Many modern people want eternal justice on their own terms. This desire may have little or nothing to do with God.
“You can feel this tension with someone like Epstein right now, because people really want justice, and even if they were able to get human justice, that wouldn’t be enough, because of the horrors of what this man appears to have done,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. His Oxford University doctoral studies focused on 20 centuries of doctrines about hell, and last year, he addressed the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem on modern beliefs about eternal damnation.
When faced with hellish acts by individuals and groups, modern believers and even unbelievers can’t help but cry out for some form of justice that transcends human courts, he noted. That creates a problem, since many people no longer “believe in a transcendent source of justice that determines what is right or wrong in this life. Their beliefs about eternal judgment are all personal and based on their own feelings. …
“You end up with a sense of injustice about the lack of ultimate justice, because the only justice that would provide what many people yearn for is some kind of transcendent, divine justice – which they would never accept.”
Fascinating analysis from @tweetmattingly regarding the conflict of wanting J Epstein to suffer in Hell if you don’t believe in Hell. https://t.co/dJPK6HmmPn
— Chuck Hinkle (@CLHinkle) August 19, 2019