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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Victor Reppert vs. C.S. Lewis

Reppert: Thirdly, while I do understand hell as a possible outcome so long as people continue to disobey and God, out of respect for their freedom, refuses to forcibly convert them, I do not understand hell as deserved retributive punishment for all sin. That is, I understand a "natural consequences" view of hell but not eternal retribution per se. Source

Lewis: We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a 'case'. (C.S. Lewis The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, 1970, 288).)

Retributive punishment: The retributive notion of punishment in general is that (a) as a foundational matter of justice, criminals deserve punishment, and (b) punishment should be equal to the harm done. Source

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