Eternal hell for finite sin is infinitely disproportionate and therefore monstrous.

Question

No crime a finite human could commit - a lifetime of the worst cruelty - warrants infinite punishment. A judge who imposed even a million years of torture for shoplifting would be called a tyrant; yet God imposes never-ending conscious torment for, in many traditional formulations, the accident of unbelief. This is straight moral affront. Bertrand Russell said he could not respect any being who would design such a system. Any system in which infinite punishment follows finite sin is a moral catastrophe.

Christwise · Accepted Answer

Four clarifications, each with substantial literature behind it. (1) The traditional Christian view is not "torture by an angry God"; it is the continuation of a person's chosen rejection of God. C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain): "the gates of hell are locked on the inside." Hell, on this reading, is what a freely chosen life without God looks like when extended into the eternal state. If God wills to preserve the personhood of those who refuse him, the outcome is not divine cruelty but the shape of their own freely chosen trajectory. (2) The "finite sin, infinite punishment" framing assumes sin's gravity is proportional to duration of act, not to the dignity of the one sinned against (Anselm: sin against an infinite good is of infinite gravity). It also assumes persons in hell stop sinning; Lewis and others argue the self-enclosure continues. (3) Annihilationism and conditional immortality (John Stott, Edward Fudge) hold that the lost are not eternally tortured but cease to exist - a view with respectable biblical and historical support (it is a minority but not a fringe position). Universalism (David Bentley Hart, Robin Parry) is another respected minority. Christians disagree on the nature of final judgment; the caricature is not the only game in town. (4) The New Testament's dominant image is not sadistic torture but exclusion from a wedding feast, outer darkness, a door shut. The judgment is held to be tragic, not gleeful. Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

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