The teaching that the wicked will go to hell has about it a certain logic and justice. We may not think that a loving God would wish to consign anyone to eternal torment, but that the final destination of the evil should be different from that of the good is not, on the face of the matter, unjust. A case for the extinction of the utterly evil was argued by Ulrich Simon in his Theology of Auschwitz. May it not be the case that some become so corrupted by the evil of their ways that there is nothing left for them but annihilation? ‘Extirpation is congruous with the feverish activists in annihilation. Damnation is the silent seal on their wickedness. Unforgiven and unforgivable they go to the doom which their own fantasies and crimes have already sought on earth.’ Could justice demand anything less?

Why then has the doctrine of hell fallen into such disrepute? The main cause is that we have lost the concept of the justice of God. A number of reasons for the loss can be listed. First, there is the form the doctrine often took in the tradition. At least from the time of Augustine there has been a tendency to teach that the justice of God consisted in the fact that he could, had he wished, have consigned the whole of the human race to hell, but that he graciously (gratuitously?) saved a few brands from the burning. It is not wholly an accident that folk belief has often held that an unbaptised child will go to hell.