Happy while people are being tortured?

[lotharson]

This is a question which was just aked to professor Randal Rauser.

"

*Professor Rauser,

I enjoyed your interview greatly. Debbie raised a very interesting, probing question that, I think, you just didn’t have ample time to answer in depth granted the interview format: how can anyone really be happy in heaven knowing that others are suffering eternally in hell? Debbie referenced the even greater difficulty if, among those others in hell, are loved ones, especially close family members.

Quite frankly, I have no idea how heaven could possibly exist if an eternal hell exists. No matter how wonderful and glorious heaven might be, if at the same time others are suffering eternally in hell, then I would argue that no decent, kind, caring, moral person could ever be even remotely happy. Such knowledge of the suffering of others in hell would forever haunt them and transform heaven into hell itself.*

**
I agree that’s a real problem. I discuss it at some length in chapter 7 of my book “Faith Lacking Understanding”. I discuss it as well in chapter 19 of “What on Earth do we Know about Heaven?” and also in this short article:

[christianity.ca/pag..](http://www.christianity.ca/pag..).

My resolution is twofold. First, I reject eternal conscious torment in favor of annihilationism. Second, in chapter 20 of "What on Earth" I present a hopeful universalist position. Annihilationism (the belief that some will cease to exist after facing posthumous punitive punishment) combined with hopeful universalism (the hope that annihilationism turns out to be wrong such that all are saved) together offer a far more adequate alternative, in my view, than the classic view that the saints will rejoice in the suffering of the reprobate.**

"

What are your thoughts on that?

I agree that it is absurd to think one could be happy in heaven while knowing that billions of people are being tortured.

BUT I don’t see a real need to be a hopeful universalist like professor Rauser does.

At the risk of once again showing off my Germanic boldness, I could not care less if Hitler or Fred Phelps were to be utterly destroyed.
Please don’t interpret this as an insult or a personal attack.
I might be wrong but I think that I reflect the feeling of the overwhelming majority of human beings.

[Cindy_Skillman]

Could you care less if Hitler repented before he died (he had time – he knew it was coming) and is in heaven, while his unsaved victims were annihilated, not having had the opportunity at salvation that Hitler did? If we’re talking about Hitler, it’s easy to hate. What about Mahatma Gandhi? What about Anne Frank? What about your friend’s sweet little Hindu grandma who went to her grave practicing her ancestral religion? Is it as easy to hate these people and wish them annihilated?

[lotharson]

Hey Cindy.

“Could you care less if Hitler repented before he died (he had time – he knew it was coming) and is in heaven, while his unsaved victims were annihilated, not having had the opportunity at salvation that Hitler did? If we’re talking about Hitler, it’s easy to hate. What about Mahatma Gandhi? What about Anne Frank? What about your friend’s sweet little Hindu grandma who went to her grave practicing her ancestral religion? Is it as easy to hate these people and wish them annihilated?”

No, if Hitler had sincerely repented (both before and after the grave), he would have been saved.

I think and hope that after the emotional shock, most of his killed victims decided to be with God.

“What about Mahatma Gandhi? What about Anne Frank? What about your friend’s sweet little Hindu grandma who went to her grave practicing her ancestral religion? Is it as easy to hate these people and wish them annihilated?”"

Absolutely not, it would be monstruous. But if they do not desire at all to be with God, God cannot save them.
I expect many nice atheists dying as such to be in heaven.

[JasonPratt]

BUT I don’t see a real need to be a hopeful universalist like professor Rauser does.

I think his point, which he has muddled somewhat, is that those in heaven still could not be happy even knowing that ones they loved were annihilated out of existence: any finally hopelessly unrighteous situation is antithetical to final righteousness, especially if righteousness (per trinitarian theology) ultimately means fair-togetherness between persons.

Annihilation might benefit the survivors (because it is impossible for persons annihilated out of existence to improve the condition of their existence and so benefit) by the reassurance that those they love aren’t continuing to suffer; or if they have no love for the unrighteous (assuming that’s even possible for the righteous, which I would deny), by the reassurance that unrighteousness does not continue somewhere in God’s creation. But it still means that there has been a finally victorious unrighteousness over God, even if that was a (literally) pyhrric victory; or worse(??) that God authoritatively chose to enable and enact final unrighteousness. Any knowledge of that would necessarily grate against righteousness.

By the same proportion, that ought to be true now, too, even if the perception of conflict is muddied by various factors. And I think that’s what is happening here. Professor Rauser, aside from whatever other reasons he may think he has for hopeful universalism (scriptural and/or metaphysical), perceives that a righteous man ought to love his enemies or at the very least not hope for final unrighteousness, and so he finds a hope that annihilationism is false and universalism is true to be proper (despite what he must see as more solid evidence for annihilationism than universalism, scripturally and/or metaphysically. Otherwise he’d be primarily a hopeful universalist at least, and at most agnostic about whether anni was true.) I’ve seen other people, scholars and laity alike, go this route.

But then, if he perceives a hopeful universalism to be needed to blunt the sharp edge of grief of the righteous in this life over final unrighteousness, the same thing ought to be even more necessary in the next life to blunt the sharp edge of grief of the righteous.

If not, then he has logically confused something somewhere else in his system, and his need for a hopeful universalism in order for his annihilationism to be “a far more adequate alternative… than the classic view that the saints will rejoice in the suffering of the reprobate” (who are not really re-probate at all in any hopeless damnation scenario, by the way) must be based in nothing better than ignorance and maybe even in sin!

But if hopeful universalism is a far more adequate alternative to ECT or even to anni alone, based in proper knowledge and attitude and righteousness, there is no way to avoid that being even more true for the righteous after the resurrection when our proper knowledge and righteousness increases with fewer or no stumbling blocks to muddy our attitudes and understandings. And if that’s true, then hopeful universalism, the hope in God for the unrighteous to become righteous with the righteousness of God (apart from which there is no other righteousness as 1 John says), must continue for as long as righteousness continues.

But if that’s true, then annihilationism cannot be true, for the unrighteous persons must continue to exist for that hope to continue!

In conclusion: his appeal to hopeful universalism as a far more adequate alternative to annihilationism alone, can only lead to a conclusion that he has made a mistake elsewhere and anni is false; or else to the conclusion that he has made a mistake somewhere else and the hope for all sinners to come to the knowledge and righteousness of God is based at best only in ignorance and maybe even in unrighteousness.