Mothers Day - Questioning Eternal Hell

The Nature of Human Beings

I have often heard it said that when a mother gives birth to a child, her heart begins to live outside of her.  

The pain of the child from then on becomes the pain of the mother. The loss of the child becomes the loss of the mother. The distress of the child becomes the distress of the mother.  And this is also true of joy and happiness, the joy of the child becomes the joy of the mother and the happiness of the child becomes the happiness of the mother.  

(I do believe that this would also be true of fathers also. One has a sense of this in the story of the Prodigal Son.  The fathers happiness in the story is linked to the happiness of his two sons. When his younger son leaves home and squanders his wealth and his health on wild living, the father cannot rest. Day and night he remains vigilant, waiting for his lost son to come home.  His heart lives outside of himself as he waits longingly for his son to return home. And when the older son refuses to join in the party, again, the father cannot rest. He goes outside to his son to urge him to come in.  As long as the older son remains outside, a part of the heart of the father remains outside also.)

But there is also something significant about the bond between a mother and a child, in light of the fact that a child lives inside the mother for 9 months.  There is an emotional and a spiritual bond.  Indeed there is an energetic bond. 

One of my aunts experienced this bond in a very powerful way. Her daughter, my cousin was pregnant. At the time they were living on different continents. When my cousin went into labour, my aunt already knew, even before the phone had rung to tell her, because she had felt things in her own body that told her that her daughter had gone into labour. Newtonian science is unable to explain that and would pooh pooh it as wives tales, but in the framework of Quantum Physics where everything is connected to everything else at the level of energy, such an experience is in fact not so surprising.  Once to particles have been connected together at a quantum level what happens to one of them in one part of the universe affects the other immediately. If the one particle begins to turn in a different direction, the connected particle will simultaneously begin to turn in the same direction, even when separated by vast distances. 

Human beings are connected to one another in much deeper ways than we have been programmed to think by our materialist, Newtonian scientific world view. 

Over the past few weeks, we have been on a journey questioning the notion of Eternal Hell. 

One of the key arguments that David Bentley Hart uses against the notion of Eternal Hell is the nature of who we are as human beings –   

In the modern world, we have grown accustomed to thinking of ourselves as discrete individuals.  We have come to understand ourselves as completely separate beings. But David Bentley Hart suggests that this view of our humanity and our personhood is in fact not accurate. He writes that the nature of our humanity is in fact deeply inter-connected.  To be a person he says is to be in relationship.  Personhood consists of relationships. 

And Mother’s Day should give us the clue… a mother’s happiness and well-being is deeply connected to the well-being of her children.   And what is true of a mother should ultimately be true for each of us if we truly think about it. 


And it is precisely for this reason that David Bentley Hart believes that the notion of Eternal Hell is so questionable.  The doctrine of Eternal Hell suggests that it is possible for some to be ‘saved’ in the afterlife, and to live some kind of heavenly blissful existence, while there is the potential for their family members and friends, who are ‘not saved’ to live in eternal torment and eternal suffering.  

He suggests that this formula doesn’t in fact add up.  Would it be even possible for a mother to enjoy heavenly bliss while knowing that her child has been condemned to a life of eternal unending torment.  For any among us who are mothers, I wonder if that could even be conceivable?  If a mother’s heart lives outside of her (as indeed I believe would be true of most fathers too), could a mother ever be ‘saved’ to live a blissful life in heaven, if in the back of her mind she was even vaguely aware that her child had made a wrong choice and would forever more live in eternal torment.   This would surely be true, even if her son was a serial murder. Surely such  a mother’s happiness is ultimately dependent on on the complete reformation and salvation of her serial killer son, or she would never be able to experience eternal happiness herself? 

Some theologians who are believers in eternal hell and eternal damnation have tried to do some theological gymnastics to imagine how this might be possible. 

Some have suggested for example that God will cause the ‘saved’ to have the memory of their condemned loved one’s erased forever from their minds in a kind of spiritual lobotomy.  But David Bentley Hart asks what this would really mean?  Would a spiritual lobotomy of this kind not lead to a serious diminishing of the personhood of that mother?  If a mother’s identity is bound up in her relationship with her children, what would happen to the fullness of her personhood if the memory of a child she had given birth to were just deleted from her memory bank? 

This would not be an enhanced life for such a mother. It would surely be a seriously diminished life.  David Bentley Hart asks the question Is not the heavenly life meant to enhance our being and our happiness rather than diminishing it? 

Another way theologians have suggested coming to terms with the possibility of eternal hell is that those who are saved should have no sympathy for the damned simply because such pity is fruitless, just as it is forgivable to avert one’s eyes from a frightful accident on the roads from which one cannot rescue the victims, and to cease to think about it entirely. But David Bentley Hart invites us to ask:  Is this also not in fact a diminished state of people who are unable to feel the pain of others? 

Again, this is surely true even if we were to think of the example of a serial killer. While most of us may not feel sympathy for the suffering of a serial killer, it is surely true that the murderers brother, mother, father, sister, child, wife or friend must think of him and must suffer grief at the thought of what he has become and the end he has reached.  This means suggests David Bentley Hart that our indifference to his fate must also logically be an indifference to their sufferings as well. And when projected onto eternity this would amount to an eternity of indifference to the suffering of others. 

David Bentley Hart asks, Does not the state of hell consist of those who are incapable of showing or feeling sympathy or compassion towards other beings.  If in order to experience the bliss of heaven, the saved are no longer able to feel compassion for those suffering, have they not in so doing  become no different from those living in hell? 

And so David Bentley Hart writes ‘There is no way in which persons can be saved as persons, except in and with all other persons.’  He goes onto to suggest that ‘No soul is who or what it is in isolation; and so no soul’s sufferings can be ignored without the sufferings of potentially limitless number of souls being ignored as well. And so it seems, if we allow the possibility that even so much as a single soul might slip away into everlasting misery, the ethos of heaven turns out to be ‘every soul for itself’ – which is also curiously enough precisely the ethos of hell. 

While it might indeed lead us back into childish and simplistic anthropomorphisms, if the parable of the prodigal son is anything to go by, then God too would never be able to dwell in blissful happiness and contentment if even one of God’s creatures were to dwell in unending torment and suffering.  And on Mother’s Day we remember also the analogy used by the prophet Isaiah who compares God to a mother who is unable to forget the child of her breast: 

“Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, and walk away from the baby she bore? But even if a mother could forget, I would never forget you—never. Look, I’ve written your names on the palms of my hands.” Would it ever be possible for God, the source of all mother-hood, to abandon the children of Her creation to an eternity of suffering and torment? Surely this would not be possible even for God, or perhaps, especially for God? 

I end with a few passages of scripture that invite us to continue to think more deeply on these things

Matthew 18:11-14 – 12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”

1 Timothy 2:4 – “It is the will of God our Saviour that all people should be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

“But God would not take away a life; He would devise plans so that the one banished from Him does not remain banished.” 2 Sam. 14:14

“With God nothing is impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

“Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:8)