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Objection 09 · Infinite punishment for finite sin

An eternal hell is unjust.

The objection, in full

Even the worst sinner — Hitler, Stalin, the child murderer — committed at most a few decades of finite wrongs. To punish a finite wrong with infinite torment is moral monstrosity. No human court would do this. A God who would is morally beneath us.

I would rather hell than the heaven of a god who tortures the dead.
— common formulation; cf. Bertrand Russell

or, in plain terms —I'm a decent person and your God would still send me to burn forever?

Augustine
introspective, confessional
354–430

I feared hell because I loved my sin.

When I was unconverted, the doctrine of hell seemed to me an obscenity. After my conversion, I understood: the obscenity was what I had been doing, not what I had been threatened with.

We do not understand hell because we do not understand the weight of refusing love. The wedding feast is set; the bridegroom waits; the only way to be outside is to walk out.

It is a mercy that he warns us. The threat is the sound of the door he is holding open.

Citations Confessions VIII; Enchiridion 112
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam