Compassion Without Clemency: When Justice and Mercy Coincide

As observed by Joey Dear ten years ago, “Some conditionalists believe that the wicked deserve their annihilation, and some believe that they actually deserve worse but God annihilates them out of mercy.”¹Joseph Dear, “How Conditionalists Approach Wrath, Love, and Other Things,” Rethinking Hell [blog], October 15, 2015, https://rethinkinghell.com/2015/10/15/how-conditionalists-approach-wrath-love-and-other-things/; emphasis added. We at Rethinking Hell are among those conditionalists who take the first view: the damned receive precisely what they deserve. But as Joey also observed, conditionalists who emphasize God’s mercy often don’t, in fact, think the damned get less than they deserve. Joey chalked this up to “cognitive dissonance”: “God is loving and merciful, and so he is merciful even in final punishment. However, the final punishment is not less than the unsaved deserve, but exactly what they deserve.” Recently, however, a different explanation occurred to me, one that vindicates conditionalists who appeal to mercy but nevertheless think the damned will get exactly the justice they deserve.

When some conditionalists say that God shows mercy to the damned in hell by annihilating them, hearers often assume that the conditionalist is using “mercy” to mean something like getting less than what one deserves. This assumption is somewhat reasonable, for this is the primary definition in many dictionaries. Consider the first one listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, for example:

I.1.a. Clemency and compassion shown to a person who is in a position of powerlessness or subjection, or to a person with no right or claim to receive kindness; kind and compassionate treatment in a case where severity is merited or expected, esp. in giving legal judgment or passing sentence.²Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., “mercy,” https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mercy_n?tab=meaning_and_use; emphasis added.

More succinctly, Cambridge first offers, “kindness that makes you forgive someone, usually someone that you have authority over.”³Cambridge English Dictionary, s.v., “mercy,” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mercy; emphasis added. And Merriam-Webster begins with, “1 a compassion, leniency, or restraint (as in imposing punishment) shown especially to an offender or to one subject to the power of another.”⁴Merriam-Webster, s.v., “mercy,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mercy; emphasis added. If this primary definition of “mercy” were the only definition—getting less than what one deserves—then yes, conditionalists who say God shows mercy to the damned in hell could not at the same time say the damned get exactly what they deserve in being finally annihilated. As it turns out, this is not the only definition.

Dictionaries consistently offer at least one additional definition of “mercy,” something like compassionate treatment of people in distress. Oxford, for example, goes on to offer the definition, “I.5 An act of (esp. divine) mercy; an event or circumstance calling for special thankfulness. Now also in weakened sense: a blessing, a relief; a positive aspect to a generally bad situation.”⁵Emphasis added. Cambridge further lists, “an event or situation that you are grateful for because it stops something unpleasant.”⁶Emphasis added. And Merriam-Webster includes, “compassionate treatment of those in distress.”⁷Emphasis added. On this definition, mercy doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what the one treated mercifully deserves; rather, it has to do with reducing or ending their distress. Cambridge offers an illustrative example sentence: “After months of suffering, his death was a mercy.” On this definition, capital punishment can be merciful to a psychopathic serial murderer sentenced to death, not because it’s less than he deserves, but because it brings an end to the distress of his psychopathy and rebellious destructiveness.

This, I think, is why some conditionalists say God shows the damned mercy in hell while also giving them precisely the justice they deserve. It’s not because of cognitive dissonance; it’s because, whether they realize it or not, they’re using “mercy” in its secondary meaning: compassionate treatment of people in distress. By finally destroying the rebellious lost in hell, God is giving them exactly what they deserve—“For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23)—but if the alternative would be continued life in depraved, self-destructive sinfulness and rebellion, tormented by remaining separated from God, then their destruction would simultaneously be compassionate treatment of people in distress. As one annihilationist put it in a comment on Kirk Cameron’s recent Hellgate roundtable discussion, “Final destruction is not only a final and eternal judgment but also ultimately an act of mercy. The wicked are literally put out of their misery; no longer to cause suffering to anyone, including themselves.”⁸Commenter @nsnowman on Kirk Cameron, “Hellgate: The Christian Debate We’re Afraid to Have | The Kirk Cameron Show Ep 102,” January 28, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds3UbUsIaQs&lc=UgzmJbMu1b6q_pBUqDd4AaABAg; emphasis added. The annihilation of the damned is not clemency; it’s not giving them less than what they deserve. But it is arguably mercy, inasmuch as it ends the distress caused by their sinful rebelliousness and separation from God. It may very well be where justice and mercy coincide.

Addendum: Diversity Among Conditionalists a Strength of Conditionalism

My main point in writing this article was to vindicate conditionalists who think the annihilation of the damned in hell is merciful and precisely what they deserve, but it’s worth observing, before I go (so to speak), that diversity of opinion like this among conditionalists is a strength of conditionalism that makes it all the harder to rebut. As Joey puts it toward the end of his article, “because there is a variety of viewpoints on God’s wrath within conditionalism, simply arguing against one approach to God’s wrath is not going to defeat the doctrine. Conditionalism is a broader and more nuanced position than that, and it must be engaged as such.”⁹Dear, “How Conditionalists Approach Wrath, Love, and Other Things.” You may balk at the notion that God could show mercy to the damned while nevertheless giving them precisely what they deserve, but even if you’re right, you cannot debunk conditionalism on those grounds. Many of us conditionalists never speak of the annihilation of the damned in hell as an act of mercy and do not think of it as such. If you reject my explanation above and remain incredulous toward the both-mercy-and-deserved-punishment variation of conditionalism, that’s fine; but if you reject conditionalism altogether for this specific reason, you’re only pretending to examine competing views.

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