What is hell like?
Hell is separation from God, with punishment proportioned to the gravity and frequency of sin. Robert Sungenis holds that God's justice never punishes beyond guilt, and that whether the pain or the existence itself is eternal remains uncertain.
What is hell like?
Answer
What is hell like? Hell is separation from God and includes proportional punishment. Pain differs by the gravity and frequency of sin. Whether pain or existence is eternal is uncertain, but God's justice ensures punishment never exceeds guilt. Robert Sungenis points to Scripture for the idea that punishment differs from person to person. In his Catholic Apologetics Study Bible commentary on Matthew (CASB 1, Second Edition 2019), on Matthew 11:21-24, where the judgment "shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you," he writes: "Thus, Jesus' words reinforce the fact that these Jews will be sent to a worse punishment than the Gentile cities." In the same commentary he treats Jude 7 ("a sign of suffering the punishment of eternal fire") and 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 as passages about hell, and notes that weeping and gnashing of teeth is the New Testament's common way of speaking of eternal judgment (Matthew 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51). In his book Not By Faith Alone (Second Edition), discussing Matthew 25, he writes: "Although the punishment in eternity may be more or less, depending on mitigating factors in the man's earthly life, the point of the teaching is that the unrighteousness he has done at the end of his life will prevent him from entering the bliss of heaven."