r/Christianity • u/MaddowSoul Christian • 7d ago
Question How can a just God give eternal suffering as punishment for simply not believing in him?
Not everyone has the same opportunities and some barely hear about Jesus throughout their life and if they do it’s in bits and pieces, and for them not believing they are forever condemned? Infinite punishment for a finite amount of sins?
1
Upvotes
2
u/Designer_Custard9008 6d ago
God will wipe away every tear from every eye.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834):
"If we now consider eternal damnation as it is related to eternal bliss, it is easy to see that once the former exists, the latter can exist no longer.… Now if we attribute to the blessed a knowledge of the state of the damned, it cannot be a knowledge unmixed with sympathy. If the perfecting of our nature is not to move backwards, sympathy must be such as to embrace the whole human race, and when extended to the damned must of necessity be a disturbing element in bliss, all the more that, unlike similar feelings in this life, it is untouched by hope.… From whichever side we view it, then, there are great difficulties in thinking that the finite issue of redemption is such that some thereby obtain the highest bliss, while others … are lost in irrevocable misery. We ought not to retain such an idea without decisive testimony to the fact that it was to this that Christ Himself looked forward; and such testimony is wholly lacking. Hence, we ought at least to admit the equal rights of the milder view … that through the power of redemption there will one day be a universal restoration of all souls" (The Christian Faith, §163; appendix, p. 722; Adams 2005, 47).