Hell’s Bells

Some links with infernal consequences

Nerprun (Octidi), 18 Fructidor, CCXXXIV

Some of you may know that, in a haze of THC (for pain therapy, not recreation), I recently lost my temper at an especially depraved defense of the idea of a hell of eternal torment floated by a young philosopher still damp and dripping from the waters of the Tiber. I am hostile to all defenses of the doctrine, of course, but with a variable degree of intensity depending on the quantity of moral disquiet on the part of the infernalist apologist. The tenderhearted “Free Will Defense” of the teaching is an abject failure considered logically, and it is younger (historically speaking) than television, but it demonstrates a degree of moral intelligence and sensitivity. The most loathsome defense of the teaching is that of someone like John Piper or other adherents of the Calvinist cult in its purest strains, but no less horrid—and psychologically more troubling—are the attempts of some to make the sufferings throughout eternity of the damned an expression of divine love.

Anyway, because that little contretemps, apart from gaining me a flood of new paid subscribers (who knew?), prompted several readers and casual commentators to ask me about TASBS, more or less requesting summaries of its arguments, which of course I am not going to supply in comment boxes or private exchanges, I thought I might provide links here to the four-part “Interim Report” that I published a few years back with Public Orthodoxy: here, here, here, and here. The report does not cover everything in the book, and covers nothing in sufficient detail, but it provides a roadmap.

Oh, and there’s this as well.