Chapter 10
Why Eternal Torment Is the Sharpest Version of the Problem of Evil, and What the Possible Answers Are
The problem of evil asks why a good God allows suffering. The problem of hell asks something sharper: why a good God allows suffering that never ends and never heals.
Most books about hell try to answer this question. Very few begin by admitting it is the question. They move quickly to a defense. They quote a verse. They appeal to mystery. But the question stays, because the tension at its heart has never been dissolved.
And it is not a question that only philosophers feel. Pastors feel it every time they stand at a funeral. Parents feel it when they lie awake thinking about a child who has left the faith. Missionaries feel it when they look at the billions who have lived and died without ever hearing the name of Jesus. If God loves them all, and if hell lasts forever, then something in the picture is wrong. The question is what.
The tension is this. Christians hold two things at the same time. First, God is perfectly good, perfectly loving, and all-powerful. Second, some people will suffer in hell forever. Each claim, on its own, is easy to hold. Taken together, they press against each other until something has to give.1
I want to lay this whole problem on the table, plainly, before we try to solve it. In this chapter I will state the problem in its formal shape, map every major type of answer, show which answers actually dissolve the tension and which only relocate it, and explain why I believe the problem itself points toward the hope this book defends. The next two chapters take up the strongest answers in detail: the free-will defense in Chapter 11 and the divine-presence model in Chapter 12. Here the job is to see the landscape clearly.
And I want to be honest from the start. I am not neutral. I came to the problem of hell as a believer who loved God but could not worship a God who torments forever. That struggle is what brought me, step by step, to the hope I now hold: that the fire is real, but the fire heals, and no one is left behind. This chapter tells you why I think the problem demands that answer.
The problem of hell is not just a philosophical puzzle. It is the single sharpest obstacle standing between thoughtful people and the Christian faith.
A college student reads about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. A quarter of a million people died, most of them in places where the name of Jesus had scarcely been spoken. She is told that God loves every one of them and that hell lasts forever. She does the math. And the math does not add up.2
Philosophers have a name for what she feels. The general problem of evil asks: Why does a good and all-powerful God allow any suffering at all? That question is hard. But the problem of hell is harder, and for a specific reason. With most suffering, the purpose is unknown. We can say, "Maybe God has a reason we cannot see." Philosophers call that move skeptical theism, and it is a fair one when we are genuinely in the dark.3
But with hell, the purpose is not hidden. The tradition tells us what hell is for. It exists to punish sin, or to honor free choice, or to display God's justice. Once the purpose is on the table, we can test it. We can ask: Does this purpose square with a God who is both perfectly just and perfectly loving? And if it does not, we cannot retreat into mystery. That retreat is honest only when we do not know the reason. Here we are told the reason, and the reason is the problem.4
Manis on Why the Problem of Hell Is Uniquely Hard
Unlike the existence of other evils, which are known experientially, the existence of hell is known only through the revelation of the religious traditions that include the doctrine, and these revelations are typically understood as indicating the purpose of hell, as well. As Kvanvig has noted, this forestalls the application of the now-standard methods of skeptical theism to the problem of hell. R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 15
Here is why this matters for the hope I defend. If the problem of hell is real, every view of hell is an attempt to relieve it. Each attempt gives up something. Some give up God's universal love. Some give up His power. Some give up the person. The question I am pressing in this book is whether there is an answer that gives up none of these. I believe there is. And it begins by stating the problem well enough to see why every other answer falls short.
The problem of hell rests on a set of claims that most Christians hold but that pull against each other. Let me state them plainly.5
The Inconsistent Set
(A) God is omnipotent: He has the power to prevent anyone from being lost.
(B) God is perfectly good and loving: He wills the highest good of every person He has made.
(C) Some persons are lost forever: they suffer in hell for all eternity, with no end and no escape.
The problem: if (A) and (B) are both true, then (C) is very hard to believe. A God with the power to save all and the love to will the good of all would not leave anyone in endless torment. Something in the set must give.6
Notice how this differs from the general problem of evil. The general problem concerns suffering that is temporary. A disease ends in death or in healing. A war ends in peace or in ruin. But on the traditional view, hell has no end. The suffering never stops, the person is never healed, and the evil is never redeemed. That is what makes the problem of hell the sharpest version of the problem of evil: the suffering is not just bad, but permanent and beyond all remedy.7
R. Zachary Manis, whose careful work has shaped much of this chapter, breaks the problem into three faces. The problem of justice asks whether endless punishment is proportional to finite sin (we examined this in Chapter 9). The problem of love asks whether punishment that is not aimed at the good of the one punished can be an act of love at all. And the doxastic problem (from the Greek doxa, "belief") asks what happens to a person who truly believes the doctrine. Manis considers the problem of love the most formidable of the three, and I agree.8
The doxastic problem deserves a closer look, because it is Manis's distinctive contribution and it often goes unnoticed. Think about what it means to really believe in hell. Manis uses a vivid picture: imagine a man who holds a gun to his beloved's head and demands that she love him. He wants her to know he is serious. But that is exactly the problem. You cannot love someone under the threat of maximum harm. You can say you love them. You can act as though you do. But genuine love, freely given, becomes impossible when a loaded gun is pointed at your head.
The revelation of hell works the same way. If hell is real, and if God threatens it as the price of unbelief, then the threat is the most coercive thing in the universe. It either produces a fear-based faith (which is not the free love God wants) or it breeds despair in those who believe it while watching their loved ones drift away from the church. A belief you can hold only by not thinking about it too carefully is a belief in trouble.
Plain Words
The problem of hell is the question of how a God who is all-powerful and all-loving can allow anyone to suffer in hell forever. The problem of justice asks whether eternal punishment is fair for finite sins. The problem of love asks whether endless punishment that does not aim at healing can be an act of love. The doxastic problem asks what believing in hell does to the believer's own faith. Skeptical theism is the move that says we may not understand God's reasons for allowing evil, so we should not judge too quickly. Hellism (Reitan and Kronen's term) is any doctrine that holds some are finally and permanently lost.
The problem of love deserves a word more. If God punishes a person forever, and the punishment is not aimed at that person's reform, then God is not willing their good. He is willing their harm. And a being who wills harm to those He claims to love is not loving in any sense we can recognize. Manis puts it as a principle: to love someone (with the self-giving love the New Testament calls agape) requires willing the good of the beloved, at least so far as one is able. This seems close to self-evident. A God who is all-powerful is certainly able. So if He consigns anyone to endless pain without healing, He is not willing their good. And if He is not willing their good, He does not love them. But Scripture says He does.9
Every Christian answer to the problem of hell works by denying or modifying at least one claim in the inconsistent set. There are, in the end, only four roads out of the tension. Each road gives up something different.10
Road (i): Deny that God loves all. This is the road of strong Calvinism. God does not will the salvation of every person. He chooses some for glory and passes over the rest (or, on the hardest version, actively decrees their damnation). The tension dissolves because (B) is dropped: God is not perfectly loving toward the reprobate, only toward the elect. The cost is severe. It requires us to say that God creates persons He does not love and never intended to save. It relocates the problem from hell to the character of God. And the character it reveals is hard to square with the One who said, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11). Manis argues that under theological determinism, the problems of justice and love become even more severe, because the damned are not merely permitted to suffer but caused to suffer by divine decree.11
Road (ii): Deny that God can save all without coercion. This is the Arminian free-will defense. God loves all and wills the salvation of all, but He cannot guarantee it without overriding human freedom. Some people choose to reject Him, and God respects the choice. The tension is relieved because (A) is qualified: God's power does not extend to determining the free choices of creatures. This is the live contender, the strongest non-universalist answer, and we will spend the whole of Chapter 11 on it. For now I note only that it carries a hidden assumption: that a free creature could keep the door locked forever, against unlimited love and unlimited time.12
Road (iii): Reinterpret the nature of hell. Instead of modifying (A) or (B), redefine what (C) means. Two versions are important here. Annihilationism (conditional immortality) says the lost do not suffer forever; they cease to exist. This removes the worst edge of the problem, because the suffering ends, but it raises its own question: Why would a loving God destroy a person He could still reach? The divine-presence model (developed by Manis) says the fire of hell is God's own unveiled love, experienced as torment by those who refuse it. We will explore this model fully in Chapter 12.13
Road (iv): Deny that anyone is lost forever. This is universalism: the hope that God will, in the end, bring every person to free, saving faith in Christ. On this view, the fire is real, the judgment is real, but the judgment is restorative, not final. Hell is a painful chapter in a story that ends with "God all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). The tension is dissolved because (C) is denied outright. No one is lost forever. The question that presses on this road is whether it can hold up without crushing human freedom. That is the question the rest of this book must answer.14
Eric Reitan and John Kronen, in God's Final Victory, call the various doctrines of permanent loss "hellisms" and classify them by how they answer two questions. First, what causes damnation? Does God reject the sinner (classical Calvinism), or does the sinner reject God (the free-will view)? Second, what does the suffering include? Only the loss of God's presence, or added torments on top of that? By crossing these two axes, Reitan and Kronen map six distinct species of hell-doctrine, from the harshest classical retributive form to the mildest "liberal" version. But all hellisms share one claim: that some created persons, while preserved in being forever, will never be saved. And every hellism must answer the inconsistent set.15
Reitan and Kronen on the Deepest Problem Facing Every Hellism
Defenders of [the view that God rejects the damned] must overcome the prima facie absurdity of the following conjunction: God loves every one of His creatures with a profound and unwavering benevolence; and He wills upon some of these creatures the very worst kind of evil conceivable, and He wills that they suffer it for all eternity, even though it cannot possibly do them any good, since it never culminates in anything but more of the same. Eric Reitan and John Kronen, God's Final Victory, 26
Their taxonomy matters because it shows that the problem of hell is not one problem but a family of them. Arguments that work against the retributive form may not work against the free-will form. A full case against the doctrine of permanent loss must therefore take each species on its own terms. That is what Chapters 8 through 12 of this book set out to do.15b
Not all roads out of the inconsistent set are equal. Some dissolve the tension. Others only push it somewhere else.
Road (i), strong Calvinism, dissolves the logical tension cleanly. If God does not love all, then (A) and (C) sit together without strain. But the cost is enormous. It saves logic by sacrificing the character of God. A God who creates people He never intended to save, who passes them over without love, is not the God revealed in Christ. The tension is removed from the propositions. It is moved into the heart of the believer who is asked to worship a God whose goodness looks nothing like goodness.16
Road (ii), the free-will defense, does not dissolve the tension; it relocates it. The question becomes: Could a free creature really resist God forever? If yes, then the defense holds, but at a price. It means God's love can be permanently defeated by the stubbornness of the creature. Reitan and Kronen press this point hard: under the free-will view, despite all of God's infinite resources, despite infinite time in which to work, despite His perfect knowledge of every detail of the human soul, and despite His unrelenting love, sin would prove stronger than God in at least some human hearts. Most theologians in history would have called that conclusion something close to blasphemy. If no, if freedom cannot resist forever, then the defense collapses into universalism. Everything turns on what freedom can and cannot do across unlimited time and unlimited grace. That question will occupy us through all of Part IV.17
Notice what this means. The free-will defense is the strongest non-universalist answer, and I respect it. But even at its best, it does not dissolve the tension. It relocates it to a new question: the rationality of final rejection. And that question is exactly what Chapter 17 is about.
A third option, reinterpreting hell's nature, softens the problem but does not eliminate it. Annihilationism removes the endlessness of the suffering, and that helps. But the permanent loss of a person whom God loves and could have saved is still a failure of the divine project. The divine-presence model is richer: the fire is God's love, not His wrath. But if the fire torments forever and never heals, the problem of love returns in a new form. Reitan and Kronen press a deeper difficulty that haunts every species of hellism without exception: the damned are forever confirmed in moral degeneracy. This is not the reason for their damnation; it is the result of being cut off from God. The very God who hates sin permits it to continue in the damned forever, with no prospect of healing. A God who either cannot or will not provide the conditions for overcoming wickedness raises hard questions about both His sovereignty and His goodness.18
Finally, universalism dissolves the tension cleanly, if it can meet the freedom worry. Nobody is lost forever. God's love wins every heart. The fire is real and severe, but it heals. The question is whether this hope can hold without turning God into a bully who forces the will. I believe it can, and the rest of this book is the case for that belief. But I hold the conclusion as a conviction, not a logical proof, because freedom is real and a genuine "yes" requires a possible "no."19
Where the Roads Lead
Of the four roads, only two dissolve the inconsistent set cleanly: strong Calvinism and universalism. Calvinism dissolves it by giving up God's love for all. Universalism dissolves it by giving up the finality of hell. The free-will defense and the reinterpretation strategies relocate the tension rather than removing it. The question for the reader is: Which sacrifice is more faithful to the God revealed in Scripture?
Someone might think the problem of hell is a modern invention, dreamed up by philosophers who have lost their nerve. It is not. The tension is in the Bible itself.
On one side, Scripture speaks with unmistakable force about God's desire to save all. Paul tells Timothy that God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4). Peter says the Lord is "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). Abraham appeals to God's justice in the most basic terms: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). And the prophet writes, speaking for God: "For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men" (Lamentations 3:31–33).20
For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.
— Lamentations 3:31–33 (ESV)
On the other side, Jesus warns of a judgment that uses the language of permanence. "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:46). Whatever the word "eternal" (Greek aionios) means in this verse (and we will return to that question), the warning is serious. Jesus is not playing.21
Both sides of this tension are in the Bible. A God who wills all saved, and a judgment that sounds final. A God who "does not afflict from his heart," and a fire described as lasting. This is not a problem invented by squeamish moderns. It is a problem posed by Scripture itself, and Scripture asks us to hold both truths in view while we seek the one that reconciles them.22
I have laid out the problem and the map. Now let me say where this book goes from here.
The rest of this book is the working-out of road (iv): the claim that no one is lost forever, not because hell is unreal, but because hell is not final. The fire is real (Chapter 12 will argue it is God's own unveiled love). Freedom is real (Chapter 13 will defend libertarian freedom and part from Hart's necessitarianism). The worry about freedom is the live one: Can God save all without forcing anyone? I believe He can, because a God with middle knowledge (Chapter 14) can offer each person the most persuasive possible appeal (Chapter 15), across all the time eternity allows (Chapter 21), until even the hardest heart freely yields (Chapter 17).23
But first, the strongest rivals. Chapter 11 takes on the free-will defense of hell, the view that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. It is the best the traditionalist has, and it deserves a full hearing. Chapter 12 takes up the divine-presence model, the view that the fire of hell is the love of God, experienced as torment by those who refuse it. I find this model deeply compelling. It honors the biblical fire-imagery, it avoids the worst problems of traditionalism, and it opens a door toward universal restoration. Of the four roads, road (iv) dissolves the tension most completely. The chapters that follow are the case that it does so without sacrificing freedom, justice, or the cross.
The hope I defend is not that hell is unreal. It is that hell is not the last word. The fire burns, but the fire heals. The judgment is severe, but the judgment is for the sake of the person judged. And the God who judges is the God who, according to the prophet, "does not afflict from his heart." That is the hope. And the problem of hell is the question that demands it.
The problem of hell sits at the center of the philosophy of religion, and some of the best minds in the field have spent careers on it. Let me place the key voices briefly.
Jonathan Kvanvig, in his landmark The Problem of Hell, argues that the problem is philosophical to the core. You do not need sacred texts to feel its force. Any worldview with a final state and a good God faces something like it. Kvanvig's own answer is what he calls the "issuant" view: a form of free-will annihilationism in which the purpose of hell is to bring each person to a rational choice between reconciliation and non-existence. His work shows that even philosophers who do not reach a universalist conclusion find the traditional view deeply troubled.24
R. Zachary Manis states the problem more sharply than anyone else in print. His three-part structure (justice, love, the doxastic problem) is the most complete philosophical analysis of the problem available. Manis maps four "standard options" for answering the problem (traditionalism, universalism, annihilationism, and the choice model) and argues that each is deficient in at least one significant way. His own proposal, the divine-presence model, is a fifth option that he believes avoids the worst weaknesses of the other four. He is not a universalist. But his analysis lays bare why every non-universalist answer is in trouble. We will examine his model closely in Chapter 12.25
Jerry Walls, whose Hell: The Logic of Damnation is the most careful philosophical defense of the free-will view, occupies an important place on this map. Walls is not a universalist. He argues that hell is the result of a "decisive" rejection of God, a settled choice made by someone "fully informed of the Christian faith." His defense is the strongest version of road (ii), and we will engage it at length in Chapter 11. But even Walls concedes a striking point: "no finite being can continue endlessly to choose greater and greater misery for himself." That concession will matter when we get there.26
Marilyn McCord Adams argues that God's goodness to each person requires that horrendous evils be defeated within that person's own life. An evil is not defeated by being outweighed by goods elsewhere. The person who suffers must herself be brought to a place where the evil is redeemed. If endless torment is a horrendous evil, then a good God must bring even the damned to healing. Adams presses strongly toward universal restoration.27
Thomas Talbott, whose inconsistent triad we examined in Chapter 5, sees the problem of hell as the result of trying to hold together divine love, divine power, and eternal loss. Something must give. For Talbott, what gives is eternal loss. Eleonore Stump, drawing on Aquinas, argues that love seeks the good of the beloved and desires union with the beloved. A God who allows permanent separation has, in some deep sense, failed at love. Neither Stump nor Walls is a universalist, yet their work on love and freedom creates strong pressure in that direction.28
Michael McClymond and James De Young, the critics at the center of this book's Part VI, insist that universalism is a worse problem than the problem of hell. McClymond argues that it "eclipses grace." De Young contends that "even reason demands hell." We will engage their arguments at full strength in Chapters 22–28. But I note here that both critics feel the force of the problem. Their response is not to deny the tension but to argue that the alternatives are worse.29
"If you can live with suffering now, you can live with hell. The problem of hell is nothing new."
This misses a key difference. Temporal evil can be defeated and redeemed. A person who suffers in this life can be brought, eventually, to a place where the suffering is overcome and even transfigured. Adams has argued this point with great care: God's goodness requires defeating horrendous evils within the sufferer's own life, not merely outweighing them with goods elsewhere. A child who suffers abuse can grow into a person whose life, taken as a whole, is one in which the evil has been redeemed. The evil is still real, still terrible. But it is not the last word. It is defeated by the good that follows and surrounds it.30
But endless, unredeemed evil cannot be defeated. If hell never ends and the person is never healed, then no future good can redeem it. The evil stands, raw and final, forever. That is not the same problem as temporary suffering in a world where God is still at work. It is a worse one, because the usual answer ("God will make it right in the end") is precisely what the doctrine of endless hell denies. The promise of redemption is the answer to temporal evil. Remove the promise, and there is no answer left.31
"God's Ways Are Higher Than Ours"
Appeals to mystery are honest when the reasons behind an evil are genuinely hidden. But the problem of hell is different. The tradition tells us the purpose of hell: retributive justice, or the honoring of free choice, or some combination. Once the purpose is stated, it can be tested. And if the stated purpose does not square with the character of God revealed in Christ, retreating into mystery is not humility. It is evasion.
More deeply, a God whose goodness is entirely unrecognizable is not the God of the gospel.32 Jesus said, "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?" (Matthew 7:11). The whole force of that argument rests on a continuity between our understanding of goodness and God's. A "goodness" that includes tormenting people forever, in a way no human parent would accept, is not a higher goodness. It is an unrecognizable one. And an unrecognizable goodness is, for all practical purposes, no goodness at all.33
Let me gather what we have found.
The problem of hell is the sharpest version of the problem of evil. It presses harder because the purpose of hell is stated, not hidden. Its three faces (the problem of justice, the problem of love, the doxastic problem) converge on a single point: the traditional doctrine of endless, unredeemed torment cannot be squared with a God who is both perfectly just and perfectly loving.
Four roads lead out of that tension. Strong Calvinism dissolves it by denying God's universal love. The free-will defense relocates it to the question of whether freedom can resist forever. Reinterpretation strategies soften it. And universalism dissolves it by denying the finality of hell. Only two roads dissolve the tension cleanly: Calvinism and universalism. Which sacrifice is more faithful to Scripture?
This tension is not imported by philosophers. It is in the Bible itself, in the same canon that says God "does not afflict from his heart" and warns of a fire that seems to last. Not whether the tension is real but which resolution honors the whole witness of Scripture and the character of God.
The Hope, Not the Counterfeit
The universalism that answers the problem of hell in this book is not the sentimental kind that abolishes the fire and pretends sin does not matter. It is not the pluralist kind that says all paths lead home and Christ is optional. The fire is real, because sin is real, and judgment matters. Christ is the only Savior, because the cross is how God reconciles the world to Himself. What this book denies is not hell's reality but its finality. The fire heals. The judgment restores. And the God who lights the fire is the God who will not rest until every soul He made has freely come home.
In Chapter 11, we take on the strongest non-universalist reply: the free-will defense of hell. It is the best case the other side has. In Chapter 12, we explore the divine-presence model, in which the fire of hell is God's own love. Both are steps in a cumulative case that reaches its full weight in Chapter 29.
The problem of hell is real. And the answer, I believe, is not a God who torments forever, but a God who loves until love wins.
↑ 1. The philosophical literature typically frames the problem of hell as a special case of the problem of evil. For a classic treatment, see Marilyn McCord Adams, "The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians," in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 301–27. See also Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ch. 1.
↑ 2. Sharon Baker opens her book with similar stories from her students. See Sharon Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), ch. 1.
↑ 3. For a standard statement of skeptical theism, see Michael Bergmann, "Skeptical Theism and Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil," Noûs 35, no. 2 (2001): 278–96. The key idea is that our cognitive limitations may prevent us from seeing the morally sufficient reasons an omniscient being might have for permitting a given evil.
↑ 4. R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 15. Kvanvig makes the same point in The Problem of Hell, ch. 1: the stated purpose of hell closes off the usual skeptical-theist escape route.
↑ 5. The formal statement follows the structure in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 15, and Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, ch. 1. The tension is between claims about God’s nature (omnipotence, omnibenevolence) and the existence of a permanent state of conscious suffering.
↑ 6. Manis frames the problem as arising from "a prima facie tension between the proposition that there is a perfectly good, loving, and powerful God and the proposition that some persons will exist for all eternity in hell." See Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 15.
↑ 7. Adams argues that God’s goodness requires "defeating" horrendous evils within each person’s own life. An evil that can never be redeemed or defeated is, on her framework, incompatible with divine goodness. See Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), chs. 1–2.
↑ 8. Manis develops the problem of justice in ch. 1 (pp. 18–38), the problem of love in ch. 1 (pp. 39–46), and the doxastic problem in ch. 2 (pp. 47–66). On the comparative severity: "I submit that, despite the greater popularity of the problem of justice, the problem of love is at least as formidable an objection to retributive models of hell; in my judgment, it is the more formidable of the two standard objections." Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 46.
↑ 9. Manis calls this the "Principle" and states it formally: "Necessarily, an agent S1 loves [agapao] an agent S2 only if S1 wills the good of S2, insofar as S1 is able." He notes that this is "partially constitutive of the very concept of agape love." Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 40–41. For the biblical texts that ground God’s universal love, see 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9.
↑ 10. This fourfold taxonomy follows the logic of the inconsistent set: each road removes the tension by modifying or denying one of its elements. Compare the discussion of "standard options" in Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, chs. 3–6, and the taxonomy of "hellisms" in Eric Reitan and John Kronen, God’s Final Victory: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism (New York: Continuum, 2011), ch. 2, "Hellisms: The Species of DH," 12–27. Reitan and Kronen define a doctrine of hell generically as the view that "some created persons, while preserved forever in being, will never be saved" (12), then distinguish species along two axes: the nature of the sufferings of the damned (NH1 versus NH2, 15–17) and the impelling causes of damnation (CH1 versus CH2, 18–23).
↑ 11. Manis treats the Calvinist and determinist versions of the problem in his "Addendum: Additional Problems for Calvinists and Other Theological Determinists," Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 67–93. He argues that theological determinism faces even more severe versions of the problems of justice, love, and belief. See also Jerry L. Walls, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What Is Wrong with Calvinism (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016).
↑ 12. The free-will defense is associated especially with C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940), 127 ("the doors of hell are locked on the inside"), and Jerry L. Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). See Chapter 11 of this volume.
↑ 13. For annihilationism, see Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011). For the divine-presence model, see Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, pt. III. The model draws on an Eastern Orthodox tradition in which hell is the experience of God’s unveiled love by those not prepared to receive it.
↑ 14. For the universalist answer, see Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014); Robin Parry [Gregory MacDonald], The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019); Reitan and Kronen, God’s Final Victory. The freedom worry is the subject of Part IV of this volume.
↑ 15. Reitan and Kronen, God’s Final Victory, ch. 2, "Hellisms: The Species of DH," 12–27. Their taxonomy distinguishes species by two parameters: the impelling causes of damnation (does God reject the sinner, CH2, or does the sinner reject God, CH1?) and the nature of the sufferings (does the suffering include retributive torments inflicted by God, NH1a, or only the inherent loss of the beatific vision, NH2?). By crossing these axes they generate six species, from the Classical Doctrine of Hell (DH1–DH3, combining CH2 with various forms of NH) through the Liberal Doctrine (DH5–DH6, combining CH1 with NH1b or NH2). See esp. 14–23. For a preliminary assessment of the difficulties each species faces, see 23–27.
↑ 15b. Reitan and Kronen make this methodological point explicitly: "arguments that may work against some species of DH may not work against others. For example, the argument that it would be unfair of God to punish a person forever for a temporally finite sin, while applicable to species of DH that regard damnation as retributive punishment for earthly sins, has no force against species of DH that regard damnation as the natural outcome of forever rejecting God’s love." God’s Final Victory, 12.
↑ 16. Manis argues that under theological determinism, "the problems of justice and love become considerably more severe." If God determines who will be damned, then the damned are not merely permitted to suffer but caused to suffer by divine decree. See Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 67–76. Reitan and Kronen call this the “Classical Doctrine of Hell” (their DH1–DH3, all combining CH2 with various forms of suffering), “the perspective most commonly expressed in medieval Catholic and Protestant Orthodox theology.” Under this view, “the eternal alienation of the damned is directly intended by God and so cannot be viewed as God’s failure or defeat.” God’s Final Victory, 21, 27.
↑ 17. The question of whether freedom can resist God forever is the subject of Chapter 17 of this volume. Reitan and Kronen argue that the free-will version of the doctrine of hell entails that "despite all of His infinite resources, despite infinite time in which to work, despite His perfect knowledge of every nuance of the souls of the damned, despite His unrelenting love, His efforts will be for naught. At least in some human souls, sin will prove more powerful than God." They note that "most Christian theologians historically would have responded to [this] with cries of blasphemy." God’s Final Victory, 26–27. See also Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chs. 9–10, and Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation, ch. 5.
↑ 18. Manis himself wrestles with this question in the conclusion of Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 301–05, where he considers the objection that even on his model, God should remain hidden to the damned if hiding would reduce their suffering. His response invokes the idea that divine hiddenness, once its soul-making purpose is achieved, is no longer justified. On the moral degeneracy problem: Reitan and Kronen argue that “for every species of DH, one of the evils that necessarily accompanies damnation is eternal moral degeneracy,” and that “God either cannot, or will not, provide what amounts to a necessary condition for overcoming wickedness. Therefore, all versions of DH commit one to the view that God is either defeated by sin or complicit in its perpetuation.” God’s Final Victory, 25. This global feature of all hell-doctrines, they argue, raises “serious questions about God’s sovereignty, goodness, or both” (25).
↑ 19. On the shape of the case as conviction rather than proof, see Chapter 2 of this volume. On the parting from Hart’s necessitarianism, see Chapter 13.
↑ 20. All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted. The universal salvific will is treated at length in Chapter 4 of this volume.
↑ 21. The Greek adjective aionios (αἰώνιος) is contested. Hart translates it "of the Age" rather than "everlasting." See David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). For a fuller discussion, see Ilaria L. E. Ramelli and David Konstan, Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Texts (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2013). The exegetical question falls outside this book’s philosophical scope; what matters here is that Jesus’s warning is serious and the tension is real.
↑ 22. Robin Parry traces this biblical tension across the canon in The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), chs. 1–5. See also Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chs. 2–3.
↑ 23. This preview of the book’s argument summarizes what is developed in Chapters 14 (middle knowledge), 15 (optimal grace), 17 (the rationality of final rejection), and 21 (divine temporality). The cumulative case is weighed in Chapter 29.
↑ 24. Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ch. 1 (on the philosophical character of the problem) and chs. 7–8 (on the "issuant" view). Kvanvig insists that "any adequate account of hell must begin with an understanding of the nature of God and present the possibilities of heaven and hell as flowing from this one nature." See also Kvanvig, Destiny and Deliberation: Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). For a discussion of Kvanvig’s issuant conception and its implications, see Reitan and Kronen, God’s Final Victory, 45–46.
↑ 25. Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, esp. pt. III and the conclusion. Manis develops the divine-presence model as an alternative to the four standard options, one he believes avoids their worst problems. He writes with appropriate epistemic humility: "I present this view not as the correct one, the one Christians ought to hold, but rather as a view that Christians would do well to entertain."
↑ 26. Jerry L. Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), ch. 5. The phrase "a settled response which is made by one fully informed of the Christian faith" captures Walls’s idea of a "decisive" rejection of God. The concession about finite endurance appears on p. 128: "no finite being can continue endlessly to choose greater and greater misery for himself." See Chapter 11 of this volume for the full engagement.
↑ 27. Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, chs. 1–2 and 7. Her argument is that "defeat" of horrendous evil requires that the sufferer herself be brought to a state where the evil is integrated into a meaningful whole. See also Adams, "The Problem of Hell," 301–27.
↑ 28. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chs. 4–5 (the inconsistent triad). See Chapter 5 of this volume. Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. chs. 6–9 and 17. Walls is not a universalist; see Chapter 11 for his free-will defense.
↑ 29. Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), esp. §0.10, "A Theological Irony: Universalism’s Eclipse of Grace," and ch. 12, "The Eclipse of Grace: An Appraisal," with its subsections on the Problem of God (§12.2), the Problem of Grace (§12.3), the Problem of Belief (§12.4), and the Challenge of Evil (§12.5). James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism: A Comprehensive Guide to the Faulty Appeals Made by Universalists (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018), esp. Part 2, "The Appeal to Emotion and Reason," chs. 4–5, and the excursus "Even Reason Demands That Hell Must Be Everlasting." De Young argues that universalists wrongly subordinate God’s holiness to a human notion of love. Both are engaged at length in Chapters 22–28 of this volume.
↑ 30. Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, chs. 1–2. On the distinction between defeating and merely balancing evils, see also Adams, "The Problem of Hell," 313–15.
↑ 31. This is the key disanalogy. Temporal suffering exists within a narrative that can, in principle, move toward redemption. Endless suffering in hell exists within no such narrative. See Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5, for the argument that an unredeemed eternity of suffering is incompatible with God’s goodness to the sufferer.
↑ 32. Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, ch. 1. Manis endorses this point: skeptical theism is blocked because the purpose of hell is stated. Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 15.
↑ 33. The appeal to continuity in Jesus’s argument (Matthew 7:11) is noted by Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, ch. 1. If even fallen human parents know how to give good gifts, then a perfectly good God would not give a "gift" that includes the eternal torment of His children.