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Swinburne's Heaven: One Hell of a Place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael Levine
Michael Levine
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia, 6009
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Extract

Discussions of immortality have tended to focus on the nature of personal identity and, in a related way, the mind/body problem. (i) Who is that is going to survive, and (ii) is it possible to survive bodily destruction? There has been far less discussion of what immortality would be like; e.g. the nature of heaven. Richard Swinburne, however, has recently discussed ‘heaven’, and has constructed a novel theodicy fundamentally based on his conception of what heaven is like. I shall criticize both his conception of heaven – a conception he claims is consonant with the classical theistic one of Aquinas – and also his theodicy. I will argue that his theodicy reintroduces the problem of evil in connection with his idea of heaven – and does nothing to resolve it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 519 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 The only article that comes readily to mind is Bernard, Williams, ‘The Makropoulos Case’, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973),Google Scholar chapter 6.

2 Not all theistic traditions, and certainly not all theists, believe either in life after death or heaven. Classical Judaism, for instance, is relatively quiet on the subject as compared either to classical Christian theism or Islam.

3 Bertrand Russell, for example, has argued that Jesus's teaching on hell and damnation are morally flawed. Bertrand, Russell, ‘Why I am Not a Christian’, in Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975).Google Scholar

4 Richard, Swinburne, ‘A Theodicy of Heaven and Hell’, in Freddoso, Alfred J., (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 37–54.Google Scholar Page references in the text refer to this essay. Swinburne says, ‘those who espouse it [universal salvation] have not taken into account some important points about the nature of human happiness and human choice which support a more traditional doctrine’ (p. 39).

5 Cf. Swinburne's, Faith and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981),Google Scholar chapter 5. For a recent account of concepts of heaven see Bernhard, Lang and Colleen, McDannell, Heaven: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Bernard, Williams, ‘The Makropoulos Case’, in Problems of the Self,Google Scholar chapter 6. Referring to Williams, Swinburne says ‘A man who has molded his desires so as to seek only the good and its continuation would not, given the Christian doctrine of God, be bored in eternity’ (p. 43). ‘… those whom he [Williams] pictures as necessarily bored in eternity seem to me persons of limited idealism’ (p. 53, n. 11).

7 Paul, Taylor, Principles of Ethics (Encino, CA.: Dickenson, 1975), p. 132.Google Scholar Taylor goes on to explain the connection between an essentialist conception of happiness (which Christianity also has) and an essentialist conception of man.

According to the essentialist conception of happiness, a truly happy life is identified with the Good Life for Man … Happiness (eudaimonia, well-being) is the kind of life that is suitable or fitting for a human being to live, and a human being is one who exemplifies the essential nature (or essence of) man. Thus happiness is not to be identified with any kind of life a person might actually want to live. Instead it characterises the kind of life we all would want to live if we understood our true nature as human beings. Happiness, then, may be defined as that state of the ‘soul’ or condition of life which all human beings, insofar as they are human, ultimately aim at (Taylor, p. 132).

8 Cf. Paul, Taylor, Principles of Ethics, p. 133.Google Scholar Taylor says, When this [essentialist] conception of happiness is used as the standard of intrinsic value, the standard becomes identical with the essentialist's standard of human perfection or virtue. What determines the intrinsic goodness of a person's life is the realisation of an ideal; in living a truly human life, the person is realising the good for man as man. Not everyone fulfils this standard to the same degree, but to the extent that a person does, his life takes on a worth, a perfection, that gives it value in itself, independently of any consequences it might have in the lives of others.

9 Swinburne continues, What are the most worthwhile actions, the most worthwhile tasks to pursue? I suggest that they are developing our understanding of the world and beautifying it. Developing our friendship with others, and helping others towards a deeply happy life. And what are the most worthwhile situations? The having of pleasurable sensations is desirable, but they are better for coming from the doing of worthwhile actions. People want the sensations of sexual pleasure through the development of a personal relationship, not by themselves … And a worthwhile situation will be one in which the good triumphs in the world, and one's own contribution toward this is recognized (p. 41).

10 It is better that we ‘make our souls’ and freely choose to relate to God, even if this involves the occurrence of evil, than it is to have God create us in such a way that we can do no evil. For a defence of the ‘vale of soul-making’ theodicy see John, Hick, ‘Soul-Making and Suffering’, in Adams, R. and Adams, M. (eds.), The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 168–88.Google Scholar

11 Swinburne refers to the parable of Dives and Lazarus. “Dives, in hell, asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers to change their life-style lest they go to hell. He says to Abraham, ‘If someone goes to them from the dead, the will repent.’ But Abraham replies; ‘If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rises from the dead’” (Luke 16: 29f) (p. 54, n. 21). I can imagine cases in which one might respond to the latter but not the former. If so, what was Abraham's point?