Many people wonder why the God who is infinite love would sentence someone to an eternity of fiery punishment. Consequently, many entertain the idea that God would never do such a thing. Then, they conclude that God will either eventually bring those who are in Hell into Heaven (universalism) or that He will annihilate their souls (annihilationism), thereby bringing an end to their suffering. This article will show why both conclusions are wrong.
The Catechism on Hell
Like any good parent, God tells His children about the punishments that await us if we do not cease our evil actions and do what is right. Scripture verses about Hell serve as a warning to reject all evil. They are calls to conversion. The Catechism states,
The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of Hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: ‘Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few’ (CCC 1036).
Bible Verses On Hell
The Bible tells us a lot about Hell’s eternal nature and the eternal punishment that Hell’s inhabitants will experience.
Matthew 25 describes the punishment of Hell as eternal in two places. First, when Jesus describes the final judgement, He commands those at His left hand (“the goats”) to enter the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And we know from Revelation 20:10 that Hell will torment the devil and his angels “day and night forever and ever.”
Regarding those who worship the devil, Revelation 14:11 adds that the smoke of their torment will rise “forever and ever” and that they will have no rest “day or night.” Second, Matthew 25:46 states, “And [the unrepentant sinners] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Luke 3:17 tells us that sinners will burn with “unquenchable fire.” Jude 1:7 states that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah undergo a punishment of eternal fire.
The prophet Isaiah warns us about the eternal nature of Hell, writing, “And [the just] shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against Me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched…” (Isaiah 66:24). And Jesus echoes this in Mark 9:47-48, saying, “…it is better to enter the kingdom with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
“Destruction” In Hell
The above Catechism paragraph quotes Matthew 7:13, which states, “…for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction….” The word “destruction” might cause one to think that God annihilates the soul in Hell. However, given the Bible verses above and the spiritual nature of our souls, we should understand that destruction means ruination rather than annihilation.
For example, if I totaled my car in an accident, I would correctly conclude that the accident destroyed my car. This is because the accident ruined it rather than annihilated it. The car continues to exist, but it no longer functions at all as it should.
Similarly, those in Hell destroyed/ruined their own souls when they chose not to repent of their sins. By choosing Hell, they chose an eternal state of ruination, which includes the eternal state of never functioning as God made them to function. They also chose the misery that follows their decisions.
Not only do the above Bible verses support the fact of eternal ruination in Hell, but common sense tells us the same thing. First, God made us in His eternal image and likeness, and He does not cease to exist. Therefore, we will not cease to exist. He also made us for eternal happiness. Therefore, our permanent rejection of eternal happiness leads to our permanent embracing of eternal misery.
Second, God’s threat of Hell would lose its impact if He simply meant annihilation. Imagine God telling us that if we die in a state of sin that we would simply cease to exist. Most people, if not all, would not fear this threat. But, the threat of eternal pain and misery is fearful even if many people would rather ignore it for sin’s sake.
Freewill and Eternal Happiness
God designs us to reflect His goodness and freewill. Therefore, He gives each of us a will that is free to seek that which makes us truly happy, namely, Himself and eternity with Him. However, we abuse our freewill when we choose to sin. And, when we choose to sin, we choose to reject God, the eternal source and ultimate end of our happiness.
By committing mortal sin, we choose to embrace eternal misery. If we repent, God will forgive us. If we choose to reject God’s forgiveness unto bodily death, then we choose to embrace eternal misery. This eternal misery is Hell, and one cannot leave Hell once one confines himself to it.
Why Those in Hell Cannot Leave
Grace is God’s favor, and it is necessary for eternal life. When people die without grace, they choose to eternally reject both God and His grace. In Hell, people cannot desire sanctifying grace because God does not give them the actual grace to do so due to their persistence in rejecting all grace at the moment of death.
Since those in Hell reject friendship with God, and the purpose of actual grace is to help us to obtain and maintain this friendship, then those in Hell cannot have and do not want actual grace.
Jesus warns us about this very problem in the parable of the ten maidens. Here, five maidens did not have sanctifying grace at the time of the Lord’s visitation, which is why He says, “I do not know you.” They petitioned the other maidens for grace rather than pursuing the grace God wanted to give them according to His law of humble submission.
Then, Jesus warns his disciples, “Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” In other words, make yourselves known to God by seizing upon the grace He is trying to give you.
Additionally, those in Hell cannot desire to leave Hell because such a desire could proceed only from grace to be with God. This is because Heaven and Hell are the only two final destinations. If one in Hell desires to leave, he would implicitly desire Heaven because it is the only alternative. Since their desire to be with God can only proceed from grace, and they reject grace, then they will never have the desire to leave Hell and live with God.
So, by their sinful actions on earth, through which they permanently reject grace, they prefer the punishments of Hell over heavenly respite, a good that God made them to have. By rejecting grace, they reject God’s rest.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
The rich man in the parable about the poor man named Lazarus illustrates this very point. In this parable, the rich man is in Hell and the poor man is in Abraham’s Bosom. The rich man desires some water to “cool his tongue,” the very tongue that refused to repent. Did he turn to God and repent? No, he did not. Rather, he turned to Abraham instead because he sealed his own fate by rejecting the only One who could help him.
After Abraham rebuffs his request, Abraham then tells the man that a “great chasm has been fixed” between those in his Bosom and those in Hell (Luke 16:19-31). Consequently, the rich man will never leave his eternal residence. The absence of grace is the great chasm that “has been fixed.” For more on a graceless Hell, please read Revelation 21:8 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9.
Total Corruption of the Soul and Annihilation
Furthermore, by rejecting God, those in Hell also reject His mercies (see Isaiah 59:2). Therefore, God will not give them the mercy of annihilation. Those in Hell do not want God to destroy them. In fact, they desire Hell, not because it makes them happy, but because they eternally rejected Him who could have alleviated their pain before departing this life. Their misery doesn’t make them happy. They are just so corrupt that they cannot desire anything else. Regarding this hardening of hearts, St. Paul writes,
But by your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous will be revealed. For He will render to every man according to his works: …for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.
A hardened heart is one that rejects Him who can soften it. And everyone in Hell has a hardened heart because they rejected God’s grace and mercy.
Further, the souls in Hell do not desire existence, since existence is good. But they do not desire nonexistence either, since that would require the mercy that leads to an end of punishment. Instead, they desire precisely what they have chosen, Hell and its associated punishments.
In other words, they have so hardened their hearts with pride that they prefer eternal punishment rather than asking God for His mercy. St. John describes those who love evil (John 3:19-20). He writes,
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed.
Those who die in this state prefer darkness and reject the Light who can heal them.
We all know people who would rather justify their evil actions with endless arguments rather than ask the one they offend for forgiveness. They hate to admit that they are wrong and to ask for mercy. They are so prideful that they would rather shift blame to the victim or to someone else.
A False Hope
Some people erroneously believe that God will bring everyone in Hell into Heaven at the end of the age. However, if God did this, He would be forcing these people into Heaven, thereby destroying their freewill. He would effectively ruin them as an image of Himself who is free will.
In this life, God can give actual grace to sinners without destroying our free will because we are free to accept or reject His help. However, Hell is the place of completely hardened hearts, a place in which all residents have rejected all grace.
Further, if God forced people into Heaven, this would mean that either He does not make us in His image and likeness, or that He makes us in His image and likeness and that something or someone is forcing Him. Both conclusions are erroneous and heretical.
The Solution
The solution is simple – turn to Christ, including all His teachings, and trust in Him. During this Advent season, we should understand that God reveals the reality of Hell to us because He wants us to choose the eternal happiness for which He makes us. We should not look at Hell as something to fear but as a call to conversion in preparation for the Second Advent.
Jesus tells us in His parable about the sheep and the goats whom He will separate according to their works. Those who do the works that proceed from grace will enter Heaven, but those who do not will enter Hell. “And [the unrepentant sinners] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:31-46). By way of contrasting good and evil works, Jesus gives us the way to escape Hell: Imitate Him!
Additional Reading
Regarding sanctifying and actual graces, please click here. For more on how grace improves our free will, please click here. For an article on meriting grace, please click here. To better understand the difference between mortal and venial sin, please click here.
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22 thoughts on “Why Those in Hell Can Never Leave”
Grace is ordered too good. Grace is like an allowance, a trust. God gives more to those (Matt: 25) who will produce good fruits for the coming kingdom. Everyone on earth can receive grace or be denied it according to their spiritual disposition. On the transmigration: In the future I will use this saved doc. because I am tired of reiterating. Parents partake in co-creation for one reason – life is its own reward, ergo: death is of NO concern which begs a very important question – if any kind of death Is of no concern, where they could lose their immortal soul, then you’d have to be the world’s biggest hypocrite to say that life is worth it once but NEVER again. Eastern deism’s trans migration doctrine is not going anywhere, anytime. The CC has run up against a truth that it is too proud to understand or incorporate. These ten-gospel chapter/verses too easily support the premise: Matt 10:39, Mk 9:45 and 13:30, Lk 12:59, 17:33 and 20:36, Jn 8:23, 8:51, 9:1 and 21:22. Now, let’s let our egos rest.
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How then do you explain Hebrews 9:27: “Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment . . .”?
Gene and company will die once. Gene’s soul, which acquired all the lessons, grace, good deeds, and practiced works of spiritual (certainly) and corporeal mercies is a well-honed tool that belongs to God. Gene and company left this body with some unfinished business, regrets, potential, longings and more. These failings yearn for resolution. Somewhere in the future God will use this very useful, utterly unique tool for the purpose of intersecting with another kindred soul dressed in a body perfectly suited to bring about the kind of change needed to better the coming kingdom. When Francis said ‘Hell is not what the gospels are about’ he meant that divine justice carries with it a body suited to receive the specific lessons needed for absolution should that soul be lucky enough to be born into a family that will nurture a spark of faith. When the apostles asked Jesus about the man born blind whose sin it was, he in no way denounced the concept but replied neutrally. “This man (singular pronoun) was born to show the glory of God. Anyway, it’s just one way of looking at scriptures that skewer our ‘takes’ and I and the Hindu’s
could all be way off course – but I’ll take that chance in this realm while coveting the faith I received, thanks be to God.
Jesus made it pretty clear, when He told the parable of Lazarus and the blind man (Luke 16:19-31), that there are no second chances.
And furthermore, to CLOSE OUT this moot exchange, one can accumulate only so much ‘treasure in heaven’ which is your ‘reward’ Once you use up those credits in a paradise type ‘mansion’ it’s back to work … out your perfection. Of course, some of the many called, make it to the spiritual realm, most don’t. and that’s why earth’s population keeps increasing.
I’m disappointed. I wanted to know happens to all the left over bodies after the Second Coming, when our soul (singular) is reunited with our body, which, according to you, is actually multiple bodies.
Your thought about those in hell neither desiring existence or nonexistence bc it is impossible to desire when desire depends on grace, and they have rejected grace, omits a logical term that I am not sure has been proved to not obtain here: the word “all” in modifying grace. In a word: why must we believe that those in hell have rejected all grace? Certainly in their lives, I am sure, most people accept some grace. And at death, it is not necessary to reject all grace when refusing to repent of our sins, is it? Certainly the dying in many cases accept many graces – but not necessarily the grace of repentance from their sins.
Thus it seems to me it is possible that those in hell still could desire the grace to exist or to not exist.
What prompted my thought was the question: “do people in hell give thanks for their existence?” I think sometimes they may. For it is still a good to exist. Even if their suffering is eternal. Even though their suffering will not end, that does not mean they suffer at every moment of time throughout eternity with equal pain and suffering. Pain will be different depending on the sinfulness, I think. And even in hell there is no reason why God could not, if He choose, grant souls a temporary respite now and then.
Just my thoughts and if you can definitively prove me wrong I am open to your argument.
I think Trump would pardon the mass majority with Dems being on eternal parole.
Ha! If all Trump would give them is parole, then he would let them off lightly.
Yan, I appreciate your comment, and it is a logical one as far as its structure goes. However, i have a question for you: Toward what ultimate end is grace always ordered?
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I’ve had conversations recently with fellow Catholics and in almost all cases there’s this UNIVERSALIST mentality that ‘most if not all people go to Heaven’ which I find mind boggling from other Catholics. Truly, they do not really know the faith at all.
When I press them on why Jesus HIMSELF warns us over and over again about the possibility of eternal damnation AND even tells us directly such as in the Narrow Road verses and how MANY TAKE THE ROAD TO DESTRUCTION….exactly what is unclear about these verses and WHERE do they get the idea that GOD eventually brings everyone to Heaven? That would be not only against our Free will but cruel to think that GOD permitted some people to suffer terribly in this world for no reason other than to skip some ‘temporary hell’–makes no sense.
We are to listen and take heed from Christ Himself and STRIVE for Holiness every day….no exceptions!! And we are to accept that many people will prefer darkness over light and turn from GOD as they did when HE walked the earth. As you wrote…there are ONLY TWO CHOICES and if you choose to ignore Our Lord, prefer sinful lives, and turn down His freely offered Grace then there is only one option for Eternity for YOU…..HELL.
Amen, IF! Thank you for your comment!
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My point of view: If the souls in Hell entered Heaven, then Heaven would not be Heaven for long.
Ha!! Exactly. Thanks, Richard!
some thoughts
God is free will? have you never heard of divine simplicity? there is no before and after in God, so where is this deliberative will in The One Who Is. He is One Thing eternally, and He has already demonstrated what His will is, see Timothy. His will is that all are saved.
let’s say for the sake of this conversation that you Mr Guyear, are the one damned. this is what that means. At the same time that God said yes to Nate Guyear’s existence, God also existed in that future moment when you were damned to hell. God exists in both moments simultaneously. Now, since God FREELY created you, God accepts your end, which in this illustration is damnation, FROM THE VERY FIRST MOMENT OF YOUR EXISTENCE. Thus damnation, is the meaning of your beginning, so any soul who is damned was essentially created to be damned. You good with that? you good with a God who made you for hell. Sorry, but that’s moloch.
You are making an idol of free will. Freedom is the freedom to be who we were made to be according to our natural end. Freedom is not the ability to choose between a bunch of options. To choose against God is not an exercise in freedom, but an exercise in madness; it is irrational, and the irrational person IS NOT FREE.
Furthermore, choice is not what makes love love. I don’t choose to love my kids, that doesn’t denigrate the love between a parent and child. in fact a parent who doesn’t love their child isn’t seen as free; they are seen as mentally ill, so why this need to say that we must CHOOSE God in order for it to be real love. Nonsense. My 6 kids love me without choice, does that mean their love isn’t real? of course not.
You say the following: However, if God did this, He would be forcing these people into Heaven, thereby destroying their freewill.
have you never read Philippians? Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. What happen to God’s absolute and total protection of this sacrosanct free will.
Finally, As in Adam all men die, so also in Christ shall ALL be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). Mathew 25 says what it says, but if the Church Fathers are right, the goat and sheep are in each of us and so it is right that the old man nature, the goat if you will, be destroyed eternally. See, i get to have both verses as true, but you don’t. according to your understanding of reality, 1 Corinthians must be explained away so that it can’t mean what it plainly says.
Hello, Mishkin! I’m sorry for the long delay in responding to your comment. Please forgive me.
I will look at three of your comments, your best three. Taking your last comment on Corinthians first, I indeed get to have both verses, but you certainly do not. Here’s why. “For as IN ADAM, all die, so also IN CHRIST shall all be made alive.” This verse simply means that all those who refuse to turn to Christ, and therefore remain in Adam, will die. And all those who turn to Christ and remain in Him will be made alive. That’s it. It’s super simple. Your poor interpretation is based on a problem that St. Peter points out: The ignorant and unstable twist Scripture to their own destruction.
Regarding divine simplicity, God has one will, and from this one will, God wills both that all men be saved and that men be free to choose Hell. God certainly wills that all men be saved, and He gives us the grace to choose this. But His grace does not override our freedom, freedom that comes from being made in His image and likeness. If grace overrides our freedom, then God forces us to do His will, and grace becomes a figment. This turns God into a divine dictator rather than a loving Father. So, you have misunderstood what divine simplicity is, and you have created a false god in the process.
Regarding the statement in your second paragraph, “Thus damnation, is the meaning of your beginning, so any soul who is damned was essentially created to be damned,” it smacks of immature reasoning. Just because God knows my end does not mean that He created me for it. It simply means that I chose it and that He will give me what He knew I would choose. Again, very simple.
You try to explain away an eternal Hell, but you create an unjust god in the process. I suggest you read the entire Bible and come to the realization that those in Hell will never leave. If you reject this truth, you make yourself a child of Hell. Thus, your denial of Hell is the very thing that will send you there.
May God help you.
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Nate, you really need to take the high road and stop saying ‘never’. Give yourself some space for error. It’s quite obvious here that the worm (death) ‘dying not’, represents reincarnation. Souls can transmigrate a million times before they leave a mortal body and move on to other planes of existence. And yes, some may never break that Buddhist/Hindu cycle called the wheel of life-sin-death. Anyway, Merry Christmas, and it’s always a pleasure sparring and agreeing with you too.
Hey, OP! I’m sorry for the long delay in responding to your comment. Please forgive me.
Regarding your comment, you will need to prove that “dying not” represents reincarnation. Also, please give me your best argument for transmigration of souls, and please make it pithy. Thank you!
Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! God bless!
just saw your challenge and will work on pithy