Can the soul be happy in Hell?

The Christian tradition holds that Hell is definitive separation from God, and that this separation hurts because human beings are made for Him. Whoever does not love or long for Him does not experience that pain, but neither does he attain the fullness for which he was created.

The question is a meaty one. If Hell is the absence of divine grace, why would it hurt? There are people who live without God, work, fall in love, listen to music and are happy. The classical answer does not speak of physical punishments, but of a deprivation that is only noticed when one knows what is missing.

## The distinction between the pain of loss and the pain of the senses

Catholic theology distinguishes two punishments in Hell. The **pain of loss** is the deprivation of the beatific vision, that is, of seeing God face to face. The **pain of the senses** is associated with fire and other sufferings. The first is the essential one; the second, an addition.

**Thomas Aquinas**, in the *Summa Theologiae* (13th century), holds that the principal punishment of Hell is separation from God, and that fire is an instrument of that punishment. The suffering does not come from God inflicting arbitrary tortures, but from the soul being deprived of that for which it was created.

## The natural desire to see God

Christian anthropology starts from the premise that human beings have a natural desire for happiness, and that full happiness is only attained in the contemplation of God. **Augustine of Hippo** formulated it in the *Confessions* (around the year 400): "You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you".

If that desire is constitutive, the deprivation of its object produces suffering. But it only produces it in the one who experiences it as deprivation. Whoever does not love or long for God does not feel that absence as pain, because he does not perceive it. There lies the nuance: Hell is not a torture chamber for the unbeliever, but the confirmation of a lack that goes unrecognized.

## And the demons? Do they fall in love?

The question about demons has a long tradition. Catholic doctrine presents them as fallen angels, spiritual beings with intelligence and will, but without a body. The love attributed to them is not human love, which passes through the senses and biological affectivity.

**Thomas Aquinas** states that angels love one another with a love of charity, but that demons, by definitively rejecting God, have fixed their will on evil. They do not fall in love the way a person does. Their will became obstinate, without the mutability of human love.

## Happiness as fullness, not as comfort

The key lies in what is meant by happiness. If happiness is having a good time, eating well and sleeping soundly, then yes, one can be happy without God. If happiness is the fullness of being, the satisfaction of the deepest desire, then things change.

The Christian tradition does not deny that there are joys outside the faith. What it denies is that those joys are ultimate happiness. Hell, in that framework, would not be a place where one has a bad time as punishment, but a state of definitive lack of what fulfills. And that, for the one who knows it, hurts.