ABSTRACT
It is plain to see that many people suffer greatly in this life. But this observable pain may be just the tip of the iceberg. Traditional Christian theology posits the existence of even more suffering in the universe, suffering that we cannot (yet) observe: the agony of the damned in hell. If the suffering we see in this life is diffi cult to reconcile with the existence of a loving, omnipotent God, the supposed suffering of the damned is even more so. For on many traditional views of hell, God does not merely allow the damned to suffer, but actively infl icts their pain upon them. As David Lewis puts it:
God has prescribed torment for insubordination. The punishment is to go on forever, and the agonies to be endured by the damned intensify, in unimaginable ways, the sufferings we undergo in our earthly lives. In both dimensions, time and intensity, the torment is infi nitely worse than all the suffering and sin that will have occurred during the history of life in the universe. What God does is thus infi nitely worse than what the worst of tyrants have done.2
