208 What May Be Believed
with certain forms of "manualist" Thomism, which I see as
being wrong on all these matters in only the most interesting
ways). But I do not think that it would actually add anything
to the essential arguments of these pages. As I stated at the
beginning of this book, the two exceedingly simple - almost
childish-questions that have persistently bothered me down
the years, whenever I have tried to make sense of the doctrine
of a hell of eternal torment, are whether it lies within the power
of any finite rational creature freely to reject God, and to do so
with eternal finality, and whether a God who could create a
world in which the eternal perdition of rational spirits is even a
possibility could be not only good, but the transcendent Good
as such. And, for the reasons I have given above, I believe that
the answer to both questions must be an unqualified and un-
yielding no.
I have been asked more than once in the last few years
whether, if I were to become convinced that Christian adher-
ence absolutely requires a belief in a hell of eternal torment,
this would constitute in my mind proof that Christianity
should be dismissed as a self-evidently morally obtuse and
logically incoherent faith. And, as it happens, it would. As I
say, for me it is a matter of conscience, which is after all only
a name for the natural will's aboriginal and constant orienta-
tion toward the Good when that orientation expresses itself in
our conscious motives. As such, conscience must not abide by
the rule of the majority. Placed in the balance over against its
dictates, the authority of a dominant tradition or of a reigning
opinion has no weight whatever. And my conscience forbids
assent to a picture of reality that I regard as morally corrupt,
contrary to justice, perverse, inexcusably cruel, deeply irratio-
nal, and essentially wicked. Nor do I believe that this is arro-
gance on my part. For me, the option of such assent simply