Dialogue with Matthew F, prompted by the following comment I made to the video Does the Christian View of Hell Make Any Sense? w/ Fr. James Rooney on 1/25/2023
Without love, there's no heaven.
Without freedom there's no love.
Without the possibility of choosing to be separated from God for all eternity there's no freedom.
Hell is a necessary requirement for the viability of free will. Without hell there's no free will. Without free will there's no love. Without love there's no heaven.
Conclusion:
Without hell there's no heaven.
Line of dialogue with Matthew F
@Matthew F By writing what you wrote you're proving that you think you're free to write it and I am free to change my mind about me being free. Otherwise, you are a mindless machine, a bot that writes things without its own purpose in mind (which you cannot have, because you don't have a mind).
But you do have a mind. And you were free to give me a piece of it.
@Matthew F What do you think free will is?
@Matthew F I totally agree. That's an absurd proposition. Obviously, as a matter of fact, we CANNOT go back in time. How can that be defined as a capacity? All 'could have' 'would have' propositions are dealing with mere speculation, not with reality.
The right and the wrong way of viewing freedom
@Matthew F I agree. The classic concept of free will is the capacity of self-determination towards the end of nature (which, in the Christian view, the end or goal of human nature is infinite happiness that's only found in the loving union with the divinity for which we were made). Because the end of human nature must be realized in an act of love to our Creator, and love is self-giving, it is necessary for the human person to be granted the full possession of the self (only the owner can give something). That right of ownership over the self is freedom, whose purpose is to become a gift of love to our Creator (who not only gave us our selves as gifts, but He also became man and died to become himself a gift of love to us), which can only be achieved through obedience to His commands, the first of which is to love others.
This concept of freedom became distorted in the Enlightenment, shifting the emphasis from free will as an essential character of human nature to a right of the individual person. The doctrinaires of the French revolution definitely unhinged the concept of freedom from its telos. Instead of being a human faculty to enable the individual person to properly insert his incomplete individuality into the wider human community, it became an aimless faculty that allows the individual to do whatever it pleases, even to the point of ignoring its fundamental incompleteness as an integral member of a society. Instead of understanding the human nature as essentially social (a being made for relationship), they pit the individual against society, devising bizarre contractualist theories (see Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau) that see the life in society an any social commitment as a curtailment of the individual's freedom instead of understanding it as a fundamental necessity inherent to the shared human nature of each individual person.
That’s why in the Christian view, man is born with a sacred dignity (that of being made out of love and for love), but also with obligations. Freedom is an essential quality before being a right. And it is not a right without also being an obligation, an obligation to use that freedom in the right way. And the right way to use it is in commitments of love: love of our families, love of our neighbors, of our communities, of our nation, love of humanity. And this is not “feeling love.” Love is something very solid and concrete: a willingness to make sacrifices for the good of what we love. Willingness to sacrifice for our families, neighbors, communities, nation, and human race, which is willingness to make the necessary sacrifices to protect the dignity of every individual human being without distinctions whatsoever, because that dignity is borne of all having the same origin (everyone is created out of God’s pure love), and the same purpose—to be loved by God and love Him in return. Sacrifice is to give. Anything that belongs to us and we give it up for love—not for our immediate benefit, but for the good of those to whom we owe the duty of love, in the proper order of love (family first)—becomes an offering of love. Anything: time, money, possessions, even our life. As long as it is ours we can give it. And nobody can give it in our stead. Forced love is an act of theft. To take away in order to give is contrary to human nature, contrary to the common good. Freedom is ownership of the self, and everything that belongs to it, in order to give it of our own volition (which is the prerequisite for it to become an offering of love.)
The “enlightened” view that assigns freedom to the individual disconnected from its responsibility to society, is the view that disconnects freedom from its purpose, which is to love. Upon a superficial glance, this individualist centered view of freedom may seem to favor the individual, but it comes around to actually undermine its dignity and, therefore, to undermine its freedom. Why? Because it confuses freedom with autonomy. Autonomy is the alleged right of the individual to dictate its own norms of behavior, because the individual is viewed unhinged from its social context, even confronted with it. Instead of recognizing the human nature of the individual as essentially social, it negates the symbiotic relationship between individual and society by the fiction of a social contract into which the individual is given the power to enter, giving up part of his freedom. Instead of seeing life in the community as a realization of the individual’s freedom, society is viewed as a limitation of individual freedom (which is at the root of the typical American view of taxes as something that the state “takes away” instead of a willing cooperation with society). This distorted view of freedom leads to an unnatural placement of the individual outside of the society to which he must consent to be part of, as a concession. The Christian view is that the individual is as much part of the society as the society is part of the individual. There is no distinction between the individual and the social interests. Individual interests are social, and social interests are individual.
When the individual is disconnected from the social duties of love, it necessarily cuts him out from the source of that obligation (originated in a divine command), which is also the source of his dignity. And so, the same distorted view of freedom is at the root of extreme individualist/libertarian and extreme socialist conceptions of human nature. This distorted view of freedom is at the root of theories that privilege the individual’s autonomy to decide based on the naked self-interest with disregard towards social obligations (economic systems based on greed and irresponsible capitalism). But it is also at the root of socialist/communist theories that, because they disconnect the individual from its source of dignity, leave him isolated and defenseless before the oppression of the state.
So, no, I don’t subscribe to the current cultural understanding of freedom that gives rise to both libertarian savage capitalism and oppressive communism. And, in the end, that understanding of freedom becomes untenable, and it is no surprise that it is being severely questioned and undermined as if it was a fiction. And it is. I mean, that distorted view of freedom is indeed a fiction, because it disconnects human beings from their source and their social context. And, I’m afraid to say that it is the natural stance of an atheistic worldview that, by cutting the human being from its creator, it also cuts him from the rest of the creation, which recognizes its unity only in virtue of a common origin and source, and a common purpose and destination.