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The Scourge Of Love (Ecstatic Contemplation)
The whole debate around hell is extremely backwards. Let me put it this way: we are ALL in danger of hell—because we are all being loved without escape.
St. Isaac the Syrian speaks without hesitation: “Those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love.” (Ascetical Homily 84)The fire of hell is not something God becomes. It is what God already is—a fire of Love. “All will be tried by this fire,” not because God is wrathful, but because Love is reality and desires our eternal good, no matter the cost to our perverted and distorted will. Reality does not leave illusion intact. It is the same Love that is joy eternal and unshadowed delight that is experienced as torment by the soul that clings to distortion— not because love is vengeful, but because resistance to Reality Himself hurts like hell. Indeed, if observed rightly, we are all tormented even now by this Love every day. Tormented into reality, learning to walk on the real grass; it may hurt at first, but the further up and the further in we go, the more real we become. (The Great Divorce)
C.S. Lewis renders this with quiet precision in The Great Divorce: “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.” And again: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’” Heaven and hell are not rival realms, but rival responses to the same unchanging Reality. Lewis presses it further: “To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth.” Which means hell is not humanity intensified, but humanity refused—a refusal to become real. So the fire is not opposite of mercy. The fire IS mercy— experienced differently.
And no soul that seriously desires joy will ever miss it. The only real question is whether we want a joy so intense that He rips us from our distortions. And in the dawn of eternity, no soul is deprived of joy, for the love of God is without end. But it is true the will that resists is chastened by that love, tried and purified and restored to the joy for which it was made.
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By Benjamin DunnThe whole debate around hell is extremely backwards. Let me put it this way: we are ALL in danger of hell—because we are all being loved without escape.
St. Isaac the Syrian speaks without hesitation: “Those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love.” (Ascetical Homily 84)The fire of hell is not something God becomes. It is what God already is—a fire of Love. “All will be tried by this fire,” not because God is wrathful, but because Love is reality and desires our eternal good, no matter the cost to our perverted and distorted will. Reality does not leave illusion intact. It is the same Love that is joy eternal and unshadowed delight that is experienced as torment by the soul that clings to distortion— not because love is vengeful, but because resistance to Reality Himself hurts like hell. Indeed, if observed rightly, we are all tormented even now by this Love every day. Tormented into reality, learning to walk on the real grass; it may hurt at first, but the further up and the further in we go, the more real we become. (The Great Divorce)
C.S. Lewis renders this with quiet precision in The Great Divorce: “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.” And again: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’” Heaven and hell are not rival realms, but rival responses to the same unchanging Reality. Lewis presses it further: “To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth.” Which means hell is not humanity intensified, but humanity refused—a refusal to become real. So the fire is not opposite of mercy. The fire IS mercy— experienced differently.
And no soul that seriously desires joy will ever miss it. The only real question is whether we want a joy so intense that He rips us from our distortions. And in the dawn of eternity, no soul is deprived of joy, for the love of God is without end. But it is true the will that resists is chastened by that love, tried and purified and restored to the joy for which it was made.