ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Resurrection Judgement and the Hereafter Lesson Twenty: The Eternal Nature of Punishment The eternal nature of the punishment that the faithless and wicked are to suffer in hellfire presents a problem for many people. Given the fact that evil acts are marked by the finiteness of the world, how, they ask, can requital for those acts be eternal and everlasting? Can there be any common measure between a finite act and an infinite punishment?

A punishment that is to extend over an indefinite future does indeed represent an extreme form of torment; it is terrifying and induces a shudder merely to think of a punishment for which no limit is set in time. It is also true that according to human judicial systems and penal provisions the punishment of lawbreakers and offenders is fixed according to the crimes they have committed; some punishments are brief in duration while others last longer.

The offences men commit are not uniform, either qualitatively or quantitatively, and the penalties awarded them also cannot be uniform. We must remind ourselves at this point that utter justice prevails in God's judging of men, for an accounting will be made of even the slightest of deeds. Neither an atom's weight of good shall remain unrewarded nor shall a single offender escape punishment, unless he benefit from God's forgiveness and mercy.

How then could the punishment dispensed by God not be precisely commensurate with the offence? If no one objects to the eternity of the paradise in which the blessed reside, this is because paradise and hellfire are not founded on a common basis. There is a manifest difference between eternal punishment and eternal reward. The reward that God dispenses without measure derives from His generosity and mercy, and no one therefore raises any objection.

The objection pertains only to faithless evildoers residing eternally in hellfire, without their torment being lessened for a single instant. Is such a punishment for the necessarily limited and finite sin and corruption of which the sinner was guilty compatible with the principle of divine justice, even if they dominated his whole life?

Let us suppose someone spends his whole life in the swamp of atheism, unbelief and corruption; it cannot last much more than a century, which is like a brief instant when compared with eternity.