. Conversely, the tradition in eastern icons that depict the face of Christ aglow in red better describes what happens in the center of heaven where the fire of the love of God burns bright, the fire that will set aflame the man who chooses to love.

For there is a certain vibrancy and active vitality to fire that ice cannot comprehend except by passively melting in its presence. This is why there cannot be any ‘ice’-olation in heaven; it can only exist in Hell where the damned are assured, out of respect for their freedom, that the temperature will never rise.

[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1979), 247.

[2] c.f. Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York, NY: Random House, 1949), 47.

[3] c.f. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 301.

[4] John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975), 39.

[5] As quoted by Jerry L. Walls in Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5.

[6] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1983), 83.

[7] c.f. The Divine Comedy, Canto 34.