I am going to repost something written by @Rabbi. I took a screenshot of it for keepsake.
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
No matter what Scripture proof-texts one uses to argue that “it is certain that some persons go to Hell”, I am convinced of this:
No one in their right mind would ever propose that everlasting torment is a just form of punishment if he were not first already beholden to the idea that it is “a divinely revealed fact” that some persons are damned to Hell.
In other words, I firmly believe that if it were not for the fact that some people sincerely believe that there are people in Hell/going to Hell, those believers would not have ever come to the view that eternal torment is a defensible and just punishment for a finite offense.
And this is significant to me,
because while “matters of faith cannot be proven by reason”, Catholics also believe that “faith does not contradict reason”.
So, if absent Divine Revelation (or one’s interpretation thereof), the idea of punitive, everlasting torment is repugnant to the rational mind, then…
Believing that there are people in Hell does not - in and of itself - change this natural repugnance. What it does have the power to do is resign a person to the threat of Hell such that he says to himself “Regardless of what I think about the justice of Hell, it exists”.
In other words, it can resign a believer in the same way that it can resign the citizen of a society to the reality of the criminal justice system and its consequences (regardless of whether that citizen is in agreement with the decisions and policies of that system).
But let’s not confuse defending the existence of something with proving its justice. And I think those two issues get conflated in discussions about Hell.
