54 The Question of an Eternal Hellextending to all the children of the heavens and the earth. It is
perfectly reasonable, then, to allow this similitude a particu-
larly privileged status when trying to think about God's rela-
tions to his creatures. But perhaps, in order to understand this
fully, we must almost force ourselves to reason in a childlike
way. We can then at the very least gain some sense of what not
to expect from God. For instance, a father who punishes his
child for any purpose other than that child's correction and
moral improvement, and who even then fails to do so only re-
luctantly, is a poor father. One who brutally beats his child, or
wantonly inflicts needless pain of any kind upon his child, is
a contemptible monster. And one who surrenders his child to
fate, even if that fate should consist in the entirely "just" conse-
quences of his child's own choices and actions, is an altogether
unnatural father-not a father at all, really, except in the most
trivial biological sense. Natural justice-in fact, proportional
justice as such- is not the primary business of fathers. It is
their responsibility to continue to love their children in all con-
ditions, to seek their children's well-being and (if need be) ref-
ormation, and to use whatever natural powers they possess to
save their children from ruin. (What a happy circumstance,
then, if a father happens to possess infinite power.) Paternal
love has nothing to do with proportion; its proper "measure"
is total, ceaseless abandon. This is something that indeed any
child should be able to grasp. Hence we should be able to grasp
it as well. For some reason, however, we usually are not.
One of the more irksome complaints often raised against
any moral critique of the infernalist orthodoxies is that it in-
volves judging the acts of God according to some ethical stan-
dard applicable to finite creatures, and thereby attempts to
trespass upon the inaccessible transcendence of the one who