Hell, love, and divine simplicty

[ccmnxc]

I had a question with regards to hell. As a disclaimer, it is a decent possibility that I am not accurately representing Church teaching or divine simplicity, but I will try anyways.
Simply put, does God love those who are in hell? Initially, it is tempting to answer “yes,” but (at least with my conception of hell) it looks problematic. I have seen hell basically as a place where God has withdrawn Himself and He (or more specifically, His love) is not present. Being simple, God withdrawing Himself from hell seems to imply that He also withdraws His love from hell. Can God “feel” love towards the person, or is the problematic on divine simplicity? I hope my comment made sense and I’m wondering if anyone could set me straight, most likely with either clarification on divine simplicity or Hell. Thanks.

 

[TomD123]

I had a question with regards to hell. As a disclaimer, it is a decent possibility that I am not accurately representing Church teaching or divine simplicity, but I will try anyways.
Simply put, does God love those who are in hell? Initially, it is tempting to answer “yes,” but (at least with my conception of hell) it looks problematic. I have seen hell basically as a place where God has withdrawn Himself and He (or more specifically, His love) is not present. Being simple, God withdrawing Himself from hell seems to imply that He also withdraws His love from hell. Can God “feel” love towards the person, or is the problematic on divine simplicity? I hope my comment made sense and I’m wondering if anyone could set me straight, most likely with either clarification on divine simplicity or Hell. Thanks.

God does love those in hell. This simply means that God wills the good of those in hell. God is eternal so if he did not love those in hell that means he did not love them while they were alive which is not true since while they were alive God willed their salvation, meaning he gave them the graces necessary for salvation. Since they are in hell, there is no grace, and in this sense God’s love is now futile or ineffective. On the other hand, many have thought that in hell God shows mercy either by having the damned suffer less than they deserved (St. Thomas thought this) or that perhaps hell itself is a form of mercy given that heaven might be more painful for those who hate God.

God is not present in hell to the extent that those in hell do not experience his happiness. God has to be present to an extent though because if He was not, hell would not exist and neither would the souls there. So this means God has to be present but only experienced in a certain manner. Similar to how on earth God is present but we do not experience him in the fullness, only in hell, we do not experience his happiness at all whereas on earth we get glimpses of it through natural happiness.

God cannot feel love to anyone because God does not feel. God wills, and because of simplicity, God is his will. One thing we have to remember with Divine Simplicity is the doctrine of St. Thomas on “analogy.” This means that even though we say something is in God (for example intellect or justice or love, etc.) this does not mean it is in God in the same manner that it is in us. It also does not mean that it is part of God in a completely different manner…its in God in an analogous manner. This means that God is love, not in the sense that He is our love, but He is something analogous too our love. In this way, we can learn about divine simplicity because whereas our concepts of love and justice for instance might not seem the same, in God since God has something analogous to love and justice this analogous quality is the same.