that people in hell could have an opportunity to learn and grow spiritually and
be admitted eventually into heaven?
In this issue, the Rev. Grant Odhner concludes a very scholarly, doctrinal
and readable three-part series: Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve – The
Nature of Human Choice and the Problem of Universal Salvation. He is very
clear in this treatise that the Writings are unequivocal: We cannot change
our character after death – the person we really are – nor the “home” for our
character.
The key word in this series is “choose”: “choose this day…” If we did not
have free choice – even to choose against God and heaven – we would not
have life. Hell is the ultimate of a loving God’s permission. He wills heaven for
everyone, but allows us to choose against him.
As Mr. Odhner puts it: “It is sad when people choose to deny God and
to be ruled by selfish love. But a god who would create a system where that
choice was not a possibility, would not be a god who prized mutuality and the
reciprocal nature of genuine love.”
Swedenborg describes various degrees of hell – some less severe, some
more so. But all who are in any of the hells love where they are and do not wish
for heaven.
When Abram and Lot were dividing the land of Canaan, this represented
those with the faith that leads to heaven and those whose faith leads them – by
their choice and their loves – to hell. In transcribing the spiritual sense of this,
Swedenborg writes:
Anyone willing simply to think about it is capable of seeing that the kingdom of
heaven cannot be given to people whose faith is devoid of charity, that is, people
who say they have faith and yet hate their neighbor. This kind of faith cannot have
any life in it, since hatred – hell, in other words – constitutes its life. Hell consists
of pure hatred – not the kinds of hatred we inherit, but the kinds that we secure for
ourselves by the way we actually live. (Secrets of Heaven 1608.3)
451
(BMH)