Extract

It might be thought that as hell is either just (in which case it is not evil) or unjust (in which case a just God will not have created it) it affords no particular problem to the theist. Naturally, things are not that simple. If hell is in fact just, why is this so? Does the traditional picture of hell require modification if the justice of hell is to be defended? On the other hand, if hell would not be just, what idea should replace it? Universal salvation? or the annihilation of the wicked? or a hell from which it is possible to escape by repentance? The contributors to this extremely interesting volume set out to answer these and related questions, and come up with some very different answers. All, incidentally, work in the United States, except the editor, who is Canadian.

There are no annihilationists among the sixteen contributors even though, sometimes under the name of ‘conditional immortality’, annihilationism has had able defenders: eternal life is a gift of God’s grace, and human death otherwise would be as final as it has usually been supposed to be for other animals. Annihilationism’s absence here is perhaps a pity. Instead, one paper (that by Brown and Walls) is directed against this view, and another (Keith Yandell) also specifically rejects it, among other errors.

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