60 The Question of an Eternal Hellmake sense within the context of all other contingent events
and conditions, but are instead presented with a comprehen-
sive story that purports to be nothing less than the total narra-
tive and total rationale of all God's actions in creation, then we
may indeed pass judgment on that story's plausibility. In fact, it
is morally required of us to do so; not to judge is a dereliction
of our rational vocation to know and affirm the Good. And
here, recall again, we are not assessing God's acts against some
higher standard of ethical action; we are merely measuring the
stories we tell about him against his own supposed revealed
nature as the transcendent Good. It is our story that is being
judged for its internal coherence, in keeping with our rational
grasp of justice and benevolence, not God who is being judged
according to some external scale of ethical values. Thus, for in-
stance, it is perfectly permissible to say with confidence that
God, by his nature, could not create a reality containing ratio-
nal creatures, all of whom, for no reason save the exercise of
the divine will, he keeps entirely ignorant of the Good during
their lives, and then mercilessly consigns to eternal torment
thereafter as a penalty for their misdeeds. Because he is the
Good itself, God cannot be the author of absolute injustice,
absolute evil; such an irrational possibility would be a limi-
tation upon the infinite freedom with which he expresses his
nature.
In fact, if God were some impulsively erratic or play-
fully mercurial psychological personality, capable of occasion -
ally contradicting his own essence just to make the point that
he can, all theological language would be just so much mean-
ingless babble. And, if God's essence were nothing more than
sheer indeterminate will, detached from the measure of the
Good, he would be both a logical contradiction in himself, and
an utterly impenetrable enigma or ultimate absurdity in regard