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To the atheistic formula, "If God exists, then man is not free." The Bible responds, "If man exists, God is no longer free." We are able to say not to God, but God is no longer able to say no to us, for according to St. Paul, "there is only yes in God," (2 Cor 1:19) the yes of his Covenant which Christ has given on the Cross. Then, "I am free" means "God exists." It is God himself who guarantees the freedom of doubt so as to not violate human conscience.

God has created the "second freedom," and he takes the supreme risk of a freedom which is capable of stopping him, of obligating him to descend into death and into hell. He freely allows himself to be assassinated in order to offer pardon and resurrection to the assassins. His omnipotence is to make room for human freedom, to veil his presence in order to be in dialogue with "the other," to love with all infinite patience which waits for the free response, a free creation of a common life of God and his child. A patristic saying states it this way, "God can do everything, except constrain us to love him." The omnipotence of God is to become the life giving Cross, the unique response to this case of atheism on freedom and evil.

"The Kingdom of God has come among you," means that hell has also come among us. Marcel Johandeau puts it in his own way, "On my own, I am able to set up before God an empire in which he can to nothing, and this is hell...if we do not understand hell it is because we do not know our own hearts..." It is the hell of all those who despair and who explore the depths of Satan and cast towards heaven their empty blasphemies.

Now even the despair of hell is wounded by Christ, who as a person has experienced God's silence: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). Here we see the connection of hell with the freedom of loving God. Human freedom can create hell because we are always able to say: "May your will not be done." and not even God can control these words.

The freedom to refuse God is his wish for us, without limits. The suspended power of human choice renders our destiny conditional. And it is hell, therefore, to speak of divine love, the heavenly dimension of hell, the divine vision of humanity immersed in the night of solitude.

it is of the greatest urgency to correct the "terrorist" and "penitentiary" ideas of God. It is no longer possible to believe in a heartless God incapable of suffering. The only message which could reach atheism today is that of Christ descending into hell. As deep as the hell in which today we find ourselves, it is even more profound to find Christ already there waiting for us. God does not ask of us virtue, moralism, blind obedience but a cry of assurance and of love from the depth of our hell. We ought never to fall into despair. We can only fall into God and it is God who never despairs. St. Anthony the Great said that hell surely exists but only for himself, which is to say that hell is never "for the others," that is never the object of our discourse.

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