Does Sin Against an Infinite God Require Infinite Punishment?

In brief#

The argument that sin against an infinite God requires infinite punishment is one of the best known defences of eternal conscious torment (ECT). As usually stated it is reasoning about the nature of God rather than exposition of a text. Where Scripture does address degrees of judgment, it calibrates them by what the sinner knew, not by the dignity of the one sinned against.

Two further problems follow. Punishment of infinite magnitude paid out at finite intensity is never completed, so full justice for a given sin is never reached. And the usual reply, that the lost go on sinning for ever, creates difficulties of its own.

One distinction matters throughout. Infinite punishment, meaning punishing that goes on for ever, is not the same thing as eternal punishment, which is thoroughly biblical language and is examined in What Does "Eternal Punishment" Mean?. This page disputes the first, not the second.

The traditional argument in its own words#

Anyone who has spent time in a gospel-preaching church in America has heard some version of this. It deserves to be heard from its defenders rather than summarised by an opponent.

Thomas Aquinas#

The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin ... and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.

The elided clause supplies the illustration: it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen. This wording is the variant that circulates in sermons and popular writing rather than a standard translation.

Jonathan Edwards#

Edwards states the same reasoning in his own voice.

Our obligation to love, honor and obey any being is in proportion to his loveliness, honor and authority. Therefore, sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous and so deserving infinite punishment. If there is any evil in sin against God it is infinite evil.

John MacArthur#

And more recently, stated compactly in a sermon:

Crimes against the infinitely holy and exalted God are infinitely wicked, and the punishment fits the crime. Infinite crimes against an infinite God deserve an infinite punishment.

What the argument rests on#

Two features stand out. The first is the near absence of Scripture references: these are arguments from the nature of God, offered as such. The second is the speed of the move from "God is infinite" to "sin against God requires infinite punishment", with nothing between the two except the principle that gravity of offence tracks dignity of the offended party.

Set aside inferences drawn from the ECT reading of the passages usually cited for that view, and a biblical case that sin requires infinite punishment is hard to build. The doctrine looks less like a conclusion drawn from the text than like a requirement produced by the ECT view, which is not the same as evidence for it.

Scripture grades judgment by the sinner#

Where Scripture discusses degrees of judgment, the variable it adjusts is the knowledge and circumstance of the one who sinned.

Two servants, the same failure, different punishments, and the difference turns on what each of them knew. It does not turn on the character or nature of the master, which is identical in both cases. Notice also what neither servant receives: an infinite number of blows.

The cities that saw the mighty works face a heavier reckoning than Tyre and Sidon, and the reason given is that they saw more and did not repent. Jesus can speak of one day of judgment as more bearable than another.

The principle recurs. Jesus asks forgiveness for those at the cross because they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). He says those he has spoken to now have no excuse, though they would not have been guilty had he not come (John 15:22), and that guilt attaches precisely to the claim to see (John 9:41). Paul makes the distinction structural.

If the offence against God were the only thing weighed, sin would be charged identically to everyone regardless of what they understood. Paul says it is not, and applies the principle to himself: he received mercy because he acted in ignorance and unbelief (1 Timothy 1:13), implying he would otherwise have stood under more condemnation. It goes further still. Some things are sinful for one person and not another, not because the act changes in God's sight but because knowledge and conscience differ.

Notice the form of the sentence. It does not say that failing to do the right thing is sin. It says that failing to do it when you know it is sin. Paul says the same of doubt in Romans 14:23, and in Romans 14:14 says that nothing is unclean in itself but is unclean for the person who thinks it so. In 1 Corinthians 8 he is personally untroubled by meat offered to idols while warning that a believer with a weak conscience can be destroyed by being led into eating it. So what is the penalty for eating meat? Infinite, because God is infinite? Or nothing at all for the person whose conscience rightly permits it, and something real for the person whose conscience does not?

One qualification belongs here, and the author states it himself: the principle does not run in reverse. Some things are sin whether or not the person committing them feels any conviction about it.

This matches how we already reason about responsibility. A two year old who draws on the walls in permanent marker is not punished as a teenager would be for the same act. And to take Aquinas' illustration directly: if a person maliciously kills a stranger, the evil of the act does not depend on whether the victim was a head of state or a private citizen. It depends on the condition of the killer's heart.

There is a reason Scripture might work this way.

Our present grasp of God's holiness and majesty is partial and varies greatly from person to person. If judgment is graded by what the sinner knew, our sins are not charged against us as though we had seen clearly. That also makes sense of why Satan and his angels might face something different, since they are not described as seeing in a mirror dimly. See Why Might Satan and His Angels Have a Different Fate?.

One consequence of the infinite-offence principle is worth noticing. If the greatness of the one sinned against fixes the gravity of an offence, rather than the character of the one committing it, consider what it would mean for God to sin against us. Nothing would restrain him, since he is infinite and we are nothing by comparison. Yet his character is such that he is entirely without blame toward even the least part of his creation. The principle proves too much.

The one sin called eternal#

The phrase "eternal sin" most likely means that this sin is permanent and irreversible, which fits, since repentance is itself the work of the Spirit being blasphemed. But suppose it meant an infinite sin requiring eternal torment. Jesus is explicitly setting this sin apart from all others, which would then imply that all other sins are not eternal or infinite. That is the opposite of what the infinite-offence argument needs, since on that argument every sin against God is infinite.

A punishment that is never completed#

The next difficulty arises from a premise ECT's own defenders grant. They agree that the severity of punishment at any given moment is finite, as they must, since Scripture describes degrees of judgment. What is infinite on their account is the timescale.

But after any finite stretch of time in hell, a person has experienced finite severity for a finite duration, which is finite punishment. That holds at every moment without exception. The wicked therefore never experience the infinite punishment the argument says their sin deserves. The proposed penalty is never inflicted, which is to say God never fully administers the justice the argument requires of him.

Put as a question: at every moment the person has received less than the argument says they deserve, so why would God not raise the severity toward what is owed? That logic pushes toward infinitely severe punishment administered at once, and toward the same for everyone, regardless of the differences in accountability Scripture records.

A common objection is that finite sins committed in an eighty year life cannot warrant unending torment. The standard ECT reply is a good one: a murder takes seconds and the sentence is measured in decades. But notice what everyone grants about that sentence. Two weeks in, justice has not yet been fully served. The analogy concedes the point at issue. And the most extreme crimes do not receive life imprisonment. They receive the death penalty. Sin, on the conditionalist reading, is a capital matter rather than a custodial one.

Finite from below, infinite from above#

Conditional immortality (CI), the view that immortality is a gift and that the unrighteous finally lose life itself, can hold both descriptions at once.

From the sinner's side, judgment and destruction are a finite experience of active punishing, limited in duration and in severity. Limited in severity they must be, since Scripture describes different degrees. That fits what Scripture says about receiving what is due.

Romans 2:6 says the same, and it matches the Old Testament pattern of commensurate retribution.

From God's side, the death that culminates that punishment is infinite in magnitude and duration alike, because the person permanently loses eternal life, infinite in duration, in his presence, infinite in good. The consequence is plainly infinite.

None of this means a person could pay for their own sins, which would diminish what Christ did on the cross. The payment required is death. That is what the unrepentant receives and what Christ bore on their behalf, and nobody pays it and remains alive, unless he holds the keys of life and death cannot hold him. Whether suffering itself discharges a debt is taken up in Why Suffering Does Not Pay for Sin.

The reply that the lost keep sinning#

Some defenders of ECT answer the never-completed problem by arguing that the lost go on sinning for ever, so that the punishment remains just. MacArthur states it directly, continuing from the passage quoted above: "sinners who go to hell never repent ... They remain God haters forever so that the punishment never catches up with the sin." He is explicit that the justice in view is retributive rather than remedial, and that those in hell continue to hate, curse, mock and blaspheme God [MacArthur].

The author raises four problems with this reply.

1. Scripture never states or implies it. Where judgment is described, it is judgment for deeds already done. Jude 15 speaks of convicting the ungodly of the deeds they have committed and the things they have spoken, all of it past.

2. It contradicts ECT's own definition of eternal punishment. On this reply, what a person deserves for an earthly life is finite punishment for a finite duration, and the endlessness comes from new sins accumulated after arrival. But ECT defines eternal punishment as the consequence of sins committed in this life. Is the fire eternal only because God foreknows the condemned will keep renewing their own sentence?

3. It leaves evil permanent rather than defeated. If the population of hell, which on Jesus' description of the narrow and wide gates outnumbers the population of heaven (Matthew 7:13-14), sins without pause for ever, in what sense has God dealt with sin? Was the enemy defeated at the cross, or was evil relocated to a corner of creation where there is more of it than ever? Paul writes of death being destroyed, not rehoused.

   ²⁴Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. ²⁵For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

4. The later sins are never judged. The last judgment happens before the condemned are thrown into the lake of fire. Are there subsequent judgments? Is God perpetually judging new offences?

   Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,

   That verse, with others, points to a single judgment, which would leave every subsequent sin unjudged. Joseph Dear puts the question sharply: "Why even have a final judgment on the last day, if there is no actual finality to it? What is even the point of having a grand judgment event, where results are based on this life, if judging must continue throughout eternity anyway?" [Dear]

One further observation, offered as an observation rather than an argument. MacArthur's own summary is that the punishment can never catch up with the wretchedness. Read plainly, that says God's punishing is never adequate to the sin committed. Whether God is genuinely unable to punish sin fully is a question the reply raises and does not answer.

Complete rather than infinite#

The author's preferred formulation replaces one word.

On this account full justice is administered on the day of judgment rather than trickling in for ever, a point developed in The Day of Judgment.

What this argument establishes#

• The infinite-punishment argument is offered by its own defenders as reasoning about God rather than as exegesis.
• Scripture repeatedly calibrates judgment by the sinner's knowledge and circumstance.
• On the traditional view, full justice for a given sin is never reached at any moment.

What it does not establish by itself#

• That final punishment is mild, brief, or anything less than the full measure God determines.
• That every defender of eternal conscious torment relies on this argument. Many rest the case on the disputed passages instead.
• That the objection from fairness has any force. It does not, and it is not used here.

Related sections and passages#

• What Does "Eternal Punishment" Mean?
• The Day of Judgment
• Why Suffering Does Not Pay for Sin
• Why Might Satan and His Angels Have a Different Fate?
• Further passages above: Luke 23:34, John 15:22, John 9:41, 1 Timothy 1:13, Romans 14:14, Romans 14:23, Romans 2:6, Jude 15.

Sources and notes#

The traditional argument is quoted from its defenders: Aquinas [Aquinas, Ia-IIae, q. 87, a. 4, objection 2], Edwards [Edwards] and MacArthur [MacArthur]. The first two are public domain; the sermon is quoted briefly and linked. The discussion of infinity draws on an article treating the question at greater length from a conditionalist standpoint [Finite sins]. The question about the purpose of a final judgment is Joseph Dear's [Dear].