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Is Eternal Punishment Justice?

Occasionally the necessity of hell or eternal punishment respectively is explained by using the analogy of a parents/fathers reason to punish their children. The analogy is used to show, that punishment and love do not exclude each other.

Another common analogy used is the one of God as just judge and divine, eternal punishment as an act of justice. This analogy is mainly an appeal to the sense of justness that is inherent to most humans.

In the eyes of a believer there presumably is a difference between human justice and punishment and divine justice and punishment. Yet the analogies applied to explain the rationale behind a presumed God's actions in this regard show the assumption of a tangible parallel between human and divine justice. Human justice is supposedly imperfect in comparison to its divine counterpart and therefore prone to error. Yet it is seen as tainted reflection of the divine justice. At least it is often asserted that our human sense of morality - which is basically a sense of superior justice - is directly derived from the existence of God or gods. This would include - to my understanding - that the reasoning behind applied human (finite) justice is a (weak) resemblance of a presumed God's reasoning behind his applied divine and (allegedly) perfect and eternal justice.

Loving parents punish their children as measure to correct mislead (in the eyes of a parent) behavior, i.e. to adjust the future conduct of the child by application of an adverse stimulus . We consider this punishment as just, because it derives from the urge to protect. Our general justice system works more universally. The threat of punishment is meant as a repellent to those inclined to perpetrate a criminal act. This can be interpreted as being intended to protect citizens from wrongdoing. In case this deterrence or protection mechanism doesn't work, the justice system goes through several levels of punishment. The lower levels (applied according to the particular countries laws) serve a similar correctional purpose as the punishments of parents applied to their children.

Only when a crime is deemed as so severe that no correction can possibly be achieved, punishment is to either remove the criminal from the society to prevent further harm or to bring a sense of justice and satisfaction to the victim(s) and their relatives (this can be interpreted as revenge) or – as a third possibility - to underline the deterring character of the threat of punishment to others by setting an example. The highest level of human punishment, i.e. punishment by death, is therefore only reserved for the most severe crimes against other humans. At least in countries with a modern justice system that still applies the death penalty (there are several modern societies that reject this form of penalty for good reasons to be discussed elsewhere).

From these considerations arise severe problems for our understanding of divine, eternal justice and punishment: An eternal punishment administered by a presumed God cannot fulfill any correctional purpose, as there is no chance of corrected, future behavior (the punishment is supposed to be everlasting). This means the parental sense of punishment as correctional, protective method is not applicable to God's divine, eternal form of punishment. A punishment out of love would necessarily have to be applied to humans (as "God's children") during life or at least for a finite duration to fulfill this purpose. The same reasoning applies to low level punishments of a justice system. There are no low level correctional punishments in a presumed God's eternal justice system with everlasting punishment.

The higher level punishments that are applied to remove criminal from society are also not applicable in a divine sense, because a removal from the eternal, heavenly society would not call for a hell, even in the sense of an eternal consciously suffered separation from God. Furthermore justice and satisfaction for the victims or their relatives become moot, as the victims are either in paradise (which is supposed to be the ultimate justice and satisfaction, regardless of the fate of others and which is in some interpretations even associated with a loss of all past memories), or the victims and/or their relatives are also in hell for crimes (sins) of their own. Then their own suffering should prevent them from feeling justified or satisfied. The third possible reason for punishment, deterring others from crimes, is also not applicable after the divine judgment day and the dawn of eternity. There are no souls left that might be deterred from evil by the example made of the souls burning in hell, according to popular Christian believe.

The only possible reason that is left for an eternal punishment is a satisfaction of God's own desire for revenge, because God would be the only entety in a position to appreciate the punishment of the 'lost' souls. This on the other hand is not considered to be just by human standards (A just judge or loving parent doesn't punish out of a personal desire for revenge).

According to this reasoning, either the analogies commonly used to explain the need for eternal punishment are plain wrong, or these analogies reveal a inherently unjust character of the presumed God himself.

If the analogies are wrong, God's actions cannot be explained by the use of the human terms "justice", i.e. God isn't just. Therefore the explanation of our human sense of justice as a reflection of divine justice collapses, and God's justice can no longer explain the origin of human justice. If God is a vengeful judge, working for his own satisfaction, the same would apply, because divine justice would not resemble reasoned and explainable human justice.

So either one can leave the question for the "why" of divine, eternal punishment/justice completely unanswered (i.e. no use of fatally flawed analogies), or one can redefine the word justice in connection with divinity (i.e. "divine justice" means something very different from "human justice", a word redefinition of the kind that is fatal to all communication), or we have to come to the conclusion that either the common Christian understanding of “God's justice” is wrong, or that God is imaginary and the concept of human justice simply got extended into the jurisdiction of a supernatural, eternal, all knowing judge to generate a functioning deterrent for all crimes and criminals unseen by humans, while ignoring all the inconsistency the notion of eternal punishment in connection with perfect justice.

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