Hell

[Old_Joe]

Who created Hell?

[Laudate_Dominum]

Anything that can be called "created", or rather anything that does not have its act of existence intrinsic to its essence, is created by God. Put another way, anything with being has God as its first cause and the basis of its existence.

Even things that we "create" can be said to be created by God. God is the source of being itself and all of the potencies latent in the created order. God is also the master and author of history and when creatures endowed with intellect and will "create" new substantial forms, we are really uncovering or actualizing things that were known by God and written into the fabric of being in its potentiality from the beginning.
For example, the only reason it is possible for men to create knives is because God designed the structure of our universe such that the nature of a knife was written into its design and knives have always existed in possibility and potentiality. An illustration of the absurd might be that we cannot "create" (co-create to be precise) square circles or rocks so heavy that God cannot lift them, because these absurd concepts do not correspond to the nature of reality as expressive of the Divine [i]Logos[/i] or [i]Ratio[/i]. There is no [i]seminale ratione[/i] or [i]logoi spermatikoi[/i] of possible being corresponding to these absurdities.

To answer the question directly, God created hell. But to know what this statement really means we must first know something of what hell is, and second, in what manner God created it.

Church dogma makes it unmistakingly clear that there really is a hell. But not much can be said definitively regarding the precise nature of hell. At least not dogmatically. The common Scriptural motifs in which hell is described are unquenchable fire, everlasting fire, darkness, the second death. The Athanasian creed declares that "those who have done evil will go to everlasting fire".

But is hell an actual place or simply a state? And if it is a place is this talk of fire literal or metaphorical? And where might it be exactly?
There is actually no dogmatic answer to these questions. As St. John Chrysostom said: "We must not ask where hell is, but how we are to escape it." And St. Augustine: "It is my opinion that the nature of hell-fire and the location of hell are known to no man unless the Holy Ghost made it known to him by a special revelation". Finally, Pope Saint Gregory the Great: "I do not dare to decide this question".

What have been the speculations of theologians?
Some fathers (notably St. Gregory of Nyssa) have suggested that the fire of hell is metaphorical and that hell is a state rather than a particular place. This has become more popular among modern theologians and has never been condemned by the Church. But the majority of fathers and theologians in history have held that hell is not merely a state of soul and that the fires are not merely a metaphor for a gnawing conscience or something of that sort.

The classical view in Roman Catholic theology is to distinguish two aspects of the suffering of hell.
1.) The pain of loss [[i]poena damni[/i]]
2.) The pain of sense [[i]poena sensus[/i]]
The pain of loss refers to the immense spiritual suffering resulting from the knowledge of having eternally lost the state of beatific vision, or union with God. This constitutes the essence of the pains of hell.
Since we are bodily beings, and we shall all be reunited to our bodies at the final judgement, the pain of sense refers to the actual physical pain that will be experienced by the damned in their bodies. The question of whether of not the fires of hell are in fact literal fire as we know it, is most often answered in the negative.

One answer may be to say that in creating beings with free will who are capable of love and of sharing in the Divine Life perfectly and eternally, the possibility of rejecting that love perfectly and eternally was possible by necessity. In this way of looking at things the creation or actualization of the negative reality of hell (meaning it is a privation, not a positive being), is in fact the responsibility of creatures who will it.
Some have also speculated that since God's love can be described as fire. Hebrews says that "God is a consuming fire", etc.. It might be put forth that the fire of love that is the perfect delight to the saints in heaven, is in fact torment to those who have definitively rejected this love. And as the saints will experience a perfect bodily bliss as well as the spiritual vision, the damned experience spiritual darkness and pain as well as perfect bodily torment. In this approach the flames of hell are for the most part metaphorical because this coming bodily and trans-temporal existence is wholly unknown to us in our current state.

But there are difficulties with this approach and there are certainly alternatives.
If I may be bold, perhaps hell is an actual physical realm. A kind of universe or space-time continuum unlike our own but akin to a sort of primordial chaos. Fire represents entropy and disintegration as it burns and consumes its fuel. There are things in the history of speculation on hell that lend themselves to the idea of the body and soul being manifest in an environment which has been described as being united to fire. I can envision an existence that could sustain a damned body, but in a state of virtual disintegration and entropy , as well as privation, which would seem appropriate for a human person as a body-soul composite and also capable of receiving the forms of fallen angels.
In this sort of perhaps bizarre scenario, God could be said to be the efficient cause of hell, and yet this realm can still be conceived of in a way proper to the Divine Nature, since creating such a realm, which would be expressive of ultimate privation and disunity, would yet be a good compared to the utter forfeiting of any existence that damned creatures would have merited.

In any case, the answer to your question is very speculative indeed. Ultimately the "last things" are mysterious to us and have not been fully revealed, we see only dim shadows of what is to come. And perhaps that is all that is possible to us for now. But I can remember something in an account of the mystical experiences of Blessed Angela of Foligno, in which she was given the highest experience of God possible in this life, namely the interior vision of the Holy Trinity. And after this experience she said that she finally understood, and had pure peace, regarding the fact of hell and why the damned go there. Unfortunately the knowledge that led to this peace and understanding was incommunicable. Perhaps we should strive for the heights of the spiritual life and tranforming union with God so as to be illuminated in these mysteries of the plan of God.