Why doesn't God annihilate the damned?

[mosher]

but annihilation can also be considered “eternal punishment”

No, because the person is not receiving their due punishment. Rather, they are side stepping their punishment for non-existence. Punishment requires that the individual being punished be conscious of the punishment and experience the same. In annihilation neither of those aspects are present and thus justice is not satisfied.

 

[mosher]

ISTM that the question relies on eternity’s being a sort of time. It’s not. Unlike time, it is without duration - there is no succession of moments in eternity, to allow us to say “that was then, this is now, that will be in the future”. Eternity involves total instantaneousness - a bit as though all time had been crushed into an infinitesimally small dot, only more so. The Big Bang can act as a metaphor for, or a picture of, eternity. God is His Eternity - it is God Who is the “heavenliness” of Heaven.

The one thing that must be said about this is the slight modification that occurs because of eternity becoming aeviternity due to the corporeality of bodies.

 

[james1441]

No, because the person is not receiving their due punishment. Rather, they are side stepping their punishment for non-existence. Punishment requires that the individual being punished be conscious of the punishment and experience the same. In annihilation neither of those aspects are present and thus justice is not satisfied.

i dont know about you but annihilation sounds like a scary punishment to me. would you consider the electric chair a punishment? if so, then consider annihilation a much more eternal electric chair

 

[francisca]

Why doesn’t God simply annihilate these people? In hell, they’re obviously doing no good to (a) themselves, (b) the people in purgatory, (c) the people in heaven, and (d) God himself. What, then, precisely, is gained by torturing people?

I suppose hell means annihilation. They feel tortured because they once existed, now they are not. I guess they will feel sorry forever. No language can discribe it exactly I guess.Who knows.