On Righteousness and the Fate of the Soul

What do we mean when we speak of "righteousness"? First we must say that "righteousness" means something like action in accordance with divine command. But once we probe deeper, we will find that opinion on how precisely to articulate the relation of righteousness to God's commands divides into two sorts.

On the first, when we wish to explain what we mean by "righteousness", the primary explanatory entity is God and His will. We begin with that, and explain righteousness in terms of it. What does this mean? God does not command a thing because it is righteous. Rather he commands a thing and then it thereby becomes righteous. (This, presumably, is not the "and then" of temporal succession. Rather it is the "and then" of explanatory inference.) Thus on this opinion, God is not constrained in His choice of what to make righteous. Rather that choice is perfectly free, or as is sometimes said, it is arbitrary. In sum: on the first opinion, righteousness is, at bottom, conformity of action to arbitrary divine command.

On the second, the primary explanatory entity is humans and their welfare. We first articulate that in which their welfare consists, and then we explain righteousness in terms of it. How is this done? We assume that God wishes us to live well. Indeed we assume that when he commands us to do a thing, he does so because he knows that, if we follow the command, we thereby become more likely to live well. Thus on this opinion, God's choice of what to make righteous is not free. Indeed it is constrained by his knowledge of that in which our welfare consists conjoined to his desire that we live well. Note that this does not imply that God's commands are absolutely necessary. God was of course free not to create us. But once he did, he was no longer free in his choice of what to make righteous for us. For in the very act of our creation, our welfare was thereby defined. (Indeed one might say that the idea of Homo sapiens - an idea that God perfectly grasped before he created us - already contains within it a definition of human welfare. Thus the definition of human welfare is at it were "there" before Homo sapiens was created.)

One might reasonably conclude from Matthew that Christ's opinion was of the second sort. He tells us that the law is for us and not we for the law. What can this mean except that God commanded as he did so that, if we but follow his commands, we will do better than we would have done otherwise? Christ subordinates the commands of God to human welfare, and he pleads with us not to reverse the proper order of the two.

Note that, on the second opinion, human welfare need not be defined in independence of God. Rather it's entirely possible that human welfare in some way involves God. Perhaps humans live well only if they love, and are loved by, God. But this does not require that we alter the relation of explanatory precedence between human welfare and God's commands. God commands as he does so that we might live well, though he perhaps commands us to love him.

(One cannot defend a third sort of view on which righteousness concerns not human but rather divine welfare. God's welfare does not wait upon his choices. Rather it is already in place, perfect, before any choice that he makes. God is of necessity complete in himself, and nothing that anyone can do - not even God - can make him any better off. Nor can one defend a third sort of view on which God commands as he does simply because it is right. For then we must ask what is the relation of God's commands to the right. If we say in response that the right is the right because God commands it, we are back to the first of our opinions above. If on the contrary we say in response that God commands what he does because it is right, then we are forced to inquire into the nature of the right, in particular of the right for human beings. What are we to say here expect that, if the right for human beings is not to be defined in terms of God's commands, it is to be defined in terms of human welfare? But once that is said, we are back to the second of the two opinions above.)

Let us now consider the relation of these two views of righteousness to the fate of the soul. On the first opinion of the relation of righteousness to God's commands, eternal retribution for human sin makes at least prima facie sense. On the first, God's commands are prior to righteousness and serve to define it. Thus they would seem to define as well what the retribution for disobedience must be. Perhaps the severity of the retribution must, as it were, match the distance between the perfection of God and the imperfection of the sin, and thus sin might perhaps merit eternal retribution. But on the second opinion of the relation of righteousness to God's commands, eternal retribution for human sin makes no sense at all. To punish eternally diminishes human welfare. Indeed it diminishes it to an infinite degree. Thus to suppose both that God commands as he does so as to maximize human welfare and yet that God punishes eternally those who break his commands seems a flat contradiction.

Conclusion. If one thinks sinners are punished eternally, one must think that the righteous is made righteous by God's arbitrary commands. But if one thinks that God commands as he does so as to maximize human welfare, one must also reject that doctrine of hell on which sinners are cast there to suffer eternally.