As before, we are confronted by a claim that no one would seriously entertain for a moment if not for the emotional pressure exerted by the conviction that he or she must believe in an eternal hell that is somehow the work of love and justice, rather than of malice. Any logical definition of penal justice requires a due proportion between (in forensic terms) a mens rea and the actus reus—between, on the one hand, the intentions, knowledge, and powers of the malefactor and, on the other, the objective wickedness of the transgression. Otherwise the very concept of justice has been rendered
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