Why does God punish? It might sound like a simple question, but the answer we give shapes everything else we believe about hell, about judgment, and about whether there is any hope for the unsaved after death. If God punishes people simply to give them what they deserve—full stop, end of story—then punishment after death is just a cold, calculated settling of accounts. But if God's punishment has a deeper purpose—if it is meant to correct, to heal, to bring people back to Him—then something very different is going on. Then even the fires of judgment might carry within them the seeds of redemption.
That is the question we need to wrestle with in this chapter. And I believe the answer the Bible gives us is both clear and beautiful. Scripture portrays God's punishment as overwhelmingly redemptive, corrective, and purifying in its purpose—not merely retributive. Yes, God is just, and sin has real consequences. But God's justice is not like a vending machine that mechanically dispenses suffering in exchange for sin. His justice is the justice of a Father who disciplines His children because He loves them and wants to see them restored. And this understanding of divine punishment, I will argue, powerfully supports the possibility that postmortem punishment could lead to repentance and salvation.
We will begin by surveying the three major views of the purpose of divine punishment. Then we will walk through the biblical evidence—both Old and New Testament—that portrays God's punishment as corrective and redemptive. We will engage with key scholars and philosophers who have wrestled with this question, including Thomas Talbott, R. Zachary Manis, Robin Parry, David Burnfield, and Sharon Baker. And we will connect our findings to the book's larger argument for postmortem opportunity.
Throughout the history of Christian theology, three basic views of why God punishes have emerged. Understanding these is essential before we can evaluate what Scripture actually teaches.
The first view is purely retributive punishment. On this view, God punishes sinners because they deserve it—period. Punishment is not intended to accomplish anything beyond balancing the scales of justice. The sinner has committed an offense, and justice demands that they suffer a corresponding penalty. The punishment is not designed to reform the sinner, nor to deter others, nor to bring about any positive outcome. It exists solely to give the guilty what they have coming. This view has deep roots in the Western theological tradition, going back especially to Anselm of Canterbury, who argued that sin is essentially an offense against God's honor that must be compensated through punishment.1
The second view is purely reformative or remedial punishment. On this view, God never punishes for punishment's sake. Every act of divine punishment is intended to bring about the correction, healing, and restoration of the one being punished. Pain and suffering are not ends in themselves but are tools God uses to wake people up, to break through their stubbornness, and to draw them back to Himself. Advocates of this view often point to the analogy of a surgeon who causes pain not to hurt the patient but to heal them.
The third view is a mixed or integrated view, which holds that God's punishment is both just retribution and redemptive discipline. On this understanding, there is a real element of justice in divine punishment—sin does deserve a response, and God takes it seriously. But the purpose of that response is never mere payback. Even when God's punishment is severe, it is always aimed at the ultimate good of the one being punished, or at least holds open the possibility of restoration. The retributive element ensures that justice is real; the reformative element ensures that love remains at the heart of everything God does.
I believe the evidence we will examine in this chapter strongly supports the third view, with heavy emphasis on the redemptive dimension. God's punishment is real and just—but it is the justice of a loving Father, not the cold calculations of a cosmic accountant.
Key Thesis: God's punishment throughout Scripture is overwhelmingly portrayed as having a redemptive, corrective, and purifying purpose—not merely retributive. This understanding supports the possibility that postmortem punishment could be the very means by which God draws the unsaved to repentance and faith.
The Old Testament gives us some of the clearest evidence that God's punishment is fundamentally corrective. Let's walk through the key passages.
Moses tells Israel:
"Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you" (Deuteronomy 8:5, ESV).
Notice the analogy God Himself chooses. He does not compare His punishment to a judge sentencing a criminal or a king executing a traitor. He compares it to a father disciplining his child. And what is the purpose of a father's discipline? Not to destroy the child, not to satisfy some abstract demand for justice, but to train, correct, and grow the child into maturity. This is the foundational image for understanding everything the Bible says about divine punishment. The God of Israel is a Father, and His punishment is parental discipline.
The wisdom tradition reinforces this fatherly image:
"My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights" (Proverbs 3:11–12, ESV).
This passage is so important that the author of Hebrews quotes it directly in the New Testament (as we will see below). The key insight is unmistakable: divine punishment flows from divine love. God does not punish because He hates us or because He is offended and demands satisfaction. He reproves us precisely because He loves us and delights in us. As Burnfield rightly observes, this "goes completely against the idea of God throwing people into hell for no purpose other than to inflict vengeance."2
What father who truly loves his son would torture that son endlessly with no possibility of correction or restoration? As Burnfield asks, "What father would torture his son non-stop? Worse yet, what father would continue to torture his son after the son was crying out to this father that he was sorry and wished to be forgiven?"3 The question answers itself.
One of the most powerful images of corrective punishment in the Old Testament comes from Isaiah:
"Therefore the Lord declares, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: 'Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes. I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city'" (Isaiah 1:24–26, ESV).
Look at the language here. God is angry, yes. He speaks of vengeance and judgment. But what does He actually do? He smelts away dross. He removes alloy. This is the language of purification, not destruction. When a refiner puts metal into the fire, the goal is not to destroy the metal—it is to purify it. The fire removes what is impure and leaves behind what is precious. And the result of God's "vengeance" here is stunning: restoration. "Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness." The punishment has a destination, and that destination is not ruin but renewal.
Jeremiah records God's words to His exiled people:
"For I am with you to save you, declares the LORD ... I will discipline you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished" (Jeremiah 30:11, ESV).
Two things stand out. First, God explicitly says He is with Israel "to save" them—even as He is disciplining them. The discipline and the salvation are not opposed; they are part of the same act of love. Second, the discipline is "in just measure"—it is proportional, limited, purposeful. It is not infinite punishment for finite offenses. It is measured correction aimed at a specific goal.
In Hosea, God describes the intended outcome of His punishment with beautiful clarity:
"I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. 'Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up'" (Hosea 5:15–6:1, ESV).
This is extraordinary. God Himself says He withdraws and allows suffering "until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face." The purpose of the punishment is to bring about repentance. God tears so that He may heal. He strikes down so that He may bind up. This is not the language of vindictive retribution. This is the language of a doctor who causes temporary pain to bring about lasting healing.
Think about the word "until." It is one of the most important words in the entire passage. God does not say, "I will withdraw from them forever because they have offended My honor." He says He will withdraw "until" they acknowledge their guilt. The punishment has a goal. It has a destination. And when that goal is reached—when repentance comes—God is ready and waiting to heal. The word "until" tells us that God's punishment is not an endless, purposeless infliction of suffering. It is a purposeful act of love aimed at a specific result.
And notice the people's response in Hosea 6:1—"Come, let us return to the LORD." The punishment actually worked. It accomplished what it was designed to do. It drove the people back toward God rather than further away from Him. This is the pattern of corrective discipline: pain that leads to reflection, reflection that leads to repentance, and repentance that leads to restoration. It is the same pattern a loving parent follows with a wayward child. The pain is real, but it is not the point. The point is the return.
Ezekiel provides another stunning example of God's purifying judgment. In Ezekiel 22, God compares Israel to impure metal and declares that He will gather them into a furnace:
"As men gather silver, bronze, iron, lead, and tin into the midst of a furnace, to blow fire on it, to melt it; so I will gather you in My anger and in My fury, and I will leave you there and melt you" (Ezekiel 22:20, NKJV).
The language is terrifying—anger, fury, melting. But what is the purpose of melting metal in a furnace? It is to separate the dross from the precious material. God is not trying to destroy Israel. He is trying to purify them. And sure enough, just a few chapters later in Ezekiel 36, we see the glorious result of this purifying fire:
"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:25–26, NKJV).
As Hurd observes, this passage reveals that God's wrath against His beloved Israel takes the form of purifying fires of affliction. God sets Himself against His people and throws them into the fire as silver, bronze, or lead. But the furnace is intended to separate the dross from their lives. The end result is that they come forth from the furnace purified and separate from sin.46 The fire that looks like wrath is actually love in disguise—fierce love, painful love, but love nonetheless.
This Ezekiel passage is especially important for our broader argument because it demonstrates that even God's most extreme judgments—judgments described with language of fury and consuming fire—have purification as their goal. If we were to read only Ezekiel 22 without knowing the rest of the story, we might assume God was simply destroying Israel in His anger. But Ezekiel 36 reveals the purpose behind the fury: new hearts, clean spirits, restoration. The fire was never the end of the story. The fire was the pathway to something beautiful.
The prophet Malachi uses one of Scripture's most vivid images of divine judgment:
"But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD" (Malachi 3:2–3, ESV).
The day of the Lord is terrifying, yes. But it is terrifying like a refiner's fire is terrifying—to the dross, not to the gold. The purpose of the fire is purification. God sits patiently, like a silversmith watching the molten metal, waiting for the impurities to rise to the surface so He can skim them away. And the end result? The purified ones "bring offerings in righteousness." The fire leads to worship, not to annihilation.
The Pattern in the Old Testament: Again and again, we see the same pattern: rebellion, followed by punishment, followed by repentance, followed by restoration. Burnfield captures this pattern beautifully in his analysis of Psalm 107: "Rebellion (v. 11), followed by punishment (v. 12), followed by repentance (v. 13), resulting in salvation (v. 13)." The purpose of the punishment was not revenge but "to bring about humility and contrition."4 This pattern runs throughout Israel's history like a golden thread.
Burnfield makes a powerful observation about the overall structure of God's dealings with Israel in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. In both passages, we see the same three-part structure: blessings for obedience (Lev. 26:1–13), curses for disobedience (Lev. 26:14–39), and then—crucially—the repeal of curses upon repentance (Lev. 26:40–45). As Burnfield notes, "If God's punishments were retributive, we'd never have verses 40–45. The story would end at verse 39 where the people are being punished."5 The fact that the story continues—the fact that God always holds the door open for return—tells us something essential about the nature of His punishment. It is designed to bring about a change, not to close the book forever.
If there is a single passage in the New Testament that speaks most directly to the purpose of God's punishment, it is Hebrews 12:5–11. This passage is so important for our argument that we need to look at it in full:
"And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? 'My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.' It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:5–11, ESV).
Let me draw out several crucial observations from this passage.
First, the passage explicitly quotes Proverbs 3:11–12, linking God's New Testament discipline directly to the Old Testament pattern of fatherly correction. There is no break, no discontinuity. The God who disciplined Israel as a Father is the same God who disciplines believers now.
Second, the purpose of divine discipline is stated with crystal clarity: "He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness" (v. 10). Not for His own satisfaction. Not to balance the cosmic scales. For our good. The goal is that we become holy—that we become like Him. This is breathtaking. The purpose of divine punishment is transformation, not mere retribution.
Third, the result of discipline is described in equally clear terms: "the peaceful fruit of righteousness" (v. 11). Discipline that is endured and received produces something beautiful—peace, righteousness, maturity. This is the fruit of a process that is working toward a goal, not the meaningless suffering of a punishment that serves no purpose.
Fourth—and this is a point Burnfield makes with great force—the passage says "everyone undergoes discipline" (v. 8). If God disciplines all His children for their good, and if God's discipline produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness, then what are we to make of a punishment after death that has no corrective purpose whatsoever?6
Now, I can hear the objection already: "But Hebrews 12 is talking about the discipline of believers in this life, not the punishment of unbelievers after death." That is true as far as it goes. The immediate context is indeed the suffering of believers. But here is the crucial question: Does God's character change at the moment of death? Does the God who disciplines His children "for their good" in this life suddenly become a God who punishes purely for retribution after death? Does the Father become a different kind of being when the grave intervenes?
I don't think so. As Burnfield argues, even if Hebrews 12 is primarily about earthly punishment, "it's still a description of God's disciplinary methods and so it's quite logical to conclude they would hold true in regards to eschatological punishment as well."7 God's character does not change. If God's discipline in this life is corrective, there is every reason to believe His punishment after death would follow the same pattern—because He is the same God.
A Key Question: If God disciplines believers in this life "for our good, that we may share his holiness" (Hebrews 12:10), on what basis do we conclude that His punishment of unbelievers after death has no redemptive purpose whatsoever? Would a God whose very nature is love suddenly abandon His corrective purposes at the moment of physical death?
One of the most fascinating pieces of evidence in this discussion involves the Greek words for punishment. As we explored in detail in Chapter 20, the Greek language has different words for different kinds of punishment, and the word Jesus chose in Matthew 25:46 is deeply significant.
The word Jesus used in Matthew 25:46 is kolasis (κόλασις). In classical Greek, this word carries the meaning of corrective or remedial punishment—punishment aimed at improving the one being punished. It is distinguished from timōria (τιμωρία), which refers to retributive punishment—punishment aimed at satisfying the one who inflicts it. The famous distinction goes all the way back to Aristotle, who wrote in his Rhetoric: "Kolasis is for the sake of the one punished; timōria is for the sake of the one punishing, that he may receive satisfaction."8
As the Greek scholar William Barclay observed, kolasis "originally meant the pruning of trees to make them grow better. I think it is true to say that in all Greek secular literature kolasis is never used of anything but remedial punishment."9 The imagery is striking: pruning is an act of removal, yes, but its purpose is growth, not destruction. You prune a tree because you want it to flourish.
The significance of this cannot be overstated. When Jesus wanted to describe the punishment awaiting the wicked in Matthew 25:46, He did not use timōria—the word for vindictive punishment. He used kolasis—the word for corrective punishment. As Hurd observes, the Pharisees of Jesus' day, who did believe in eternal vindictive punishment, used very different language: phrases like aidios timōria ("eternal torture") and eirgmos aidios ("eternal prison").10 Jesus deliberately chose a different word—one with corrective, redemptive overtones.
I will not reproduce the full lexical analysis here, since that belongs to Chapter 20's extended treatment. But the point for our present discussion is clear: the very word Jesus selected to describe eschatological punishment carries built-in connotations of correction and restoration, not mere revenge. This is exactly what we would expect if God's punishment has a redemptive purpose.
The question of whether purely retributive punishment is consistent with the character of a loving God has generated one of the most important philosophical debates in the doctrine of hell. Let me engage with three key thinkers who have addressed this question: Thomas Talbott, R. Zachary Manis, and Robin Parry.
Thomas Talbott, in his influential book The Inescapable Love of God, provides one of the most searching critiques of the retributive theory of punishment ever written. According to the retributive theory, the justification for punishment "has nothing to do with deterring crime, or with rehabilitating the criminal, or with protecting society from criminal behavior." The only justification for punishment as punishment "is that it serves the cause of justice."11
Talbott acknowledges that retributivism has some real strengths. Retributivists have rightly pointed out that justice matters—we should not punish innocent people for the sake of deterrence, and we should not subject criminals to excessive treatment for the sake of rehabilitation. The retributivist insistence that punishment should fit the crime is an important moral intuition.12
But Talbott identifies what he calls a "fatal flaw" in the retributive theory. He points to Anselm's argument that since God is infinite, any offense against Him is infinitely serious and therefore warrants infinite punishment. Talbott argues that Anselm was actually right about one thing: no finite punishment can ever fully "pay for" a sin. But Anselm drew the wrong conclusion. Instead of recognizing that this shows retributivism is flawed—that punishment simply cannot balance the scales of justice—Anselm concluded that only infinite punishment would do the job.13
The truth, Talbott argues, is that "punishment is simply not the sort of thing that could pay for any offense; it is no equipoise at all for sin." Justice requires "something of a different nature altogether"—namely, repentance, reconciliation, and restoration.14 On Talbott's view, God's punishment is always redemptive. God does not shield sinners from the natural consequences of their sin—because that would be at cross-purposes with His goal of bringing about their restoration. But the suffering they experience is never an end in itself. It is always a means to a redemptive end.15
As the author of Hebrews puts it, even harsh punishment—"a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries" (Hebrews 10:27)—must be understood within a Pauline framework as an expression of mercy. God's mercy, Talbott writes, "consists in just this: he will continue to hold our feet to the coals until the adversary—that is, the false self—is utterly consumed."16
Talbott also raises a devastating problem of proportionality for the retributive view. He points out that the Old Testament principle of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (Leviticus 24:17–20) was actually designed to limit punishment—to prevent excessive punishment, not to justify harsh penalties. The idea was simple: measure the seriousness of the crime by the degree of harm done, and match the punishment to the crime. Given this principle, Talbott asks, for what sort of crime might everlasting torment be a just retaliation? He argues that the only crime that could possibly warrant everlasting suffering would be one in which the perpetrator inflicted everlasting suffering on someone else. But if God is omnipotent and perfectly loving, He would never permit such irreparable harm in the first place.47
Furthermore, Talbott observes that the idea that all sins against an infinite God are infinitely serious—and therefore warrant infinite punishment—actually undermines the very intuition that makes retributivism plausible in the first place. If all sins are equally infinite, then there can be no meaningful differences in the severity of punishment. But we would hardly consider a king just who "executes every law-breaker, the jaywalker no less than the murderer." And yet this is exactly what the traditional retributive view of hell implies: everyone, from the mass murderer to the person who simply never heard the gospel, receives essentially the same sentence—eternal separation from God.48
I find Talbott's critique largely convincing, though I would nuance it in one important way. I do not think we should reject retribution entirely. There is a real element of justice in God's response to sin—sin deserves consequences, and God takes it seriously. What I reject is pure retribution—retribution as the sole purpose of punishment with no redemptive dimension. The Bible never presents us with a God who inflicts suffering simply for the sake of balancing cosmic ledgers. As we have seen, God's punishment in Scripture always has a purpose beyond mere payback.
R. Zachary Manis offers a different but complementary perspective in his important book Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God. Manis identifies what he calls the "retribution thesis"—the claim that "hell's purpose is to inflict punishment on the wicked as recompense for earthly wrongdoing"17—and argues that it generates severe problems for any view of hell that embraces it.
The most acute problem is what Manis calls the "problem of love." If God loves every person, and if divine love (agape) involves willing the highest good of the beloved, then how can God subject anyone to purely retributive punishment? A purely retributive punishment is, by definition, not aimed at the moral improvement of the person being punished. And if it is not aimed at their highest good, how can it be an expression of love?18
Manis considers several possible responses. Perhaps God's punishment of the wicked is an act of love toward the victims of injustice, vindicating their dignity. Perhaps the promotion of the dignity of the damned is itself a good. But Manis finds these responses ultimately insufficient. The problem is not whether eternal punishment could be an act of love in some abstract sense, but whether it could be an act of love for the damned. And a purely retributive punishment, Manis argues, fails this test: "In order to love persons who are not yet holy, one must will their moral improvement, insofar as one is able."19
Manis's own solution—the divine presence model—achieves what he calls "a balance between the biblical motifs of retribution and restoration." On this model, God's aim "is always toward restoration, and His intention is the salvation of every person." The damned do experience something that functions like retributive punishment, but this is not God's intent. Rather, it is the inevitable result of being in the full, unshielded presence of a holy God as an unrepentant sinner. Hell has a "retributive function" but not a "retributive intent."20
This is a crucial distinction for our argument. If God does not intend punishment as pure retribution—if His aim is always restoration—then the experience of divine judgment, even after death, is not a closed door but potentially an open one. The fire of God's presence is agonizing for the unrepentant not because God wants them to suffer, but because their sin makes His love unbearable. But that same fire could also be the means of their purification, if they would only turn toward God rather than away from Him. (We will explore this at much greater length in Chapters 23–23C.)
Robin Parry (writing as Gregory MacDonald in The Evangelical Universalist) makes a similar but distinctly biblical argument. He notes that throughout Scripture, God's punishment of Israel and of the nations follows the same pattern: it is "retributive but also restorative," "deserved but also corrective."21
Parry challenges the common assumption that God's punishment of believers is corrective while His punishment of unbelievers is purely retributive. If Israel's exile parallels the general human condition of expulsion from Eden, and if God's covenant with Israel reflects a broader covenant with all of creation, then "God's punishment of Israel/the church is of the same order as his punishment of humanity in general."22 The same God who punished Israel with exile—and then restored them—is the God who judges all humanity. And if His character does not change, we should expect His punishment of all people to follow the same corrective pattern.
As Parry beautifully summarizes: "Once we see that God's justice is more than mere retribution but is also restorative, and once we see that divine punishments are more than deserved but also corrective, then a way is open to see God's final punishment as another manifestation of this very same justice and not something qualitatively different."23
The Emerging Consensus: Across a wide spectrum of theological perspectives—from Talbott's universalism, to Manis's divine presence model, to Parry's evangelical universalism, to Baker's annihilationism-with-divine-presence—we see a growing recognition that purely retributive models of divine punishment face severe problems. The question is not whether God's punishment involves justice, but whether justice is the whole story. All of these thinkers agree: it is not. God's love permeates even His acts of judgment.
David Burnfield, in his book Patristic Universalism, devotes an entire chapter to the purpose of punishment and provides extensive evidence from both Scripture and the early Church Fathers that divine punishment is corrective in nature.24
Burnfield begins with a careful survey of biblical passages that describe the healing purpose of punishment. He highlights Proverbs 20:30—"Stripes that wound scour away evil, and strokes reach the innermost parts"—as a passage where "the purpose of God's discipline is not to inflict vengeance but to improve the one being punished. The end result is to remove evil and cleanse the soul."25 Similarly, Proverbs 22:15 ("The rod of discipline will remove foolishness far from him") and Proverbs 23:14 ("If you strike him with the rod, you will deliver him from death") both describe discipline as benefiting the one being punished, not the one delivering the correction.
Burnfield then makes a striking observation about the cross itself: the punishment endured by Jesus Christ was delivered to heal us. "He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5, ESV). If the most significant act of divine punishment in all of history—the cross—had a redemptive purpose, does this not tell us something fundamental about the nature of all God's punishments?26
Burnfield also brings forward an important argument from Psalm 107, which he sees as a summary of how God operates: "Rebellion (v. 11), followed by punishment (v. 12), followed by repentance (v. 13), resulting in salvation (v. 13)." The punishment was not to inflict revenge but to bring about humility and contrition. And only after the punishment achieved its purpose did God bring about deliverance.27
Perhaps most importantly for our discussion, Burnfield draws on the testimony of the early Church Fathers. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215), one of the most learned Christian writers of the early centuries, wrote plainly about the corrective nature of God's punishment: "God does not punish, for punishment is retaliation for evil. He chastises, however, for good to those who are chastised." Clement also described punishment as being "in its operation, like medicine; it dissolves the hard heart, purges away the filth of uncleanness, and reduces the swellings of pride and haughtiness; thus restoring its subject to a sound and healthful state."28
Even more remarkable is Clement's assertion that "God's punishments are saving and disciplinary leading to conversion … and especially since souls, although darkened by passions, when released from their bodies, are able to perceive more clearly because of their being no longer obstructed by the paltry flesh."29 Notice that Clement explicitly extends God's corrective discipline beyond death. Souls after death, freed from the limitations of the body, are actually more capable of perceiving truth and responding to God's correction. This is precisely the kind of postmortem correction that supports our broader argument.
Burnfield further notes that the theologian Isaak Dorner argued for the possibility of moral progress in the intermediate state, even for believers who had not yet achieved sinlessness at the time of death. Dorner wrote that "not merely would nothing of essential importance remain for the Judgment, if every one entered the place of his eternal destiny directly after death, but in that case also no space would be left for a progress of believers, who still are not sinless at the moment of death."30 If even believers need further sanctification after death, how much more might the unsaved benefit from God's corrective discipline in the intermediate state?
One of the most overlooked arguments against purely retributive, eternal punishment comes from Jesus' own teaching about degrees of punishment. In Luke 12:47–48, Jesus says:
"And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more" (Luke 12:47–48, ESV).
Similarly, in Matthew 11:21–24, Jesus declares that it will be "more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon" than for the cities that rejected His ministry.
Burnfield makes a simple but devastating point about these passages: "If the degree of punishment depends on the crime, then hell cannot be eternal for how can you have degrees of eternality?"31 This is common sense. "Few" stripes will take less time to deliver than "many" stripes. The very concept of degrees of punishment implies measurement, proportion, and limit. You cannot have "many" eternal stripes versus "few" eternal stripes—because eternal is eternal. The language of proportional punishment only makes sense if the punishment has a defined duration.
As Hurd similarly observes, the word "portion" (meros in Greek, meaning "that which is merited") is used in connection with punishment in several passages (Luke 12:46; Matthew 24:51; Revelation 21:8). "That which is 'a part' is a measured punishment. … If the punishment were infinite, then it couldn't be said to be a part or portion."32
Furthermore, Jesus uses the word "until" in several punishment parables: "You will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny" (Matthew 5:26); "His master … delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him" (Matthew 18:34). As Hurd notes, "A punishment cannot be forever and at the same time last until."33 The word "until" implies a process with an endpoint—which is exactly what we would expect if punishment is corrective rather than merely retributive.
These observations do not by themselves prove that postmortem punishment leads to salvation. But they strongly suggest that God's punishment is measured, proportional, and purposeful—characteristics far more consistent with corrective discipline than with pure retribution.
Another passage that sheds important light on the purpose of divine punishment is Paul's description of the judgment of believers' works in 1 Corinthians 3:12–15:
"Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:12–15, ESV).
Notice several things about this passage. First, the fire is a testing and purifying fire. It burns away what is worthless (wood, hay, straw) and preserves what is valuable (gold, silver, precious stones). This is exactly the same pattern we saw in Isaiah 1 and Malachi 3. Second, even a believer whose works are entirely consumed suffers loss but is still "saved, yet so as through fire." The fire is painful but not ultimately destructive of the person. Third, the passage applies to believers—people who are already saved. Even the saved must pass through the purifying fire.
Burnfield uses this passage to argue that if even believers undergo purifying fire after death, then the concept of postmortem purification is already present in Paul's theology.34 Sharon Baker draws a similar conclusion: "It seems that in the final judgment, everyone will go through the fire—through the fire that surrounds God, comes from God, and is God. Because fire burns away impurities, any pure works built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ will remain."35
Manis also engages with this passage in his appendix, noting that for some believers, the Day of Judgment "will not be entirely without pain or regret. Perhaps the first exposure to the glorified Christ is a refining experience for these believers, the completion of their process of sanctification: in traditional terms, an experience of purgatory."36 If this is true for believers, might not the same fiery presence of God serve a purgatorial—and potentially salvific—function for unbelievers as well?
One more passage deserves mention because it illustrates how even the harshest punishment in the New Testament has an explicitly redemptive purpose. In 1 Corinthians 5:5, Paul instructs the Corinthian church to "deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."
This is remarkable. Paul prescribes what sounds like a terrible punishment—being handed over to Satan, destruction of the flesh—but he states the purpose plainly: "so that his spirit may be saved." As Talbott observes, "One might never have guessed that, in prescribing such a punishment—that is, delivering a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh—Paul had in mind a corrective purpose, had Paul not explicitly stated the corrective purpose himself."37
This passage is a powerful warning against assuming that severe punishment necessarily excludes a redemptive purpose. Even punishment that looks purely destructive on the surface may, in God's economy, be aimed at ultimate restoration. The harshness of the penalty does not negate its corrective intent.
The Biblical Pattern Is Clear: From Deuteronomy to Hebrews, from the Proverbs to Paul's letters, the consistent witness of Scripture is that God's punishment flows from His love, is proportioned to the offense, and is aimed at the correction and restoration of the one being punished. Even the harshest forms of divine discipline—refining fire, exile, being handed over to Satan—are consistently oriented toward redemptive ends.
Sharon Baker, in her accessible and thought-provoking book Razing Hell, illustrates the corrective purpose of divine punishment through a powerful personal story and an imaginative narrative.
Baker tells the story of her own sons, who as young children made the dangerous decision to walk home from school along busy highways. When she picked them up from the police station, they expected the worst—"spanking, grounding, no TV, no Nintendo, but plenty of anger, wrath, weeping, and gnashing of teeth." But instead, Baker and her husband simply cried. They showed their sons the depth of their pain and love. And the result was transformative: "When they saw the extent of our pain and realized the love we had for them, they broke down in tears, apologizing to us, hugging us, and telling us they wouldn't do such a stupid thing again." Baker draws the parallel: "Our love, rather than harsh judgment and strict punishment, served as judgment enough and brought them to repentance."38
Baker then applies this insight to the final judgment through the imaginative narrative of "Otto"—an exceptionally wicked person who approaches God's throne expecting punishment but instead encounters overwhelming love. In the presence of God, Otto experiences not the wrath he expected but the agonizing realization of the pain he has caused others. God's love itself functions as the judgment, eliciting deep remorse and, ultimately, repentance.39
This is not a denial that God's judgment is real or painful. Baker is clear that standing in the fire of God's presence is agonizing for the unrepentant. But the agony is not arbitrary cruelty. It is the natural result of encountering perfect Love while carrying the burden of unacknowledged sin. And the purpose of the agony is not retribution but transformation.
Baker's framework closely parallels the view I have been developing throughout this book: that the fire of God's presence purifies those who repent and consumes those who refuse. (For a much fuller treatment of Baker's fire-as-God's-presence thesis, see Chapter 23B.)
Let me now pull together the threads of this chapter and show how our findings support the broader argument for postmortem opportunity.
If God's punishment is purely retributive—if it exists solely to exact payment for sin with no redemptive purpose—then there is no reason to expect that punishment after death could ever lead to salvation. A purely retributive hell is a closed system. People go in and receive what they deserve, forever and ever, with no possibility of change or redemption. The punishment accomplishes nothing beyond satisfying an abstract demand for justice.
But if God's punishment has a corrective purpose—if it is designed to break through human stubbornness, expose the true nature of sin, and draw people toward repentance—then the experience of divine judgment after death becomes something radically different. It becomes a potential doorway to salvation. The fire of God's presence that is experienced as torment by the unrepentant could, for those who finally turn toward God, become the very means of their purification and redemption.
This is not a foreign idea being imposed on the biblical text. It is the natural conclusion of taking seriously what Scripture tells us about God's character and purposes. We saw that the Old Testament portrays God as a Father who disciplines for correction, a refiner who purifies through fire, a God who tears so that He may heal. We saw that Hebrews 12 explicitly states that divine discipline is "for our good" and produces "the peaceful fruit of righteousness." We saw that Jesus used the word kolasis—corrective punishment—to describe eschatological judgment. We saw that Paul prescribed even the harshest punishments with explicitly redemptive goals. We saw that the early Church Fathers, closest in time and language to the apostles, understood divine punishment as remedial and restorative.
All of this converges on a single, powerful conclusion: God's punishment after death is not a dead end. It is an expression of the same love that pursues us in this life. And that means there is hope—real, biblical hope—that even after death, God's corrective discipline can lead sinners to repentance and faith.
Let me be specific about how this works within the framework I have been developing throughout this book. I believe that after death, unsaved persons enter a conscious intermediate state (see Chapter 9) where they are aware and capable of reflection, decision, and response. During this time—and especially at the final judgment—they encounter God's full presence (see Chapters 23–23C). That encounter is experienced as painful and overwhelming by those who are not oriented toward God, because God's holy love exposes their sin in a way that nothing else can. But this pain is not purposeless. It is the pain of a refiner's fire. It is designed to break through the layers of self-deception, pride, and rebellion that have kept the person from God.
For those who respond to this encounter with repentance—who turn toward the light rather than away from it—the fire becomes purifying. Their sin is burned away, and what remains is the image of God in them, ready to be restored to its full glory. For those who refuse—who persist in their rejection of God even when confronted with the full reality of His love—the fire becomes destructive. Not because God wants to destroy them, but because there is nothing left when the evil is consumed. As I have argued elsewhere (see Chapter 31), this is the conditionalist understanding of final destruction: it is not God hatefully annihilating sinners, but the natural result of God's holy presence encountering a soul that has refused to let go of its sin.
Beilby, though he takes a more cautious approach than I do, also recognizes the connection between corrective punishment and postmortem opportunity. He discusses how Jerry Walls has argued that persons might undergo "a process of purgatorial purification or preparation" after death, rooted in an understanding of salvation as involving genuine transformation. If salvation is not merely a legal declaration but involves real change—real sanctification—then it makes sense that God would continue His transformative work beyond the grave.42
As Stephen Jonathan observes, the tension between the biblical portrait of a loving, restorative God and the traditional teaching of purely retributive eternal punishment is one of the strongest motivations for reconsidering the possibility of postmortem salvation.40 If God's justice is truly restorative rather than merely retributive—and I believe we have shown that it is—then the case for postmortem opportunity is significantly strengthened.
Before we close this chapter, we should address the most common objections to the view we have presented.
This is perhaps the most common response, and we have already touched on it. But let me state the problem with it clearly. This objection creates a God with two fundamentally different modes of operation—one for insiders and one for outsiders. God is loving and corrective toward His children, but cold and retributive toward everyone else. But is this consistent with the God revealed in Scripture? Is this the God who "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45)? Is this the God who "is kind to the ungrateful and the evil" (Luke 6:35)?
Parry challenges this objection head-on. He argues that the biblical evidence shows God's punishment of Israel and His punishment of the nations follow the same pattern—both are retributive, and both are corrective. "God's punishment of Israel was not radically different from his wrath on the nations. Both were retributive and both were educative, and neither meant the obliteration of the hope for restoration."41
Furthermore, Burnfield makes a powerful point from Luke 6:27–36, where Jesus commands His followers to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, and be merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful. Burnfield asks whether it makes sense that God would command us to love our enemies while He Himself tortures His enemies for all eternity. Is it not reasonable to assume that God would follow His own advice?49 The early church father Thomas Allin made the same point centuries ago, arguing that if God's attitude toward His worst enemies is love, "that attitude is permanent, is eternal; nay, must be so. Whatever be the sin of His enemies, He must be to them the same unchanging God of love."50
Absolutely not. Corrective punishment does not earn salvation any more than a parent's discipline earns a child's place in the family. The child already belongs to the family. The discipline is meant to bring the child back into a right relationship with the parent. Similarly, God's corrective punishment is not a payment plan. Salvation remains entirely by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But God's discipline—even after death—can break down the barriers of pride, ignorance, and rebellion that prevent people from receiving that grace.
Think of it this way. When a person is addicted to a destructive behavior, sometimes it takes a crisis—hitting rock bottom—before they become willing to accept help. The crisis does not earn their recovery. The help of others, their own willingness to change, and the hard work of healing are what produce recovery. But the crisis was the catalyst that made everything else possible. In the same way, the pain of encountering God's holy presence after death could be the crisis that finally breaks through a lifetime of spiritual resistance. The suffering does not earn salvation. But it can open the door that a person has kept firmly shut throughout their earthly life.
On the contrary, I believe this view takes sin more seriously, not less. The traditional retributive view treats sin as a line item on a cosmic ledger—an offense that demands a corresponding penalty. The corrective view understands that sin is not merely a legal violation but a deep corruption of the human soul that requires real transformation. God does not simply want to punish sin. He wants to destroy sin—to root it out of the human heart and replace it with righteousness. That is a far more radical and thorough response to the problem of sin than merely inflicting an equivalent amount of suffering.
Furthermore, I am not suggesting that all will be saved. As I have argued throughout this book (see especially Chapter 30), I believe it is genuinely possible that some will refuse God's love even after the fullest possible revelation—and they will be destroyed. The corrective purpose of punishment does not guarantee a positive response. It means God gives every person every possible chance. But free will is real, and final rejection remains a tragic possibility.
I want to be very clear: I am not denying the reality of God's wrath. God's anger against sin is real, intense, and deeply personal. He is not indifferent to evil. The prophets thunder with the reality of divine judgment, and Jesus Himself speaks soberly about the fire of Gehenna (see Chapter 21). Nothing I have argued in this chapter should be taken as minimizing the terrifying reality of standing before a holy God as an unrepentant sinner.
But wrath and love are not opposites in God. They are two expressions of the same character. God is angry at sin precisely because He loves the sinner. A doctor who sees a cancerous tumor does not regard it with indifference—he regards it with something we might call "wrath" against the disease that is destroying his patient. But that wrath is an expression of love for the patient, not hatred. As Hurd writes, God's judgment and discipline "are just as much an expression of His love as are His favors." It is "the severe side of divine mercy."51
Jonathan also helpfully notes that while there is undeniably a punitive element in the New Testament's teaching on justice, "it is imperative to recognize the Hebraic concept of covenant justice based on relationship, rather than impose a Western notion of retributive justice on the text."52 When we read the Bible's language of wrath through a Western, retributive lens, we distort it. When we read it through the lens of covenant relationship—a Father disciplining His children—the wrath becomes intelligible as an expression of love. Baker puts it memorably: God's love itself is "the most grueling judgment—judgment that brings repentance and reconciliation."53
We began this chapter by asking a simple but profound question: Why does God punish? And we have found that the biblical answer is consistently and overwhelmingly clear. God punishes because He loves. His punishment is the discipline of a Father, the fire of a refiner, the surgery of a healer. It is just—sin has real consequences, and God does not pretend otherwise. But it is never merely retributive. It always aims at something greater: the correction, purification, and restoration of the one being punished.
We saw this pattern in the Old Testament, in the prophets' vision of God smelting away dross and refining like silver. We saw it in the New Testament, in the author of Hebrews' portrait of a Father who disciplines "for our good, that we may share his holiness." We saw it in Jesus' deliberate use of kolasis—corrective punishment—to describe eschatological judgment. We saw it in Talbott's philosophical critique of retributivism, in Manis's divine presence model that achieves a balance between retribution and restoration, and in the early Church Fathers' conviction that God's punishments are "saving and disciplinary, leading to conversion."
And we saw how all of this connects to the postmortem opportunity. If God's punishment has a corrective purpose, then the experience of divine judgment after death is not a sealed tomb. It is a furnace—and furnaces can produce gold as well as ash. The same fire that terrifies the unrepentant could, by God's grace and the Spirit's work, become the catalyst for the repentance they never achieved in this life.
We are not finished with this theme. In the next chapter, we will turn to the Lake of Fire itself and explore the stunning possibility—rooted in Eastern Orthodox theology and supported by the divine presence model—that the Lake of Fire is not a place separate from God but God's own purifying presence. If that thesis is correct, it gives even greater weight to what we have argued here: that God's punishment is always, at its deepest level, an expression of His relentless, purifying, never-ending love.
1 See the discussion of Anselm's satisfaction theory in Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), chap. 9, "The Rejection of God and the Meaning of Punishment," where Talbott notes that Anselm "spoke as if the sinner acquires a kind of debt; in the very act of disobeying God, he or she fails 'to render to God what is due.'" ↩
2 David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment, 2nd ed. (2016), chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Proverbs 3:12." ↩
3 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Proverbs 3:12." ↩
4 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Punishment's Purpose: Repentance." ↩
5 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment." ↩
6 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Hebrews 12:7–11." ↩
7 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Hebrews 12:7–11." ↩
8 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.10. See the discussion in William Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death?, chap. 9, "Kolasis and Timoria," where Harrison notes: "Kolasis is for the sake of the one punished; timoria for the sake of the one punishing, that he may receive satisfaction." ↩
9 William Barclay, New Testament Words (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1974), s.v. "kolasis," cited in George Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ (2017), chap. 5, "The Two-Edged Sword." ↩
10 Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 5, "The Two-Edged Sword." Hurd notes that the Pharisees used phrases like aidios timōria ("eternal torture") and eirgmos aidios ("eternal prison"), citing Josephus. ↩
11 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9, "The Rejection of God and the Meaning of Punishment." ↩
12 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9. Talbott acknowledges that retributivists "have nonetheless made an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between law and punishment" and have "helped to clarify the idea of an excessive punishment." ↩
13 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9, "Is God a Retributivist?" ↩
14 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9. ↩
15 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9. As Manis notes in his discussion of Talbott's view, on Talbott's account God "will not shield those who are obstinate and unrepentant from the natural consequences of their sin, because doing so would be at cross purposes to His goal of bringing about their restoration." See R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 321. ↩
16 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9, "The Rejection of God and the Meaning of Punishment." ↩
17 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 291. ↩
18 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 40–45. Manis frames this as "the problem of love for retributivist views of hell," noting that the challenge is "explaining how it could be an act of love for the damned." ↩
19 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 45. ↩
20 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 290–91. Manis writes: "The model rejects (T4), the retribution thesis in its traditionalist form: the claim that hell's purpose is to inflict punishment on the wicked as recompense for earthly wrongdoing." ↩
21 Robin Parry [as Gregory MacDonald], The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), chap. 6, "A Universalist Reading of the New Testament: Punishment." ↩
22 Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 6. ↩
23 Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 6. ↩
24 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment." ↩
25 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "Punishment's Purpose: To Help Those Being Punished," under "Proverbs 20:30." ↩
26 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "Punishment's Purpose: To Help Those Being Punished," under "Proverbs 23:14." ↩
27 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "Punishment's Purpose: Repentance." ↩
28 Clement of Alexandria, quoted in Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 12, "Universalism – The Doctrine of the Majority until Saint Augustine and the Dark Ages," under "Clement of Alexandria." See also Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death?, chap. 15, "Clement of Alexandria." ↩
29 Clement of Alexandria, quoted in Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 12, under "Clement of Alexandria." ↩
30 Isaak Dorner, quoted in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," following the discussion of 1 Corinthians 3:12–15. ↩
31 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Degrees of Punishment." ↩
32 Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 5, "The Two-Edged Sword." ↩
33 Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 5, "The Two-Edged Sword." ↩
34 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under the discussion of 1 Corinthians 3:12–15. ↩
35 Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You've Been Taught about God's Wrath and Judgment (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 115. ↩
36 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 374. ↩
37 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9, quoted also in Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 5, "The Two-Edged Sword." ↩
38 Baker, Razing Hell, 119. ↩
39 Baker, Razing Hell, 115–20. Baker's "Otto" narrative appears in Part 3, "A New View of Hell." ↩
40 Stephen Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? A Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Evaluation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), chap. 6, "Justice and Divine Wrath." Jonathan argues that "the restorative model of divine justice" is more consistent with the biblical witness than a purely retributive model. ↩
41 Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 6. ↩
42 James K. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 53–54. Beilby discusses how Jerry Walls has argued that persons might undergo "a process of purgatorial purification or preparation" after death, rooted in an understanding of salvation as involving genuine transformation. ↩
43 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 286. Manis argues that on the divine presence model, hell "does not qualify as a natural punishment, in the full sense … though it is perhaps closer to a natural punishment than to anything else in ordinary human experience." ↩
44 Baker, Razing Hell, 16–17. Baker notes that "the heartbeat of the New Testament witness circulates the good news of reconciliation more so than retribution." ↩
45 Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, 306. Manis uses the doctrine of double effect to argue that God "is willing the highest good of the damned, bringing about the conditions that are constitutive of maximal human flourishing. God knows that this will fail to bring them happiness, given the state of their souls, but their misery is not His intent." ↩
46 Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 6, "The Two-Edged Sword." Hurd writes that in the Ezekiel passage, "the furnace of fire is in order to separate the dross or scum from their lives. The end result is that they come forth from the furnace pure and separate from sin." ↩
47 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9. Talbott argues that given the Old Testament principle of equal retaliation (lex talionis), the only crime warranting everlasting suffering would be one in which the perpetrator inflicted everlasting harm—something a loving, omnipotent God would never permit. ↩
48 Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 9. ↩
49 Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Loving Our Enemies." ↩
50 Thomas Allin, quoted in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, chap. 8, "The Purpose of Punishment," under "Loving Our Enemies." ↩
51 Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 2, "A Divided God?" ↩
52 Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave, chap. 6, "Justice and Divine Wrath." ↩
53 Baker, Razing Hell, 119. ↩
Baker, Sharon L. Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You've Been Taught about God's Wrath and Judgment. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.
Barclay, William. New Testament Words. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1974.
Beilby, James K. Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021.
Burnfield, David. Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment. 2nd ed. 2016.
Harrison, William. Is Salvation Possible After Death? N.p., n.d.
Hurd, George. The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ. 2017.
Jonathan, Stephen. Grace beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? A Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Evaluation. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014.
Manis, R. Zachary. Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Parry, Robin [as Gregory MacDonald]. The Evangelical Universalist. 2nd ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012.
Talbott, Thomas. The Inescapable Love of God. 2nd ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014.