Doubting the Answers 47
cally nonsensical; it is a claim made in desperation only be-
cause no better, more plausible claim was available. So, really,
what can my Thomist acquaintances do in the end other than
repeat their asseveration, as though reciting their catechism,
and to do so repeatedly until they have convinced themselves
that it really does all make some sort of sense after all? Even the
most rigorous reasoning, however, if based on absurd prem-
ises, can yield at best only gibberish, at worst cynical sophist-
ries. And, really, none of this matters much in the end. Once
more, not a single one of these attempted justifications for the
idea of an eternal hell actually improves the picture of God
with which the infernalist orthodoxy presents us, and it is this
that should be the chief concern of any believer. All of these
arguments still oblige one to believe that a benevolent and om-
nipotent God would willfully create rational beings destined
for an endless torment that they could never, in any rational
calculus of personal responsibility, earn for themselves; and to
believe also that this, somehow, is essential to the good news
Christianity brought into the world.
In the end, there really is only one logical terminus
toward which all these lines of reasoning can lead: When all
the possible paths of evasion have tapered away among the
weeds, one has to stop, turn around, retrace one's steps back
to the beginning of the journey, and finally admit that, if there
really is an eternal hell for finite spirits, then it has to be the
case that God condemns the damned to endless misery not on
account of any sane proportion between what they are capable
of meriting and how he chooses to requite them for their sins,
but solely as a demonstration of his power to do as he wishes.
Hence, for instance, classical Thomism, at least in the "man -
ualist" tradition that so dominated the reading of Aquinas
from the sixteenth century through the early twentieth, was