52 The Question of an Eternal HellI agree with Reformed tradition that, for Christian thought in
general, the question of one's just deserts before God is irrele-
vant- as it was, for instance, for the woman taken in adultery.
If what the New Testament says about God is true, then it is
God's will not to repay us according to our merits, but simply
to claim for himself those of his creatures who had been lost
in slavery to death. I remain convinced that no one, logically
speaking, could merit eternal punishment; but I also accept
the obverse claim that no one could merit grace. This does not
mean, however, that grace must be rare in order to be truly
gracious, as so many in the infernalist party so casually assume
it must. Grace universally given is still grace. A gift made to
everyone is no less a gift, and a gift that is intrinsically pre-
cious need not be rare to be an act of the highest generosity.
Conversely, that gift becomes no more precious - indeed, it
becomes much less so - if it is certified in its value by being
distributed only parsimoniously. Our very existence is an un -
merited gift, after all (unless, of course, there really is an eter-
nal hell, in which case it is also, and perhaps preponderantly,
an unmerited brutality). More to the point, if Paul is right,
then -whereas natural justice is wholly concerned with mat-
ters of law and proportional consequences- the supernatural
justice revealed in Christ consists in God's victory over all the
powers that separate his creation from him, and to that degree
is as "unjust" as any other act of wholly unmerited mercy is.
So the entire question of deserts may be set aside for the mo-
ment, as well as any anxiety regarding a proper appreciation of
divine grace, because the more basic and comprehensive issue
remains that of the essential character of the God Christians
think they believe in. The infernalist argument from creaturely
freedom is a silly distraction at the end of the day. True, it pre-
sumes a model of freedom that is inherently absurd, as is well