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. Continue reading “Compassion Without Clemency: When Justice and Mercy Coincide”
| ￪1 | Joseph 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. |
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