A frequent objection raised by annihilationists against traditionalism is that eternal, conscious torment is unjust. Since the Judge of all the earth will do what is just (Genesis 18:25), and since eternal, conscious suffering in hell is unjust, the traditional view simply cannot be true.

J. Gregory Crofford, for example, considers the traditional view of hell to be “a total miscarriage of justice.” He argues that traditionalism “is endless separation from God, unending, conscious punishment for all who reject God during their lifetime, no matter the nature of their offenses.” He asks, “Is that what the Christian God is like?”¹J. Gregory Crofford, The Dark Side of Destiny: Hell Re-examined (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 4.

It is true that God is just and that his judgment will therefore always be just. But we must not force our ideas of justice on him. When it comes to the matter of final punishment, we must allow him to determine what is just.

As we consider the subject of justice, therefore, we must do so by asking what God, in the Bible, has revealed about justice. If we consider the biblical revelation of justice, it should help to formulate our ideas of what ultimate punishment might look like.

Lex talionis

Traditionalists and conditionalists alike appeal to the idea of justice, but their appeals lead to very different conclusions.

The typical traditionalist argument is that sin, since it is committed against an infinitely holy God, is infinitely heinous and therefore deserving of infinite punishment.²Some traditionalists argue that sinners are deserving of infinite punishment because they will continue to sin in hell, thus infinitely raking up additional guilt and therefore additional punishment. It will be this never-ending circle of sin and punishment that keeps sinners eternally tormented in hell. The idea is that the worth of the one sinned against determines the degree of punishment inflicted. It’s something of a feudal idea: If, for example, I punch a random person in the street, I will receive an appropriate degree of punishment for that sin, as determined by the justice system of the country in which I live. It is a far more serious crime, however, to punch the president of my country. If I dared to do that, I would receive a far more serious sentence, because the profile of the person sinned against is greater than the profile of the average person in the street.

Since God is of far greater worth than any human, sinning against him warrants a far greater punishment. The only just punishment for sin against an infinitely worthy being is an infinite punishment.

Conditionalists counter that it is impossible for a finite being to commit an infinite sin. Finite beings, regardless of how long they live, can only commit a finite amount of sin, and finite sin can only warrant finite punishment.

The teaching of the Bible on proportionality of punishment is unambiguous: “If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound” (Exodus 21:23–25). There is nothing in Scripture to suggest that sinning against “worthier” individuals warrants greater punishment. We may have been trained to think that way, but it is not biblical training.³It might be argued that the Bible does, in some instances, hold sins against God worthy of severer punishment than sins against people. When one individual cursed God in the Old Testament, he was sentenced to death, and God set that down as a standard rule (Leviticus 24:10–16). Cursing people, while forbidden, carries no such sanction (Exodus 22:28; Leviticus 19:14)—though one who cursed his parents was potentially liable to death (Exodus 21:17). This is, however, a far cry from the infinite sin against an infinite being argument. There is no direct textual evidence for that philosophical argument.

The argument might be made that lex talionis (the Latin name given to the principle of Exodus 21:23–25) is intended to govern human justice and cannot be applied to divine justice. But the burden of proof is on the one arguing that case. Lex talionis is how God chose to reveal his law of proportionality, and there is no good biblical reason to assume that he operates on another level. The question to be asked is, does a lifetime of finite sin warrant a proportional punishment of eternal, conscious suffering? Does the concept of eternal, conscious torment take seriously the law of just retribution?

Atonement

Any consideration of final punishment must take into consideration Christ’s atonement. As Robert Peterson says, “The cross sheds light on the fate of the wicked, because on the cross the sinless Son of God suffered that fate.”⁴Robert A. Peterson, Hell Under Fire: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1995), 216.

It is a cardinal teaching of Christianity that Jesus paid the price for the sins of those for whom he died. And what was that price? “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Again, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The penalty that Jesus paid for sin was death, not suffering. His death included suffering, to be sure (1 Peter 2:21; 3:18) (though not eternal suffering), but the penalty for sin was death. If the just punishment for sin is eternal, conscious suffering, why did Jesus not suffer consciously for all eternity in order to atone for sin?

The answer is obvious: Eternal, conscious suffering is not the just penalty for sin. The wages of sin is death, and Jesus died to pay the penalty for sin. Those who are not the beneficiaries of his substitutionary death must pay the penalty for their own sins, and that penalty is death. Since Jesus’ death included suffering, the ultimate death of the wicked may well include suffering, but the end result, as it was for Jesus, will be death. Fudge summarizes it well:

The simple truth is that Jesus died; he was not tortured forever. Jesus’ death for sinners does provide a window into the final judgment awaiting the lost. But the view we see through that window is one of suffering that ends in death—not one of everlasting conscious torment. Jesus suffered and died because he was bearing the sin of others. Unlike sinners in hell, he rose again because his own life was perfectly pleasing to the Father. It was “impossible for death to keep its hold” on the perfectly obedient Son of God (Acts 2:24). The apostle Paul literally says that Jesus died “because of” our sin and that he rose again “because of” our justification (Rom 4:25 NASB).⁵Robert A. Peterson and Edward W. Fudge, Two Views of Hell: A Biblical & Theological Dialogue (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 204–5.

This, of course, is not to suggest that traditionalists deny the importance of Jesus’ death. Indeed, a good many traditionalists—among them Peterson⁶Peterson and Fudge, Two Views of Hell, 175. and Blanchard⁷John Blanchard, Whatever Happened to Hell? (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1993), 110.—explicitly affirm that Christ’s death was the substitute for our sin. They generally argue, however, that, because he was God incarnate, Christ’s finite suffering was equal to the infinite suffering that the damned will experience in hell. This appears to be inconsistent, however, because it makes Christ’s death the substitute for human suffering. But the Bible clearly affirms what the gospel is: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). This is not to deny the reality of Christ’s suffering,⁸Indeed, the Scriptures do speak of the significance of his suffering (Isaiah 53:5; Hebrews 5:8; 1 Peter 2:21, 23; Luke 24:46).but his death, not his suffering, is the focus of the gospel. Chris Date is correct:

The pain, anguish, suffering and separation experienced by the Lord on our behalf was not atoning in and of itself. His experience on the cross while alive did not stand alone from the death in which it culminated. Christ suffered, to be sure, but he suffered as part of the process of being executed; so, too, will the risen wicked suffer as part of the process of being executed. But it was primarily the result of Jesus’ execution that atoned for sin.⁹Chris Date, “Cross Purposes: Atonement, Death and the Fate of the Wicked,” https://goo.gl/xE3dOu, retrieved 19 October 2016.

Degrees of Punishment

Traditionalists sometimes argue that annihilationism cannot be considered just because it does not account for degrees of punishment. Surely Adolf Hitler deserves a greater degree of punishing than a kindly old woman whose only obvious fault is an occasional sharp tongue? Traditionalism, they say, accounts for degrees of punishment, because the severity of Hitler’s torment will be greater than that of the sharp-tongued old woman. But if God intends to completely destroy all unbelievers, the punishment is the same.

Annihilations level the same charge at traditionalists. The severity of Hitler’s torment may be greater than that of the old woman, but if both will be tormented for all eternity, the relative severity of the torment becomes insignificant. After a trillion years of torment, at which point it has just begun, it doesn’t seem that the degrees of suffering are all that consequential.

It must be pointed out that annihilationism does not preclude the concept of degrees of punishment. In the parable of the faithful manager, Jesus offered the following interpretation: “And that servant who knew his master’s will and didn’t prepare himself or do it will be severely beaten. But the one who did not know and did what deserved punishment will receive a light beating. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be expected” (Luke 12:47–48). Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this text is discussing final judgment,¹⁰A strong argument can be made that Jesus was actually focused in this text on the first-century destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans rather than the final judgment at the end of the ages.annihilationism certainly can account for the degrees of punishment spoken of here. The destructive process can encompass whatever degree and duration of conscious suffering God determines to be just. But suffering is not, in and of itself, the biblically revealed punishment for sin. The clear testimony of Scripture, from cover to cover, is that the just punishment for sin is death.