A possible defence of non-universalist views of some versions of eternal perdition

 A possible defence of the non-universalist views of some versions of eternal perdition

Suppose that you are a theist that believes both in (1) a loving Creator God and also believe that there is the (2) possibility at least that some human beings will be irreversibly damned. In the case of Christianity, in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 5:43-8) and of Luke (Luke 6:27-36) Jesus said that we should love even our enemies because the Father is also impartial in his love. To quote an excerpt of these texts: "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (Luke 6:35-6; NIV translation). Now, suppose that also (2) is true, i.e. that it is at least possible (if not even certain) that some people will be forever excluded from the participation of the divine life in the Kingdom of God. 

We might reasonably expect that such a loving God would want the salvation of each human being. However, at least at a human level it is true that while loving another person favours the loving response on the part of the beloved it seems that human beings (including me) quite often respond to such a love in a unloving way. Suppose, for instance, that loving parents give life to a child who in adulthood breaks irreversibly the relationship with their parent. Clearly this can happen even to the most loving parents and it is clear that is a tragedy. Perhaps, this can happen even with God, i.e. a situation in which a human being can be so resistant to love that not even a loving God can turn the will of this human being to the good (which, by the way, seems to be the meaning of the word 'repentance' used to translate the Greek word metanoia). Notice that even in the Gospels, sin is not only compared to a debt or referred to a transgression of the law but it is also described as a state of enslavement (cf. John 8:34) and to an illness (cf. Matthew 9:12-3; Mark 2;17; Luke 5:31-2). So, it makes sense to think of it also as a disordered inner condition and/or a cause of a disordered inner condition. If, for instance, one firmly refuses to get a cure for a disease we might expect that the disease becomes incurable precisely becuase of such a rejection. A similar thing might be the case for those who reject the love of God. 

At the same time, though, if God truly desires that no one should be irreversibly lost, it is difficult to conceive how such a loving God would allow that the occurrence of something like death which is so often out of one's control (e.g. when one is killed by other human beings, when one dies suddenly of a natural cause... but I would say that all deaths occur in some degrees in not fully controlled circumstances by the dying) to be the 'decisive moment' after which a salvific repentance in any form becomes impossible. It is clearly strange to me that a loving God would allow that a sinner that God loves will find himself or herself in a state of utterly hopeless loss if there is still room of 'salutary repentance' just because such a sinner died in the wrong moment. Indeed, even the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, which accepts that death is the 'time limit' (see paragraph 1020-1), seems to suggest that God might grant further chances of 'salutary repentance' in a way that isn't accessible to human beings (cf. paragraph 2283). Certainly, I would say that NDEs (near death experiences), no matter how one interprets them, seems to suggest that people can have vivid conscious experiences even in situations in which we generally assume that there is no conscious experience, but I digress. So, we might well think that if we assume that a loving God exists - whose attitude is also described by Luke 6:35-6 quoted above - and also some kind of irreversible loss and exclusion from the Kingdom of God is possible then such a tragic occurrence might be due to a tragic abuse of the faculty of free will on the part of the 'irreversibly lost'. 

At this point, we might well ask ourselves what this condition might be. It seems to me that a state of endless conscious torment (ECT) is obviously worse than oblivion (if you're not convinced, imagine to prolong your worst pain you had in your life endlessly... I guess that even the most 'subtle' forms of suffering would be intolerable if they are truly endless). So, it seems to me that annihilation would be more consistent with the loving character of God than a genuine endless conscious torment. But suppose that one wants to affirm that the 'irreversibly lost' will not be annihilated. In such a case, we might expect that the existence they are given wouldn't be worse than their annihilation. They might be tormented for a period of time but not forever. What happens after such time? Since we are now assuming that they will not be granted the transcendent blessedness Kingdom, we might imagine that after they are punished for some time, torments will stop. However, the damage that they have done to themselves is irrevocable and they can't turn their will to the good in such a complete way in which they can experience the transcendent blessedness of the Kingdom. So, if they remain conscious a state of 'natural beatitude' in which they live an endless existence forever excluded from the Kingdom of God but still better than non-existence is granted to them (this more or less was the scenario imagined by Jacques Maritain, see these posts: https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/08/jacques-maritains-speculations-about.html  and https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/03/hope-vs-justice-iv-on-final-limbo.html). Notice that this still is an infinite punishment: the exclusion from the Kingdom of God is still irreversible and the 'damned' will never experience the transcendent blessedness. Their state is one of infinite loss. But, at the same time, this scenario, like annihilationism, doesn't compel one to believe that a loving God - who is described to be kind to the ungrateful and wicked (Luke 6:35) will give the 'irreversibly lost' a condition that is worse than non-existence. And, perhaps, the view of 'final limbo' might be a way to still accept a state of 'final, irreversible loss' and the statements in the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke that seem to speak of torments and imprisonment that have a limit (cf. Matthew 5:25-6/Luke 12:58-9 and Matthew 18:34-5 and perhaps even Luke 12:47-8).


*Update (05/08): A 'tiered' version of universalism might have been endorsed by the early Jerome in his Commentary on Ephesians (see the section of Jerome of this post: https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/05/possible-traces-of-universalism-in.html). However, this differs from the 'final limbo/natural beatitude' for the damned as this is still an universalist view. *

 

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