The stretches that people will make never cease to amaze me. In “The righteousness of the wrath of God”, Arthur Sido writes about a conference he went to where RC Sproul was the lecturer. The arguments, of course, are nothing new, but that doesn’t make them any less disturbing.
Basically, the argument is that “the holiness of God is not inconsistent with eternal punishment of sin, but in fact requires it.”
The problem, of course, is that redefining “love” in order to allow for eternal punishment, presumably in an eternal hell fire, disgusts most reasonable people. The reason, of course, is that such a vengeful attitude is the opposite of love, is unreasonably demanding of a fallible creation and is unjust. It means God is a liar. God told Adam he would “die”, not that he would spend eternity conscious in another place.
In other words, only an unrighteous God would send finite mortal beings into an eternal hellfire for punishment. Why make mankind mortal if they were going to go to an eternal hell, anyhow? Since mankind is limited not only by his environment, but also by his lifespan, he cannot do infinite harm. Therefore, nothing he does can warrant an infinite punishment. That is justice.
God created human beings mortal so that they would not have to endure eternal punishment. Satan and his demons are another story. They are already immortal, they refuse to repent, and so they have sealed their own fate. Mankind, however, was made mortal in order to keep any more creatures from suffering that fate.
Perhaps some of these teachers need to learn the same lesson that Jesus told the Pharisees of His day to learn:
But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
~ Mt 9:13