This Other Ethical Problem with Eternal Hell

For most of our history, a vast majority of Christians have believed in eternal torment. Today, this doctrine is falling on hard times. The truly traditional view -- that Hell is a fiery place where God will eternally torture his enemies -- has mostly fallen out of fashion. Most thoughtful Christians have moved to the self-imposed C.S. Lewis Hell, which often turns out to be eternal mild unpleasantness. In some quarters, even quite conservative ones, it's increasingly acceptable to believe in annihilationism or universal salvation. This trend is not very mysterious. It's hard to feel any affection for a God who's going to roast your friends forever. And, unless you're extremely angry1 or under immense social pressure to believe otherwise, it's blindingly obvious that nobody deserves such a fate. Perhaps, per retributivism, Himmler deserves to experience exactly what each of his millions of victims did. Yet even that frightful sentence is a speck when compared to eternal Hell. But…