§ 4. Everlasting Punishment limits the Sovereignty of God.
It is certain that the doctrine of eternal punishment, in the common form, can only be maintained by giving up some of the infinite attributes of the Almighty. If punishment is to exist without end; if hell is always to co-exist with heaven; if certain beings are to be continued forever in existence merely as sinful sufferers,—then, it is clear, God is not omnipotent. He shares his throne forever with Satan. Satan and God divide between them the universe. God reigns in heaven, Satan in hell. God desires that all shall be saved; but this desire is absolutely and forever defeated by a fate greater than Deity. Law divorced from love—that is, nature in its old Pagan aspect—is higher than God. God is not the Almighty to any one who really believes eternal punishment. God is not the Sovereign of the universe, but only of a part of it. The doctrine of eternal punishment, in its common form, does, therefore, virtually dethrone God.[49]
It is, in fact, impossible to conceive of an eternal hell co-existing with an eternal heaven, without also seeing that it [pg 367] limits eternally the divine Omnipotence; for the omnipotence of God is in carrying out his will to have all men saved by becoming holy. Unless God's laws are obeyed, God is not obeyed; and he is not sovereign if not obeyed. Hell is a condition of things hostile to God's will: it is a permanent and successful rebellion of a part of the universe. It is no answer to say, that it is shut up, and restrained, and made to suffer; for it is not conquered. God has conquered sin only when he has reduced it to obedience. Hell is no more subject to God than the Confederate States, during the rebellion, were subject to the United States government. They were shut up by a blockade; they were restrained by great armies and navies; they were made to suffer; but they were not reduced to submission and obedience.
Nor is it any answer to say, that the existence of sin and suffering hereafter no more limits God's omnipotence than their existence here and now limits his omnipotence. For the question is of eternal suffering. Temporal suffering hereafter, we grant, is no objection to the divine Omnipotence. Limited and finite evil, in this world or the other, is no philosophical difficulty; and for this reason—that finite evil, when compared with infinite good, becomes logically and mathematically no evil. The finite disappears in relation to the infinite. All the sufferings and sins of earth, through all ages, are strictly nothing when viewed in the light of the eternal joy and holiness which are to result from them. This is a postulate of pure reason. Make evil finite, and good infinite,—make evil temporal, and good eternal,—and evil ceases to be anything. But make evil eternal, as is done by this doctrine, and then we have Manicheism—an infinite dualism—on the throne of the universe.